Who Needs Museums – and Why?
In the last ten years, the world has seen an unprecedented surge in the number of new museums being constructed. This trend is finally beginning to reach us here in Russia. Thankfully, state institutions have not been alone in the reconstruction of our museums – private investors have begun to involve themselves as well. Indeed, a well-organized museum can also become a lucrative business.
The Context
In 1997 a filial of the American Guggenheim Museum was opened in the Spanish city of Bilbao – the capital of the troubled Basque region of Spain. The building was designed by the architect, Frank Gehry, to resemble a great metallic bonfire.
The opening of the museum was clouded by threats of terrorism – the Basque separatists wanted no part of anything American. But during the first year of operation, the new architectural wonder was seen by 1.4 million tourists and, according to the Financial Times, the museum earned one hundred million euros in entrance fees during the first three years. The local tourist industry received 500 million dollars in investments. The city became home to hundreds of hotels, restaurants, and luxury boutiques. In the past twenty years, 6 theaters, 10 cultural centers, and a new opera house have been built. The metro system was designed by Norman Foster and the airport by Santiago Calatrava. Never has such an economically disadvantaged area been transformed so completely into a flourishing center of tourism and culture.
The successful Bilbao experiment opened up opportunities for museum managers throughout the world. In 2000 the Tate Modern was opened in London, where Jack Herzog and Pierre de Meron rebuilt an abandoned electric station on the banks of the Thames, winning the Pritzker prize. The Jewish Museum opened in Berlin in 2001, designed by the world-famous Daniel Liebeskind - who recently won the competition to design the Ground Zero Memorial in New York. Liebeskind is now involved in museum construction all around the world, in Toronto, in Copenhagen, in Denver, and in Manchester.
French President Jacques Chirac opened the grandiose Quai Branly Museum of Non-European Civilizations not far from the Eifel Tower in 2006 with the help of architect, Jean Nouvel. Nothing so large had been built in Paris since the opening of the Centre Pompidou.
The trend reached a new pick with the debut of the Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, which had been under construction for seven years. Among the luxury hotels, golf courses, hippodromes, and spas, sprung up four unique new museums, a center for the dramatic arts, and nineteen exhibition pavilions. Abu Dhabi also opened a new filial of the Louvre, where biennales of modern art will be hosted. The project was headed by Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, who is naturally accustomed to the work of good architects – Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando. The sheikhs have invested $30 billion dollars in the Saadiyat project.
The Tretyakovskaya Gallery
Of course, the museum boom is being felt in Russia to a much lesser degree. The overwhelming majority of our museums is run by the state, and is suffering from the usual ailments of any such endeavor: bloated bureaucracy and stagnation. In 2007, the 20 year reconstruction of the history museum was completed and in 2005 the new wings were opened at the Pushkin Museum of Visual Arts after 15 years of construction. The central offices of the Hermitage are also going through re-construction in Saint Petersburg – and work is going particularly slowly.
It seems that personal initiative has special significance in such enterprises. Private museums may not be as massive and grandiose as state projects, but they are freer and develop more aggressively, employing new forms of management and adapting western experience. In essence, the issue is that a museum renaissance is long overdue in Russia. The museum in our country is still held up as the “Temple of Art,” something created only for the admiration and awe of 19th century Prussian Romantics, craning their necks to see the artwork – as modern visitors must do at the Tretyakovskaya.
Igor Markin and Modern Art
In May of 2007, the first private museum of modern art in Russian was opened at Khlynovskii Tupik, the ‘Art4.ru.’ It occupied the first floor in an elite residential building, covering an area of 600 sqm. The museum’s proprietor is the businessman and collector, Igor Markin, who earned his wealth designing plastic windows. Five years ago he began a campaign to buy up examples of patriotic, post-war art, and by 2006 the prices for this sort of art had risen demonstrably. It now seems that Markin had done more with this project than simply throw his money to the wind – he had made a remarkable prudent investment. The works for which he had paid from $30,000 to $70,000 were now worth between $300,000 and $500,000. If he were to attempt such a collection today (nearly 900 items,) he would be unlikely to succeed. The museum itself has raised the value of the artwork.
