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Barnaul, Russia

Meeting the Challenges in Art Museums.
June 24–26, 2009

Consultants: Lyndel King and Robert Workman

The State Art Museum of the Altai Region in Barnaul hosted a three-day seminar, Developing Audiences through Mission-Based Programs, led by Fund consultants Lyndel King, Director, Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis, and Robert Workman, Director, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Barnual is the territorial capital of the Altai Region in Siberia, and their Art Museum is a dynamic and active museum. The director credits this in some part to her participation in previous Fund seminars and workshops. The museum attracts a large number of visitors, has varied exhibitions and programs, and is becoming a central part of its community.

Many thanks go to co-hosts The Russian State Museum and their representative Ira Bliznets, who also provided translation assistance, as well as to the Altai Territory Office of International and Interregional Affairs.

At the request of the museums, the objectives of the seminar were to provide tools and first-hand examples of how museums can successfully attract new audiences with the twin goals of increasing participation and attracting new sources of revenue. Museum professionals, and professors and lecturers from local universities came from throughout the region to the seminar, including one who traveled over 20 hours to attend. Though the seminar began with thirty-six participants, it grew to forty-one by the final day.

A combination of presentations by Fund consultants was balanced with a series of group exercises, which proved to be very popular among the participants. The exercises unleashed creativity and innovation as each of the six groups created a new museum concept, wrote its mission statement, conducted a role-playing focus group exercise, developed mission-based programs, created a logo or a “brand”, created an introduction and budget for a grant proposal for a key program, and finally “pitched” one of their key programs to a hypothetical funder. Several participants spoke of their interest in applying aspects of the workshop to their operations.

It became immediately clear that the subject matter was of great interest to most participants, though their experience was limited. For those who said their museum had a mission statement, for example, they admitted that it was not at the center of their day-to-day museum operations or planning strategies. Of surprise to the Fund consultants was their apparent limited access to technology, particularly the Internet, which is mostly used for email and not as a research tool. Increased Internet sophistication would help them expand their fundraising activities and give them much needed access to professional tools for their museums.

In order to give the participants as many tools as possible to succeed, Ira Bliznets volunteered to translate Ms. King’s and Mr. Workman’s presentations into Russian, which will be emailed to all the participants. Ms. King and Mr. Workman also shared information in Russian with the participants, including two planning documents hosted on the Fund’s web site, as well as basic proposal writing information developed and distributed by the Foundation Center in New York City. Ms. Bliznets also provided a translated text for the six-minute video Spark, created for the American Association of Museums, about audience response to museums.

Future Prospects

Participants were encouraged to continue networking by establishing a listserv and contacting each other for updates, advice, and support.

One possible consultant opportunity with the Art Museum was explored. The museum anticipates expanding into an adjacent structure for three years beginning in 2010, which will increase their size many fold. The budget is established, and the project is supported by the regional government, but museum has yet to develop a program plan for the expansion that will serve as the museum’s directives to the architects of the project. As The Fund has consulted with other museums on expansion plans, notably the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, this is an area in which The Fund could be of some use.