Appendix A

Report Of The Seminar "Organizational Structure Updating And Fundraising" Held In Tyumen Art Museum September 6-10, 1999

The seminar "Organizational structure updating and fundraising" took place in Tyumen Regional Art Museum from September 6 to September 10, 1999.

The seminar was presented by the team of experts from USA who are the representatives of The Fund for Arts and Culture in the East and Central Europe. They conducted the seminar in Tyumen at the request of the State Russian Museum Department of Art Museums in Russia. The present seminar became the next stage of the long-range Program launched in St.Petersburg in 1996 and continued in 1997-1999 in regions of Russia. The seminar program contained the stages of successive acquaintance of participants with main statements effectively adaptable to provide a successful existence of museums in the nowadays situation of market economy when the budget financing was sharply reduced. They were management, marketing, communications, public relations, advertisement etc.

A special feature of this program was that all these statements were presented interconnectedly and every new topic logically came out of the previous one.

And it is not for nothing the former title of the seminar was "From prompt defining the mission to the effective museum functioning". Every participant received a file with work papers containing relevant materials of currently functioning institutions and museum of USA. Just these specific features of the Program are those key moments of which the State Russian Museum every year addresses the request to Jillian Poole to present a seminar in new regions.

Representatives of 22 museums of the biggest Russian region attended in Tyumen. They came from Novy Urengoy, Nefteyugansk, Tobolsk, Ishim, Ufa, Perm, Magnitogorsk, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Kurgan, Noyabrsk, Orenburg, Tcheliabinsk. The total amount of participants - more than 30 persons.

The seminar program which contained statements interesting for museums and budget institutions was enthusiastically supported by seminar participants and the community. The most important topics widely discussed at the seminar were the following: change of traditional forms of museums organization, utilization of internal resources, development of long-range planning in new economic conditions. The participants were extremely interested in discussing the problems of fundraising, changing the role of museums within the community, studying a potential visitor and different ways of his attraction, interaction with municipal and regional managerial structures.

Simulating of possible situations, analyzing of concrete and imaginary situations, vivid discussion and exchange of opinions were highly welcomed as well.

The seminar work was widely elucidated by the local radio, TV and mass-media and it seems to be an important indication of its necessity and actuality.

Every participant filled a questionnaire after the seminar completion. The questionnaires analyses showed that the seminar was a significant phenomena in a city life and it really could help the museum employees in their searches of non-traditional solutions adaptable for complicated situations.

Seminar participants applied to organizers to continue this very helpful practice in other regions of Russia and offered new topics for seminars. The most actual of them are the following:

  • organization of exhibits registration and keeping in foreign museums
  • legislative aspects in the work of foreign museums
  • research work in foreign museums and so on.

    The State Russian Museum regularly holds seminars on these topics. We hope to collaborate with The Fund on above mentioned topics as well.

    Positive references of all participants including directors and staff-members seem to be the most important result of the seminar. A lot of fruitful ideas and projects have been found in a process of the seminar and all of them certainly will be explored in the future activity of museums.

    Experience of such seminars of last years shows that the ideas developed at seminars have been incarnated by the museums in nearest future and the examples of that are the museums in Kemerovo, Stavropol, Yaroslavl, Irkutsk.

    We would like to thank Mrs. Jillian Poole for the book integrated into the seminar program. Jillian Poole is also the author of this book.

    The State Russian Museum expresses its deepest gratitude to The Fund for Arts and Culture in East and Central Europe and personally to The Fund President Mrs. Jillian Poole for such a good and so important job and hopes very much to continue this Program being of such great interest in the regional museums of Russia. The Russian Museum also hopes to collaborate with The Fund in future in new programs realization.

    Prepared by

    N. Kuleschova, Deputy Director of The State Russian Museum
    T. Kolpakova, Curator of Department of Art Museums of Russia of The State Russian Museum