MONGOLIA     2006

Consultants: Stephen Brown

 

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Visit
October 7–15, 2006

Consultant: Stephen Brown

In response to official requests from Mongolia over the past several years, Stephen Brown, Company Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Association, traveled to Ulaanbaatar for a week in October on behalf of The Fund to explore ways of helping arts leaders in Mongolia allow their arts institutions broaden their scope and gain access to different audiences and thereby allow audiences to experience these talents. He found consensus among the arts leaders that interest in the cultural life of Mongolia must be developed among their own people and standards must be raised. The best approach to this daunting task will not be easy to find.

The Arts Council of Mongolia was in charge of his schedule, arranging visits to see the performing and visual arts available in Ulaanbaatar. Parts of his program were managed by the Director of the Opera and Ballet Theatre. There were unfortunately some problems with interpreters. He was not able to visit the provinces although all artistic leaders agreed that much help should be given to them in all the arts.

Mr. Brown found Mongolians a gregarious and welcoming people, and was made to feel totally at home by everyone that he met. Most Mongolians over the age of twenty-five speak fluent Russian as a second language. Younger Mongolians are starting to learn English, but it has not yet reached the status of the second language. Mongolia has a population of 2.6 million. A nomadic race, there are still more than thirty million animals – sheep, horses, yaks, oxen, and reindeer. Over one million people live in U.B., with 60% of them still living in yurts. 65 - 70% of the total population is aged under 30, and yet 90% of the wealth of the country is in the 35 - 50 year-old (Russian speaking) niche. The average income is approximately $110 per month, yet the average car costs $4,000. Somehow there are a lot of cars. Because of the traditional nomadic lifestyle of the population, there is a history of gender equality throughout Mongolia, illustrated by the fact that 80% of college graduates are women.

Until the Soviet take-over in 1921, most art and culture developed in the Monasteries and religious centers and was anonymous -- being both a gift from and an offering to the deities. Mongolians practice Tibetan Buddhism and their spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama. The Soviets and then the Japanese destroyed many of the monasteries and the Lamaseries, which have been slow to return since the break-up of the Soviet empire in 1991. As in the west, the monasteries and the religious centres are becoming emptier, and religion is becoming a cultural rather than a religious event.

The import of movies, television, CDs, and iPods is causing the traditional Mongolian cultural heritage to erode. The lifestyle of yurt living, land and animal cultivation, performing of religious and folk dances and singing of “long songs” and “short songs” has given way to apartment dwelling, car driving, Japanese Sumo wrestling and a taste for situation-comedy style plays. Few Mongolians receive any arts education. At University level, education and skill development is only available for students who can afford to pay.

Arts Council of Mongolia
The mission of the Arts Council of Mongolia is to connect the arts to the public, based upon the concept that the arts are the servant of the public. To that end, they have started to publish a monthly guide of all artistic events taking place in Ulaanbaatar, the first of its kind in Mongolia. A general concern appears that apart from the National History Museum and - to a lesser extent - the Drama Theatre, the cultural organizations do not have the money or the expertise to change the material that they present. This means that after an average Mongolian having visited the other organizations once or twice does not see a need or have the desire to return. Only the National History Museum rotates exhibits (although the Modern Art Museum does attempt to do so) and the Drama Theatre brings in new work, which they quickly replace should it not prove successful. Poetry is very popular, Mongolians love poetry and poetry readings are increasingly successful.

Opera and Ballet
With an annual operating budget of approximately $300,000, which includes staff salaries and electricity, the company numbers approximately 220 (50 orchestral players, 55 Choristers, 20 – 25 solo singers, 35 dancers, 15 stage technicians, 15 administrative staff, 20 service staff and 10 artistic Staff). It gives eight performances per month during a season that runs from October until June – four opera and four ballet performances. Each production is given once, and then put on hiatus for several months. The audience is primarily diplomatic personnel, tourists, Mongolian students and teachers and well-educated or traveled Mongolians. The tickets cost approximately $5 - $8, with children at half price. The company generates additional income by renting out the theatre for special events. Mr. Brown listened to Orchestra and Chorus rehearsals at the theatre and he felt in general the quality was not suited to Western classical style.

Drama
Mr. Brown met with the Director of the National Theatre (an administrator) and the Deputy Director (a famous Mongolian actress and movie star). As with the Opera Theatre, their funding comes from the government. The Theatre Company has twenty-six permanent actors who have annual contracts. There is an acting studio with thirteen acting students, who study for a two-year period. The Company performs six or seven plays per season of an international repertoire, including productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and O’Neill plays in translation as well as translations of Indian plays. Their scheduling is dependant upon the National Folk Dance Festival with whom they share the stage.

Tumen Ekh
This is the tourist show of Mongolian culture and heritage, consisting of a one-hour program of instrumental and vocal music, dance, religious mask-work and movement performed by a company of over 20 in many multi-colored national and regional costumes. Performed in its own custom rebuilt theatre several times a day during the summer tourist season, and once a night in the off-season, it is a pleasant, entertaining view of the country seen through Western eyes.

Morin Khur Orchestra
Mr. Brown attended the last rehearsal of this orchestra prior to a tour of Japan. They tour frequently all over the world, including several trips to the U.S.A. The orchestra is a combination of European and Mongolian traditional instruments – flutes, string basses and cellos; as wells as the horse-hair - two-string fiddles, nose flutes, zithers and dulcimers. The players are also involved vocally, both in group “noises” and as “Khummi” (throat singing) soloists.

The Mongolian Philharmonic Orchestra
This group performs infrequently in the large concert hall of the Culture Palace sharing players with the Morin Khur and Opera House orchestras, whose schedules cause irregular rehearsals and performances that are not announced more than a week in advance, not allowing for marketing and publicity.

National History Museum
The National History Museum is considered the most successful in Ulaanbaatar. They also have a good education program for local schools and they apply for, and receive, a number of grants from various international sources. The current exhibit – the history of Mongolia over the past 800 years, timed for the Chinggis Khaan Centenary – was cleanly and clearly laid out, the exhibits well lit and , for the most part, well-signed in Cyrillic (Mongolian and Russian). There was a considerable amount of English in the signage - but not everything, and not as completely as the Cyrillic.

Modern Art Museum
Created in 1992, after the end of the Soviet regime, the Modern Art Museum is a member of ICOM, and hosts approximately one hundred thousand visitors per year. The museum occupies 3,200 square meters of the Culture Palace. The museum buys Mongolian artwork using its Government subsidy, but 80% of the collection is still from the Soviet era, representing ideological propaganda from the time that Western art was considered capitalist or bourgeois.

The collection on display is grouped by topic or style. The pictures are well-lit and presented, and there is generally good, albeit inconsistent, signage in two or three languages (Mongolian/Russian/English). The museum has 5,000 exhibits, paintings, statues and handcrafts from the period 1921 through to the present, this is because prior to 1921 there was no indigenous Fine Art as it was all religious and anonymous. The Museum also exhibits the work of students and teachers from various Art Colleges.

So, How Can The Fund help?

Mr. Brown concluded most of the organizations with whom he came into contact are not yet in a position to benefit from the quality of consultancy or seminars that the Fund’s volunteers have to offer. The exception is the Modern Art Museum.

Something the West could bring most successfully to all artistic and cultural organizations is Audience Development and everything this implies - marketing, public relations, advertising, and use of media news for free advertising. In Ulaanbaatar programs are largely geared to the summer tourist season, for the other nine months there are few indigenous audiences.