Fund for Arts and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe

Yakutsk

October 9 – 13, 2000

 

 

The Fund's seminar in Yakutsk was preceded by an international conference "Dialogue: The Museum and Society on the threshold of the 21^st Century," part of an UNESCO project, "World Culture in Russia –2000." Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Sakha, the State Russian Museum, and the National Art Museum of the Republic of Sakha and held at the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha, the two-day convocation discussed issues relating to the sustenance of local cultures and institutions in the face of globalization. Participants came from as far away as Kazan, Omsk, Khabarovsk, Chita, and Krasnoyarsk. Fund representatives Teresia Bush, Wayne Harvey, and Sally Yerkovich attended the conference and Sally Yerkovich made a presentation on behalf of The Fund about creating visitor-centered institutions. The conference provided an unique opportunity for The Fund to assess the situation of local museums in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and, thus, to tailor the Fund's seminar to the participants' needs.

 

It was extremely encouraging to have the support of the State Russian Museum for our work in Yakutsk. Natalia Kuleshova, the Museum's Deputy Director, encouraged The Fund to make the trip to Yakutsk and then, by her presence at both the UNESCO conference and the Fund's seminar, reinforced the Museum's endorsement of our activities.

 

Fifty-nine participants attended The Fund's seminar. They included museum directors and deputy directors, museum staff members, as well as representatives of departments of culture in local governments. They represented institutions that focus upon regional studies, natural history, art and literature, ethnography as well as one art gallery. Two of the participants were from outside of Yakutia (Krasnoyarsk and Chita). The largest museums represented had as many as over 50 staff people, while the smallest (and most predominant of the attendees) has staff ranging from one to ten people. With the exception of the larger, urban museums, budget sizes averaged between 100,000 and 300,000 rubles annually.

 

Because the Republic of Sakha has few major corporations outside of its capital of Yakutsk, realistic opportunities for support for the institutions we worked with seemed to be regional foundations. As a result, The Fund's seminar was tailored to focus upon issues of institutional management and foundation fund-raising.

 

During the first day after introductions of local and Fund representatives, we began the seminar with overview presentations, giving the local audiences an opportunity to get to know The Fund's representatives and their institutions. Sally Yerkovich discussed The New Jersey Historical Society and its recent transformation to a visitor-centered institution with dynamic exhibitions and innovative programs, and Teresia Bush provided an overview of the educational programs and exhibitions of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden programs, detailing especially the challenges of developing broad audiences and introducing visitors to difficult art.

 

The focus of the seminar then shifted to mission statements. We divided the seminar participants into five groups and each became a "museum," defining their respective goals and activities and, from those, crafting their mission statements. During the remaining two and a half days, we saw these folk art, regional history, natural history and science, music and art (dedicated to the preservation of Olonho, the Sakha oral epic traditions) museums take on life-like proportions as they developed mission statements, financial plans, and project proposals.

 

With mission statements defined, we turned our attention to audience development and the relationship of effective management to creating a visitor-sensitive institution. An overview of the institutional case statement preceded a more detailed discussion led by Teresia Bush on how to develop programs in keeping with your mission and appealing to targeted audiences. The "museum" groups were then divided in two, half representing the museum staff and half representing an audience for whom a program would be developed. The folk art museum took on senior citizens; the regional history museum, school children; the Olonho museum, families; the natural history and science museum, tourists; and the music museum, wealthy businessmen with no interest in music.

 

After the projects were conceived and planned, Wayne Harvey discussed institutional finances and provided guidance to the groups in creating project budgets. The budgets included in-kind costs and overhead as well as costs for project supplies, materials, and fees so that we were able to raise many institutional finance issues within the context of the development of a specific project.

 

Finally, we focused upon the principles of fund-raising and asked the groups to prepare proposals for their projects. Once they completed this task, they exchanged proposals and provided critiques. Their discussions of the completed proposals raised many points relevant to the process of raising money as well as brought up the kinds of accountability that foundations and corporations expect. In the end, we had two strong proposals with funding as well as several others that were extremely worthy of support but needed some details clarified. We were extremely pleased to see how well most of the groups worked in teams. They presented creative proposals and critiques and, in the end, took group pictures to memorialize each of their "institutions."

 

The Fund's activities captivated the local press, with reporters from television, radio, and the print media requesting interviews at various times during the seminar. In addition, we discussed the seminar and The Fund's programs at a full press conference, held in the headquarters of the President of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Regular television coverage was reported and one evening an entire program was broadcast about the conference and seminar.