country
activities

Country Director
Paul H. Elicker

Consultants
Ralph Appelbaum, James C. Armstrong, Teresia Bush, Kathleen Charla, Martis Davis, Jessica Glass, Wayne Harvey, Jay Levenson, Jack McAuliffe, Gary Osland, Jack Pascarosa, Jillian Poole, Jane Safer, Julian Spalding, Mary Delle Stelzer, Cathy Sterling, Sally Yerkovich

Activities Summary

St. Petersburg Institute for Cultural Programmes On April 13, The Fund provided a consultant for a St. Petersburg conference for 45 senior museum personnel sponsored by Cardington International Adventures and the St. Petersburg Institute for Cultural Programmes. Kathleen Charla, an independent museum consultant and expert on Russian art, represented The Fund and spoke on “Attracting your audience and increasing their enjoyment of your museum.” Eugene Kolchin, Advisor on Culture and Tourism to the Governor of St. Petersburg, chaired the conference.

Conference for Regional Russian Museum Directors The State Russian Museum invited The Fund to send representatives to lead discussions at their annual meeting of museum directors in St. Petersburg in June. Julian Spalding, former Director of the Glasgow Museums and international museum consultant lead discussions on the role of the museum director, concentrating on how authority can be excercised through cooperation and careful decision-making. Jay Levenson, Director of International Programs of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, focused his presentation on aspects of MOMA’s operations that have special relevance to museums in Russia: MOMA’s intense focus on its mission statement and willingness to reinvent itself as circumstances require; the development of its collections policy; its education programs and the way its fundraising programs develop long-term relationships.

Regional Russian Seminar — Yakutsk The State Russian Museum invited The Fund to lead a management seminar for regional museum and cultural leaders in Yakutsk, the capital of the vast Sakha Republic. The seminar was held October 9–13, 2000. The State Russian Museum, Russian sponsor of the project, chose Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic, because of growing recognition of the critical need to preserve the cultural heritage of that region of Russia. The Fund seminar was scheduled to coincide with an international conference, “Dialogue: The Museum and Society on the Threshold of the 21st Century.” Some fifty-nine participants attended The Fund program. Veteran Fund consultants, Sally Yerkovich, Director, the New Jersey Historical Society and Wayne Harvey, Chief Financial Officer, EastWest Institute, were joined by first-time presenter Teresia Bush, Director of Education Programs at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The audience represented a cross section of the museum and cultural community primarily from the Republic of Sakha. The seminar leaders focused on institutional management issues and foundation fundraising, given the small number of corporations outside the capital of the Republic. Participants worked in groups to develop mission statements, financial plans and project proposals. This interactive approach, a mainstay of Fund programs, proved once again to be relevant and effective.

The Russian Museum reported that the seminar was highly successful. They particularly noted how museum staff from distant reaches of the Republic were brought together in a way that led to creative ideas and several joint projects. Participants were prompted to start “thinking outside the box” and to identify themselves as a special united community. Participants emphasized that they found especially useful discussions of organizational structure and staff development. They were “thrilled” to receive The Fund’s handbook: Managing for Money, which was distributed to all participants. The seminar received considerable publicity from the local press including interviews and a live broadcast of portions of the program. The seminar publicity was particularly helpful to the Yakutsk Museum of Fine Arts, by attracting an official sponsor for the restoration of a much-needed museum building. A more detailed report on this seminar can be found on The Fund's website: www.fundforartsandculture.org.

Museum Assessment and Design Seminar with Ralph Appelbaum In early December, The Fund took noted museum designer Ralph Appelbaum and his associate, Jack Pascarosa, to St. Petersburg to conduct a four-day seminar for a diverse group of museum directors from St. Petersburg and the Northwest Region.

The seminar was initiated by and organized under the auspices of Alexander Margolis, head of the International Charitable Foundation for the Renaissance of St. Petersburg-Leningrad with support of the Soros Foundation. The origins of this project came from concerns shared by The Fund and Mr. Margolis, that the intellectual and spiritual contributions which were made manifest in St. Petersburg and make it one of the great cultural capitals of the world, remain largely outside the visitor experience. Unlike other cultural capitals, visitors are not inclined to return to St. Petersburg again and again because many do not reach beyond the extraordinary and extensive representations of international artists in the Hermitage and visits to the palaces of Tsars and nobles.

