MACEDONIA     2004

Consultants: Paul Elicker • Jillian Poole

 

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Skopje and Ohrid
April 27–30, 2004

In Skopje the Embassy arranged for us to meet with the Minister of Culture who called a meeting attended by Bojan Ivanov, director of the Museum of Macedonia, a representative from Universal Hall (performing arts presentation venue), Zlatko Teodosievski, director of the Art Gallery, and Klime Korobar, director of Museum of the City of Skopje. The Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art had been invited but was unable to attend. All the directors expressed concern about lack of attendance and particularly that people do come for the openings (a wine and hors d’oeuvres party) but do not seem to return. Museums are not considered fun and interesting places to be. The separation of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education has resulted in teachers not bringing their students to the museums. They expressed concern over how to build programs for audiences with special needs and well as diverse audiences.

We briefly discussed the plan we were considering, namely a regional conference for directors from the whole region, including non-former Yugoslav countries, to be followed up by four-day intensive sessions with the directors and their senior staff (probably 3 total) from four or five selected major institutions in each country. We indicated it would be desirable to have such sessions twice a year for two years to cover the wide range of concerns museum directors worldwide share. Both the Minister and the institutional heads we met with indicated they would be supportive of this idea. They remained enthusiastic, even when we reminded them that it would mean a serious commitment of their time. Olivera Trajkova, head of the Sector for International Affairs, who had also been in the meeting with the Minister, indicated she would forward a letter of support for this project from the Minister.

Because of national holidays, our only seminar in Macedonia was held at the House of Robevci, a museum of archeological artifacts, in Ohrid, a small tourist town on a large lake. Thirty attendees represented a wide range of cultural institutions from the town and the area. Their principal concerns were human resource development (staff training and upgrading, motivation, instilling a sense of owner- ship, etc.), updating space and equipment needs, sustainability (fund raising), marketing, and communication to develop cultural tourism and conservation. Mrs. Poole and Mr. Elicker were able to discuss personnel management and fund raising, but because of time constraints only in superficial ways.