Not long ago, the “Night at the Museum” event came to an end in the Volgograd region; this year it drew a record number of visitors. All museums in Volgograd took part, and each of them prepared its own unique programme. The Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts, for example, invited citizens to take part in “A One-Night Affair.” Elena Orlova, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, told V1.ru how successful the event was, which activities attracted the greatest interest from visitors, and how necessary such events are.
— Elena Vladimirovna, how many times has your museum already taken part in the international “Night at the Museum” event? How popular has it become?
— This year the I. I. Mashkov Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts took part in the international “Night at the Museum” event for the fourth time. And I can say that it was brighter and more spectacular than last year or the year before. We had a record number of visitors, even though the museum is currently under renovation and only three halls are open. Renovation work is still under way in the exhibition hall on Chuikov Street, where the main part of previous “Night at the Museum” events used to take place. Having lost that venue, we decided to hold the event in the square that runs alongside the museum on Lenin Avenue. As it turned out, this was a very sensible and productive idea. Even the atmosphere of the May city contributed to the festive mood. We were able to invite a large number of musical groups, which would have been difficult inside an exhibition hall. Our event had a rather provocative title: “A One-Night Affair.” For one night, the museum was unfaithful to its classical art — with pop art.
— What events did you hold this year as part of “Night at the Museum”?
— We held a Street Session musical marathon. Such well-known musicians performed as Anatoly Voronov’s Combo Jazz Band, Chambery, Olga Nasyrova & The Light Jazz Band, and Soul Brothers. We tried to recreate the atmosphere of Andy Warhol’s Factory by creating the art objects Volgograd&brand, “Time Capsule,” and “pop-art tuning.” Visitors were introduced to a video presentation of Andy Warhol’s work. We chose Andy’s muse. After that there was a photo battle among young Volgograd photographers who captured that muse. At the same time, various workshops were running, along with a dance class, a children’s area — baby art square — and a “Walk of Stars” was being created. Visitors could have make-up done in the style of the 1960s and take part in a photo session.
This year we had many partners who presented their own programmes and provided prizes for various competitions. In the museum halls, meanwhile, classical art still remained. So one may say that our “affair” was a conditional one. We tried to show our visitors — there were so many of them that the museum halls could barely hold everyone — all the existing forms of museum work in a concentrated way. Over the past three years, children’s festivals and musical Thursdays have proven especially successful.
During Museum Night we tried to bring all our museum projects together into one programme. The “Night” began with “Children’s Day,” devoted to pop art. It was followed by Evgeny Zabaznov’s multimedia project “Shadows of Paris and London,” the performance “A Metabolic Concert with a Creak in the Orchestra” by Stepan Nikolishin’s Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre, and a plastic-art congratulation to the museum from actors of the Volgograd Youth Theatre, who presented fragments from the performance “I Love and I Hate.” Excursions and presentations of museum art projects were held non-stop: “Treasures of Russian Art of the 18th–19th Centuries,” “People and Gods in Works of Ancient Art,” “Images and Symbols of the Old Faith,” “Ivan Shishkin: Researcher and Lyricist,” and the exhibition of the first international open graphic-art festival VITA-ART-TIME. The unquestionable discovery of the event was a piano on the museum porch — a kind of “piano in the bushes” that turned the museum steps into a stage.
“Night at the Museum” ended well after midnight with an intellectual gathering at the museum. Visitors watched a film about a Chinese artist sometimes called the Chinese Andy Warhol. The event concluded with an art debate — an open dialogue with the most persistent visitors.
— Elena Vladimirovna, in your opinion, how necessary are such events?
— You know, the latest Museum Night inspired optimism. There had never been such a number of visitors in all the museums. This shows that interest in museums is growing. Volgograd residents are beginning to show a more active interest in the museum, and museums themselves are looking for new forms of working with visitors. From what was once a frozen, monumental institution, the museum is turning into a living organism that tries to respond to the demands of life. In short, the main result is that “Night at the Museum” is very popular and should continue to be held. Museum workers themselves look forward to it every year, and almost immediately after it ends they begin preparing for the next Night.