This inaugural cooperative seminar focused on the desire of the museums of the region to broaden public awareness of and access to the rich and important assets and resources they hold. The seminar also sought to help directors of less-visited museums focus through their institutions on the region’s resources and to make them meaningful and provocative in the context of the contemporary situation. The program fully achieved its goal of helping the participants to identify common challenges and to begin networking and planning joint projects. It also exposed the participants to the ideas and concepts of interpretative design and provided them the opportunity to think together about the challenges involved, a new experience for them that will have long-term impacts.

At the conclusion, it was clear that seminar participants had found a new consciousness of the opportunities of the 2003 anniversary and beyond to raise public awareness of St. Petersburg and the Northwest Region to a new level, and a heightened realization that they themselves jointly are custodians of one of the greatest collections of resources in the world.

The sessions were videotaped by Jessica Glass, Video Producer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. With the assistance of the St. Petersburg based Baltic Films, she taped 29 hours of sessions, interviews with participating directors, and background in their museums.

Ralph Appelbaum generously offered the museums further assistance if they should so desire it, including assessments of lighting and space allocations and general critiques of their conceptions and future plans. The Fund also offered further assistance, if it is desired. For a more detailed report on this seminar see The Fund’s website: www.fundforartsandculture.org.

Book Presentation Managing for Money: A Handbook for International Cultural Institutions, was written in the summer of 1997 in response to requests received from the Russian Museum for more adequate handouts for Fund seminars. The Fund had been holding various training seminars for the constituency of that museum since 1996 in places as diverse as Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, Dudinka and Piatigorsk, and had become increasingly aware that indeed substantive handouts would be welcome. However, nothing we could find published in the field of non-profit management was suitable to meet the needs of the museums we were trying to serve. This book, then, was The Fund's gift to answer this need.

Managing for Money is designed as a straightforward non-technical management guide for cultural institution managers. It deals with mission definition and all the steps necessary to carry out that institutional mission, namely the managing of resources, both personnel and financial, public relations and promotions and techniques for making friends who will eventually lead to fundraising success. It comes from Fund experience in working with Russian professionals and the particular challenges they face in the post-Soviet economy.

The Russian Museum generously translated the first version of the text first used in the fall of 1997. The first versions were inexpensively reproduced, and it was not until 1999 that Alexander Margolis read the text and was persuaded that it deserved more formal presentation and printing. Olga Reva, who had been translating for Fund seminars for several years, made the translation of the final version. Mr. Margolis arranged with help from the Eurasia Foundation for an initial printing of 300 copies, which were greeted with enthusiasm by seminar participants at Fund seminars that fall in Tyumen and Saratov.

The U.S. Consulate in conjunction with the State Department made possible the printing of 10,000 additional copies to be distributed to every Federal museum in the Russian Republic, regional ministries of culture and cultural institutions within their regions including public libraries, theatres and orchestras.

Future Plans

The State Russian Museum has asked The Fund to continue the series of seminars for regional museums. They will try to organize this activity for five days in June 2001 on a riverboat on the Volga River starting in St. Petersburg and heading toward Lake Ladoga, visiting Valaam Island, then to Lake Onezhskoe en route to Petrozavodsk. The thought is that the attractive venue would be a draw for museum directors and that the perennial problem of shrinking attendance from busy directors drawn back to problems at their desks would be avoided. The boat will stop at museums along the way thereby giving the participants first hand views of challenges faced by these museums, and the joint opportunity to assess and brainstorm these challenges. Seminars in the past have been focused on management issues, but now that The Fund's manual Managing for Money has been widely distributed, it may be time to address other museum issues in a larger context. We have suggested that the seminar might be offered under a rubric such as “Cooperative Dialogues on Museum Development.” Volga tourism issues may warrant addressing the institutional design in its broadest context. The Russian Museum has proposed inviting museum directors from various regions (a variant from past practice where participants are usually drawn from one community), and since the boat format will permit a wider attendance, to include a younger staff person from each institution. Presently not addressed is the question of how such a venture would be funded. Previous seminars have had some local support, but on a boat no local ministry may feel such responsibility.

The Fund and Ralph Appelbaum and his associates are prepared to support initiatives, which may come out of the December 2000 seminar in St. Petersburg if such help is desired and requested.

Reports:
Final Report on Appelbaum Seminar
Trip Report: Yakutsk, Russia
Russian State Museum Report on Yakutsk