#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In three days, from October 1 to 3, the Norilsk museum simultaneously celebrated its 85th anniversary and discussed with the professional community the problems of museum modernization, transformation and innovation.
The anniversary brought together museum directors, change projects curators and designers from all over the country for a professional discussion of current practices of large-scale museum transformations. Experts from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Murmansk and other Russian cities came to Norilsk.
“The Norilsk museum is destroying a huge number of stereotypes”, noted Leonid Kopylov, an expert from St. Petersburg. “We are used to looking towards Moscow, and now we are looking in the other direction. Such interesting centers are emerging in the country that convey new messages to the museum community. They – no matter whether federal or municipal – are much more actively introduced into the renewal of museum life. The Norilsk museum is an example of how to make a local history museum alive. Such museums encourage thinking and dreaming about what the museum of the future could be like. Here we have gathered people with whom it is interesting to talk about where museums should move”.
On the laboratory’s first day, its participants, using three museums as examples, discussed, as written in the program, “soft content and design modernization taking into account modern trends”.
The experts were the Perm museum of modern art PERMM’s director, art critic Nailya Allahverdiyeva, deputy director for research at the Murmansk regional museum of local history Anastasia Knyazeva and the Vologda region architectural and ethnographic museum Semenkovo’s scientific and exhibition department’s head Dmitry Muhin.
Nailya Allahverdiyeva told how she manages to develop the Museum of Modern Art in the city, using “constantly changing windows of opportunity”, and called herself the main initiator of changes: “This does not cancel teamwork, but I determine the course”.
The Murmansk museum celebrates its 100th anniversary in two years and is currently undergoing a second re-exposition and reconstruction. The opening is scheduled for 2025. According to Anastasia Knyazeva, the updated museum is a modern scenario for interaction with visitors, accessibility, a new visual language.
The business program moderator Leonid Kopylov, when talking about the architectural and ethnographic museum Semenkovo, described it as a museum where everything is honest. “We can count on the fingers of one hand the museums about honest peasant life”, the expert noted.
Dmitry Muhin started as a museum volunteer, went to study the structure of rural government at the European university, and when he returned, his knowledge was in demand. He names the museum team as the initiator of the changes, for whom the once achieved level is not enough.
If on the first day the experts shared how the museum can be improved and optimized without its physical transformation, while preserving the main exhibits, approaches and the existing mission, then the second day was devoted to a complete change of museum formats. The conversation about the transformation was started by the Norilsk museum, which presented the concept of the Norilsk Civilization Museum, into which the building on Leninsky, 14, is being transformed.
The Norilsk museum director Natalia Fedyanina reminded her colleagues of the project history: “We have been walking this path for a long time, conducting research, organizing a museum laboratory five years ago, where employees spoke. Three museum design teams from all over the country were invited – with experience in participatory design… The Potanin foundation program Museum. The Power of Place helped us a lot.
Together with Natalia Fedyanina, the author’s group head Andrey Rymar and the project architect Sergey Padalko participated in the presentation. Andrey Rymar, whose team with the project of the Norilsk civilization museum became the winner of the citywide contest of the best scenario, did not hide the fact that he was confident in his model. According to his co-author, the head of the St. Petersburg architectural studio Vitruvius and Sons Sergey Padalko, for him it all started with the core of the exposition: “A beam that is visible from any part of the city and its environs. This is how we declare the museum as a place of power”.
“When I saw the picture and understood the scale, I was scared”, admitted Natalya Fedyanina during the project discussion. “The museum is a monument, and for such interventions the scale of changes must be powerful. My personal design practice has shown that the more revolutionary the idea, the higher the chances of getting support, including taking into account the charisma and scope of the investor in the territory”.
At the end of the discussion, the director of the future Norilsk civilization museum noted that immediately after choosing the direction of transformation, the museum began to change eventfully, adjusting its work in accordance with the new concept:
“We are making our own museum, so we want to make it excellent. We are not competing with anyone, but we’d like to be special. If you want a good museum, you need to attract a huge number of your people, professionals. This is important to avoid making a mistake and at the same time to do something unique. In order to move something forward, given the huge investments required to transform a building with the status of a monument, you need an outstanding idea. We have one. Thanks to those who are with us on this path”, the laboratory program head concluded the presentation.
On the same day, the Perm art gallery director Yulia Tavrizyan, museum designer, one of the Izhevsk museum concept authors Marina Rupasova, the Moscow museum bureau Solarsense’s co-founder Andrey Rymar and St. Petersburg’s Nevskaya Zastava museum director Anna Yakovenko presented the stories of reformatting their museums.
The program of the day was completed by the presentation of the book Practices of Participation in Museums, published by the Norilsk museum and previously presented in the Shaninka library in Moscow.
The final day of the laboratory was the most eventful and was held under the sign of the Arctic museum of modern art being created in Norilsk.
The AMMA presentation was preceded by a series of reports on the practices of development participation, the use of the design thinking method in design. One of the presentations was devoted to a very important topic for museum workers: “How not to break the museum concept about… fire requirements”.
The spatial and activity strategy and architectural solution of AMMA were presented by Natalia Fedyanina and the head of the author’s group, architect Ilya Mukosey. In the evening, at Komsomolskaya 37, where the future Arctic museum of modern art is being created, a presentation of one of the latest projects of the Polar art residence took place.
Earlier we wrote about the Norilsk museum’s anniversary.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