I would especially like to note a fact that often remains outside public attention. “Night at the Museum” is dedicated to International Museum Day — that is, to our professional holiday. And instead of receiving congratulations and taking a rest, the museum community celebrates its holiday through intense work, trying to share with visitors the joy of communicating with art.
— How do you assess, in general, the level of cultural education among residents of our region?
— I would like to note the growing cultural needs of Volgograd residents. Whole families come to the museum; couples in love come holding hands; many young people come, as do people of mature age. Children, young people and pensioners all show interest. Someone once asked me: “Who is your visitor — a man, a woman, a grandmother, a child?” I repeated the whole list back to them.
Our museum is open to visitors every day. We have democratic prices and a large number of charitable programmes. We have something to show and something to be proud of. The collection preserved in our museum is, in my view, the main treasury of our region. The museum holds originals by such famous artists as Aivazovsky, Shishkin, Repin, Savrasov and, of course, Mashkov.
— Many Volgograd residents believe that people are not interested in the Museum of Fine Arts because the displays are static. Is that true? Is work being done to expand the collection?
— Static!? A person who thinks that simply has not been to our museum for a long time. Look at our poster, visit the museum website, and you will see how rich our exhibition and project life is! Even now, when only three halls are open, we try to show a variety of exhibition projects that, I hope, are interesting both to lovers of classical art and to lovers of contemporary art.
Adding to the collection is now a major problem. We try, by all possible and impossible means, to replenish our collection. Some works are donated by colleagues from private galleries; others are given by the artists themselves. This year we held the first open international graphic-art festival Vita-Art-Time, presenting works by contemporary artists from five countries. Under the terms of the competition, the works shown in the exhibition will remain in the museum collection.
And we do not cease to be optimists. We hope that sooner or later the museum will have the possibility to purchase works of art, because without replenishing museum collections we risk losing an entire artistic layer of this period.
— Do you cooperate with museums in other regions?
— Certainly. Last year we held anniversary events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the “Jack of Diamonds” group and the 130th anniversary of Ilya Mashkov. Together with the State Museum of Fine Arts of Tatarstan, we organised the exhibition “The Power of Life,” which presented paintings by Ilya Mashkov from our collection and from the Kazan museum’s collection. After that we held what I consider a brilliant exhibition project, “Mashkov — Zagrekov. Teacher and Student.” It presented works by Ilya Mashkov from our museum and works by Nikolai Zagrekov, Mashkov’s student, from a private museum in Berlin. We very much hope that after the renovation we will be able to open a virtual branch of the Russian Museum.
— This year all your exhibitions are also connected with another important date — the 50th anniversary of the Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts. Summing up its work, please tell us about the main achievements and future plans.
— A small correction: this year marks 50 years since the museum first opened its doors to visitors. We certainly try to offer visitors diverse and interesting exhibitions. In addition to those already mentioned, I would like to note the project “Sigmar Polke. Music of Unknown Origin,” dedicated to the Year of Germany in Russia; the exhibition project “Memory of Stalingrad,” marking the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Battle of Stalingrad; and “Gleb Vyatkin and Pyotr Zverkhovsky in the Jack of Diamonds Project. Postscriptum,” organised by the museum together with the 7 Winds charitable foundation and the Art-Ra gallery.
Exhibition projects devoted to the Year of Ecology will begin shortly. They include “The Face of Living Nature. Landscape, Still Life and Animalistic Genre from the Funds of the VMIИ” and the second youth festival of contemporary art “MOLFEST-ECOCITY” (2013). Incidentally, this may be another answer to the question about static displays.
In recent years the museum has been actively working with specific groups of visitors: children with disabilities, people of retirement age, and people with limited mobility. I would also like to stress once again that renovation work is currently taking place in the exhibition hall on Chuikov Street. I regard this as an unquestionable achievement. The museum is actively engaged in research, exhibitions and publishing. And I never tire of repeating that the I. I. Mashkov Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts is an inexhaustible image-building resource for our region!