One may sit at the cafe in Art4.ru, leafing through art magazines. The ticket booths are surrounded by glass cases full of free refreshments. Perhaps the candies are meant to take a bit of the bite off of the price – 200 rubles. Markin says that it is a reasonable price, comparable to what one spends in any cafe in Moscow. In order to make a profit, the museum has to bring in 100 visitors every day – but only about 40 people showed up on average days this past summer
“I used to think that the museum was no more than the collection, that all one really had to do was hang the pictures,” says Markin. “Now I understand that it’s really more complicated than that. You have to think about it as a whole. A modern museum is really a type of entertainment. This is what makes it from the classic museum. In Moscow there are not so many places, really, to relax after work. There’s the casinos, restaurants, movie theaters – why isn’t there room for museums? Joyful, modern ones left open until midnight, where guests are offered free champagne on Fridays and disco parties in the summer?”
The museum business usually achieves its targeted success when the proprietor and management concentrate their efforts on intensive exhibitions and supplementary media programs. Markin hopes to construct a new facility to house the museum, and has contracted a famous architect to do the design work. For now he is receiving his dividends only indirectly. He has become the most famous producer of plastic windows in the country. His most recent initiative was to create a monument to the first president of Russia with the help of modern artists and the financial support of the Boris Yeltsin Fund. This has led Markin, private museum owner, to finally collaborate with the state.
Sergei Gordeev and Russian Constructivism
Senator Sergei Gordeev first gained notoriety in 2006, when he purchased half of the home formerly owned by Konstantin Melnikov on Krivoarbatsii Pereulok. Consisting of two cylinders, Melnikov’s house is a treasured relic of the 1920s. There were apprehensions that Gordeev simply wanted the downtown lot, but it soon became clear that the senator was motivated by his own passion for the arts: the senator was a true lover of Russian Constructivism and wanted to transform Melnik’s house into a museum.
This transformation is now underway. The Fund for the Russian Avant-Garde, established by Gordeev, has attracted the greatest museum designers in the world to the project – the English company, Casson Mann. These experts designed the Churchill Museum and the British Gallery, which won the European Museum of the Year Award for 2003.
The problems at Melnik’s old house are not few, unfortunately. The construction of a shopping center is planned adjacent, and will require underground parking. Geological research has shown that the constructivist treasure will not be able to withstand this sort of activity. Gordeev has addressed the city with demands to examine the legality of the shopping center’s actions. Deliberations have begun and all construction on both projects has been halted, but no one knows what the final outcome will be.
The Fund for the Russian Avant-Garde is carrying on parallel struggles to restore the Russian Architects’ Archives, distribute their books and publications, and to support a number of cultural initiatives, including the Venetian Biennial. The fund’s headquarters is now located in the cooperative work-club, Burevestnik, constructed in the 1930s according to Melnik’s blueprint. The club is one of a rare, if not the only, example of a constructivist building in perfect condition in Moscow. It strikes the viewer immediately with its harmony of space and proportion, bringing the surrounding urban neighborhood to life. The nearby office buildings will undoubtedly benefit from their proximity.
This cultural activity has brought Sergei Gordeev an additional bonus – he is the only Russian politician who was invited to the national presentation of the museum center in Abu Dhabi.
Vadim Zadorozhnyi and Technology
Within four kilometers of the MKAD on Ilinskoe Shosse, next to the Arkhangelskoe Park, on a lot of 3.5 ha will stand Vadim Zadorozhnyi’s Museum of Technology. Five years ago, this land was empty save for a lot of wild grass. Now there is a two-story restoration workshop here, the first phase of the museum. Nearby, at a striking pace, construction is underway to finish the 6 story structure, 3 stories of which will house the museum. The remaining floors will be rented out as office centers. The third phase of the project will most likely include a hotel complex, the lobby of which will be decorated to express themes of technology.
The owner of the museum – Vadim Zadorozhnyi – is the president of the Russian Guild of Antique Collectors. He has been enthralled by old automobiles since the end of the 1990s and in record time has amassed a fascinating collection, including the ZIC 115 limousine once owned by Joseph Stalin, the ZIL 111D cabriolet given to Erik Honaker by Leonid Brezhnev, and also Laurenti Beri’s ZIC 110B cabriolet as well. Soon this car collection began to absorb military technology from the Second World War, and then all manner of other machines and mechanisms from the 17th century and early locomotives from the 20th.
