TRIP REPORT
SEMINAR CONDUCTED IN SOFIA, BULGARIA
BY THE FUND FOR ARTS AND CULTURE IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
OCTOBER 7-13, 2000
In the course of several business trips unrelated to the work of The Fund, Paul Elicker, Chairman, made contact with persons from the Values Foundation, an NGO with objectives similar to those of our Fund and through them with the Soros Center for the Arts (SCA) and also with a few of the cultural institutions and Government Ministry personnel. Subsequently and more specifically, in November, 1999, he pursued with these persons the possibility of an introductory seminar along the lines of those we had previously conducted in other countries. As plans progressed, the Values Foundation dropped out of the planning for reasons related to their own personnel affairs and the Soros Center for the Arts agreed to go forward on its own with making the organizational arrangements and providing some of the financial support. (Values subsequently provided a lesser amount of financial support but did not otherwise play an active role.) October 2000 was selected as the appropriate time for the seminar.
The seminar was only made possible by the active support and excellent organizational arrangements made by Ms. Krassimira Teneva with the support of the SCA Executive Director, Mr. Kamen Balkanski.
Sofia is a city of over one million people, the capital of Bulgaria and its largest city, although there are several others of considerable size. It became a Republic within the communist bloc after World War II. The country was late in shaking off first the communist government and subsequently it’s successor party, the Socialist party. Only three years ago, a small majority of a right of center party was at last popularly elected. Economic progress has been slow even by Eastern European standards and both the government itself and its cultural institutions, almost all government-owned, have suffered from this slow progress and from the Soviet “command economy” type of management system it has thus inherited.
It is therefore our impression that in the scale of things, cultural institution management in Bulgaria is what we would describe as very much in its initial stages.
Our presentation team consisted of Jillian Poole, Paul Elicker and Julian Spaulding, former director of the Glasgow Museums, Scotland. Mr. Spaulding has worked with The Fund on several previous occasions. We were fortunate to obtain his service for this assignment because the task of creating first-rate museums in the severely depressed industrial city of Glasgow was a task that we felt had relevancy to the problems faced by Bulgaria.
Museum Inspections
We all arrived several days before the seminar was to open on Tuesday, October 10. These days were principally spent touring Sofia’s principal museums. Those visited, with a few comments on each, were:
National History Museum: This is the country’s principal museum and the only major museum of history that is directly under government supervision, with the others being under either Oblast (Regional) or Municipal jurisdiction. Its venue has recently been changed from an accessible downtown museum, which reverted by edict to its former inhabitants, offices of the Ministry of Justice. The museum has been relocated to a building quite far out of the city in the foothills of Mt. Vitosha. This was a very unhappy event in the museum community but did not raise the general outcry that it would have raised in the West. The new museum location is in the former communist government reception building, which is gigantic, lavish and forbidding. Icons and other national artifacts, many of which are reproductions, are on the fourth floor by the Thracian Exhibit. This consists of crowded first rate gold material from very early times that has been on international tour for three years and is now returned to its home, but is presently still in temporary quarters. The material is magnificent, but its presentation, captions and attendant publicity is not up to the standard it deserves.
Farth and Man Museum: This is in fact a minerals museum. It being Sunday, there was an active bazaar taking place in the museum hall.
Ethnographical Museum and Fine Arts Gallery: These are housed in the former royal Palace from which they may be removed in the future. Display is stated to be both ethnographical and fine arts. Except for a small showing by an individual artist, the art museum is indefinitely closed; we gather low attendance and costly upkeep are factors. The Ethnographic Museum displays were sub-standard.
National Natural History Museum: This is a zoology, botany, and to some extent a geology museum. It started with a sizeable private collection assembled in the nineteenth century. There is a large collection of stuffed animals and some cages of live reptiles.
Archaeological Museum: Attractively located and housed museum of ancient artifacts, some clearly reproductions. There are also a number of old archaeological sites, principally churches, located throughout the city. The museum has started a café, which we observed as very popular and thriving. We understand that for some of these “private enterprise undertakings”, the revenue must be turned over to the Government.
Other: It should be noted that, more than in other countries in the region, Bulgaria has a number of locations with fixed artistic structures such as monasteries and churches that are referred to as “immovables” and that are under special National Government jurisdiction.
Representatives of all the museums we visited were present at the seminar.
Prior to the start of the seminar, U.S. Ambassador Miles and his wife had a welcoming reception at his residence for all participants and relevant Embassy officials, something we and the participants greatly appreciated.
There were 32 museum officials registered for the seminar: most of them attended throughout. Participants were selected by invitation only and exactly half of them came from other cities and museums scattered throughout Bulgaria, the other half being from Sofia. Locale was the American Center, which houses the USIS and provided simultaneous translation, an enormous boon. SCA had arranged its availability as a meeting site, housing amenities, and lunch. Participants were put up in a hotel a slight distance away. Sessions began at 9:30 and ran, with breaks, until 6:00, Tuesday, October 10 through Friday, October 13.
The seminar content was arranged and discussed beforehand with SCA. It was adapted from previous seminars we have conducted with special emphasis on Bulgarian wishes and requirements. By SCA’s prior request, attendance had been restricted to museums. As usual, we placed strong emphasis on the sessions featuring interactivity, with small breakout groups assigned discussion and presentation assignments. The first two plus days were principally given over to Julian Spaulding who presented museum observations from his experience. Participants stated that they found these observations very interesting and pertinent and they asked a great many questions.
The material that Julian covered was centered on how a director should relate to his staff, how he manages, assigns tasks to, and prioritizes objectives to them. This was preceded by discussion of what a museum should be and the centrality of the museum’s mission statement. He emphasized the importance of conducting purposeful staff meetings with tips on how to make such meetings productive. The coming necessity of broadening the scope of management concern to include financial considerations and the existence and presence of a financial officer was stressed.
As usual, we emphasized the importance of making a museum more “user friendly” and the importance of obtaining knowledge of the profile of the museums’ audience. The importance of programming to create outreach to new audiences was emphasized and Julian gave splendid examples. Throughout, there were group presentations of various outreach assignments.
Julian left the seminar in the late morning of the third day. Jillian and Paul covered such topics as drafting a mission statement and putting it in place, and the significance and content of annual budgets and long range plans. In this connection, there was an assignment to project a future long-range plan starting from financial figures they were given. Several of the groups fully completed this assignment and all gave surprising evidence that they grasped the essentials despite lack of previous experience.
We also shared our impressions, based on experience in other countries, of the need for the museum community to take a more pro-active role vis-à-vis the Ministry, and other public funding sources. We discussed effective lobbying techniques in this contest.
While participants had yet to have experience with fund raising, there was considerable interest in it as a coming requirement. Time was spent on how a museum “makes friends”, with the point made that this is the essence of public relations. Special “Friends Committees” and Press Relations were other topics that participants asked be discussed.
We were joined in the final session by the Chairperson of the Soros Board Elissaveta Moussakova. She and the SCA President took us to dinner that final evening to review impressions on the effectiveness of the seminars.
November 6, 2000