The Fund for Arts and Culture in
Central and Eastern Europe

Fourth Annual Regional Museum Conference in Bucharest

The Fund and the Ministry of Culture of Romania invite you to the Fourth Annual Regional Museum Conference.

• October 19-23, 2008
  
• George Enescu National Museum of Art, Bucharest

The conference, Turning Museums Into Community Assets: Some Roadmaps, will focus on how to make a museum more interesting and accessible to its various publics.  By doing so, museums will be able to attract tourism, shape education, and help build a more cohesive society; its assets will increasingly represent cultural capital for its community.  The conference will also emphasize the tools and support essential for achieving this by presenting roadmaps toward this goal.

The Faculty will be led by Marc Pachter, Former Director of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.  He will be joined by Ralph Appelbaum, principal of internationally acclaimed design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates; Jem Fraser, Project Director for Renovations of the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland; Mark O’Neill, Head of Arts and Museums for Glasgow City, Scotland, and Philip Tefft, Director of Ralph Appelbaum Associates in London.  Nicholas Appelbaum, who is studying at Harvard University, will address issues in education policy and art in education.

In-country transportation, meals, and hotel expenses will be paid for by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs.

Inquiries regarding this conference should be addressed to Alis Vasile at the Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs.  She can be reached at alis.vasile@cultura.ro.

Civic Consciousness Forum Postponed

The Civic Consciousness Forum, a joint project of the Political History Museum in St. Petersburg and The Fund, which was originally scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg this November, has been postponed.

The Civic Consciousness Forum was to be the first joint Russian-American conference for directors of major museums in both Russia and the United States to discuss the role of museums in creating awareness on this subject. Participants were to share approaches and encourage civic engagement among their museums and develop joint projects and relationships relative to civic engagement both among Russian museums and between them and their American counterparts. The Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC, was expected to publish and share keynote addresses and abstracts of the major presentations with the museum community.

The following people from the U.S. had agreed to participate:

1. Sara J. Bloomfield, Director, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC
2. Barbara Fah Charles, Managing Partner, Staples & Charles, Interpretive Planner and Designer, Alexandria, VA, Co-Organizer
3. Elizabeth L. Colton, Chair, Board of Directors, International Museum of Women, San Francisco, CA
4. Katherine Kane, Executive Director, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT
5. David Penney, Vice President of Museum Programs, The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI
6. Edward Rothstein, Cultural Critic-At-Large, New York Times
7. Blair Ruble, Director, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, DC, Co-Organizer
8. Kathy Dwyer Southern, President, National Children’s Museum, Washington, DC, Co-Organizer
9. Joseph M. Torsella, President and CEO, National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA
10. Rick West, Founding Director Emeritus, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC 
11. Emily Zimmern, Executive Director, Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, North Carolina

Message from our CEO

The Fund continues in two directions -- to serve its long-term clients and to explore new horizons.

In May, Ward Mintz, who served The Fund so expertly in Russia, Hungary, Lithuania and Georgia, just finished an exploratory visit at the request of the cultural community in Baku, Azerbaijan. We are awaiting word on what future steps there might be in that country.

In June, Sally Yerkovich, our President and long-time consultant, held a seminar in Ulan-Ude, Siberia, at the request of the Russian State Museum.

In line with expanding The Fund’s geographical reach, I have been talking with the U.S. Indonesia Society and the Indonesian Embassy about options for offering Fund services in that country.

Also toward this end, I have been exploring the possibilities of undertaking an independent achievement validation of our work with representatives of a major business school. The focus of this study will be on Russia (three institutions in St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg theatre, music and museum activities); on Ukraine museum activities; and on our annual regional museum conferences in Romania.

It is our plan that this step will prelude the creation of a sustainable business model for a new organization which will greatly broaden international expansion of volunteer arts consultations such as The Fund has undertaken in the past 18 years.

Jillian Poole