RUSSIA     2008  

Ulan-Ude
June 17–19, 2008

One three-day seminar was held in Ulan-Ude, the capital city of the Buryat Republic. The seminar was led by Sally Yerkovich, President of The Fund, and ably facilitated by Olga Reva, The Fund’s longtime translator. The Art Museum organized and hosted the seminar. Both Tamara Yakoleva, Director of the Department of Regional Museums at the State Russian Museum, and Tatiana Kolpakova, Director of the Virtual Museum Project at the State Russian Museum, attended the seminar and participated in many of the discussions.

The Buryat Republic is located in Siberia east of Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world, and just north of Mongolia. Buryats, numbering some 350,000, are the largest indigenous group in Siberia and are of Mongolian descent. Traditionally, the region was agricultural, and while it still produces agricultural and food products, it is also home to aircraft, machine-building, energy (coal and ore mining), and timber processing industries. Tourism is a growing part of the economy and the Republic maintains a tourism website: www.baikaltravel.ru.

Prior to the seminar, Ms. Yerkovich visited the Ethnographic Museum and Zoological Garden, a large open air complex outside of Ulan-Ude with serious development plans geared on the plans for increased tourism in the area; the Buryat Historical Museum; the Art Museum; the Ivolginsky Buddhist Monastery (‘datsan’), a center for Siberian Buddhism; and the Buryat Theater.

The seminar began with greetings from the Minister of Culture, Yulia Angaeva, and the Deputy Director of the Art Museum, Aiuna Tsibikdorghieva. Tamara Yakoleva provided an overview of the work of the Russian Museum, particularly its department of regional museums, and Tatiana Kolpakova discussed the State Russian Museum’s virtual museum project.

As the thirty-one seminar participants introduced themselves, Ms. Yerkovich learned how diverse the group was; many were from outside of Ulan-Ude and one from as far as 600 km away. They represented boards or departments of culture in small villages; literary, art, and regional museums; a theater, and a library for the blind. A number of representatives from Ulan-Ude museums (nature, ethnography, art, and history – both the Buryat history museum and the Ulan-Ude history museum) also attended the seminar. Their concerns included the lack of cross-museum cooperation, developing new audiences (especially young people), lack of long-term planning, the stagnation of curators, the need to attract funding and media attention, and the desire to develop traveling exhibitions and exhibition exchanges.

Ms. Yerkovich began the seminar by discussing the importance of effective mission statements as a means to attracting sponsors and defining an institution’s unique contribution to community life. Participants created mission statements for a Museum of Old Believers, an Art Museum, a Ministry of Culture, and a Library for the Visually Impaired.

The first day of the seminar concluded with a dinner attended by the Minister and Deputy Minister of Culture. The Minister of Culture expressed concern for the well-being of the museums in Buryatia. She predicted that subsidies to cultural institutions will be reduced in the near future and that organizations will have to apply annually for support. She felt that this dramatic change will come about in spite of the push to develop cultural tourism in the region. To create a magnet for future tourists to the area, the Ministry is very interested in supporting efforts of the Ethnographic Museum to develop their zoo park. They asked the Fund for assistance in identifying potential supporters for this project and we agreed to review the Museum’s proposals for expansion and to suggest possible strategies for support.

The focus of the seminar’s second day was upon audiences and visitors. They discussed developing programs targeted to new audiences and about the visitor to cultural institutions. The groups then visited local institutions to assess their effectiveness for visitors. The day concluded with an unforgettable evening visit to Lake Baikal.

After reports and discussions of the previous days’ museum visits, the final day of the seminar focused upon developing support for cultural institutions. They discussed various kinds of support – foundation, corporate/business (partnerships, sponsorships and in-kind donations), and government – and how to match an organization’s needs to its potential sources of support. The seminar concluded with a presentation of the letters the working groups wrote seeking flour for a pancake festival from a pasta factory; support for a photo competition from a camera manufacturer; help for the library for the visually impaired from an optics company, and support for an exhibition on workers’ dynasties from the ministry of railroads.

Evaluations of the seminar were overwhelmingly positive and detailed. Some requests were made to see more photos of other institutions and exhibitions as well as to have a variety of print materials available to consult (i.e., brochures and hand outs from museums and cultural organizations that demonstrate how these organizations are reaching out to different audiences, helping their visitors, etc.).

While no specific plans for a second seminar were articulated, the Fund will continue to be involved in the region, reviewing materials from the Ethnographic Museum and advising them on possible next steps in their quest for support for their expanded zoological park/garden.

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