This surprising museum houses numerous other treasures in perfect working order – the cars can be driven, the planes flow, and the anti-aircraft guns have been rigged so that they can be turned even by children. Only the weapons don’t shoot, as it’s forbidden by law. Nearly everything can be photographed in this museum or even touched by visitors. The entrance fee is 50 rubles. “Soon we will have even more technology than the Ukrainian Army,” jokes Mikhail Vagin, the head of the project.
“We have decorated the premises in a nostalgic style,” comments architect and designer, Vladimir Bondarenko. “The floor is set with wide stones, reminiscent of the old flagstones. The walls are hung with the posters and placards from that era, while the ceiling is all good red wood. Shtirlitz would feel very at home.”
The museum has become the cultural center of the Krasnogorskii Rayon, where all important guests and school children will come on their excursions. It is also bringing in a profit for the owner. The class A office centers housed in the complex are being let at $550 per sqm annually, and this money is keeping the museum in business. Residents of the nearby Rublevka district and other Krasnogordskii companies make up the tenant pool. Here also operates a restaurant, which soon will be joined by another, and the restoration workshop also takes orders from private collectors to restore rare automobiles. This rational business approach guarantees that the museum will never close.
What’s in it for the Developers?
Museums improve the quality of any urban area and raise the value of surrounding property. Some Moscow developers consciously are including museums in their projects. In 2006, at the Munich International Exhibition of Commercial Real Estate, EXPO REAL, the Inteko Company presented its unique concept for high class commercial properties, the Inteko-Parks. The design allows for the practical creation of museums on larger complexes, or ‘Fusion Parks,’ which will include residential areas and class A offices. Horus Capital also presented the Fabrika Stanislavskogo, a business center project designed by Casson Mann, which features a ‘museum-lobby,’ a space uniting the functions of a museum dedicated to Konstantin Stanislavsky with a lobby, a waiting area, a conference hall, and a cafeteria. The business center will be completed at the end of 2007.
Under the conditions predicted two or three years from now, when the office real estate market finally saturates, any new office project is going to have to struggle to break free from the pack. The general quality of construction is rising steadily and developers of class A complexes are putting world-class engineering to excellent use. But for all this, it will often be the marketing gimmicks that make the difference – and an interesting and edifying museum is probably better than most.
The State Project Approach
As for the government work in this field, the city of Perm provides us with an excellent example. The city has begun work on a new art museum by hosting an international architectural competition. The Austrian museum administrator Dieter Borner and the director of the Center for Modern Architecture, Irina Korobina, will be responsible for the organization of the competition. The first round was finished in summer of 2007, and the second round is filled with famous names: Zaha Hadid, Tarek Nara, Odil Dekk, and the Austrian Master Soor Himmelblau, as well as the great Russian architects, Alexander Brodskii, Boris Bernaskoni, Totan Kuzembaev, Vladimir Plotkin, and the AB Bureau’s Mikhail Labazov and Andrei Savin.
“I really have no universal answer to the question of how a modern museum should be built,” says architect, Vladimir Plotkin. “Everything depends on the conditions set by the clients. And we really must give the organizers their due as far as the Perm project is concerned – the conditions are very clearly spelled out, the participants all must design a structure and analyze how it is going to function. What is needed is an impressive way to satisfy local residents and simultaneously attract national attention. That’s the secret of Bilbao.”
In Place of a Conclusion
“I am deeply earnest in saying that the future of the museum question will be decided by private collectors such as Gordeev, Markin, and their colleagues,” says the deputy director at the Moscow Kremlin Museums, Zelfira Tregulova. “I also should mention here the names of Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhinaya, collectors and founders of the Ekaterina Cultural Fund, which opened its own exhibition space of exceptionally high quality in the center of Moscow. Also there is Natalya Kurnikova and her gallery, Nashi Khudozhniki, where an impressive program has been worked out to exhibit the work of the Russian Diasporas, in collaboration with the state museums. All these people have set lofty goals for themselves, and they have all succeeded in achieving these goals. If there is an element of vanity in such projects, it is still impossible to deny that they sincerely love this work, and what to do something good for the public.”