Mikhail Piotrovsky. Casting for a New Life

We have created what I call the choreography of visiting the Hermitage. Not everyone likes that word from the theatrical world here. There are certain rules for visiting the museum. It’s not a prison exercise yard where you walk round in circles. The fixed routes are a necessity for meeting the sanitary regulations, and a scenario. People move in one direction, not meeting each other head-on, not going back on themselves.

There are fixed routes in museums around the world. They exist in the Vatican, in our suburban museums. At Tsarskoye Selo there are routes that include the Amber Room and others that don’t… Our fixed routes cover nearly everything that there is in the Hermitage.

We have combined those people who by law have the privilege of visiting the museum free of charge. They can come on one day a month, the third Thursday, and can be accompanied by one or two others, but those people have to have tickets. Children under 7 visit the Hermitage free of charge.

When it comes to concessions on tickets, we are negotiating with the government about compensation. We ourselves are reckoning how much we are earning, how many more visitors we can take free of charge. It’s a process that involves economics and ethics. Privileges don’t just drop from the sky: someone has to pay for them.

It would be wonderful if our museums were free of charge, like in English-speaking countries. Incidentally, people there understand that it’s a privilege and are grateful for it. In countries to the south of Britain – in France, Italy and in Russia, there is no respect for privileges. People reckon if something is free of charge, then you can kick the door open.

When heading for the museum, people don’t prepare for their encounter with it. Through the social networks and the website, we are trying to get them interested in something, be it the display of Russian icons or the hall of the Spanish artist Ignacio Zuloaga in the General Staff building. After viewing a tour online, people are writing that they will come specially to see some particular thing. The online presence that has become regular is also an exam. “Museum TV” has appeared. Each day we show specially prepared programmes, the aim of which is to prepare people for a visit to the museum and to preserve the memory of that.

Today there is discussion around the world of the situation in which we have found ourselves. We need to understand how to live with new problems.

For example, in the American Academy of Sciences there has been discussion of one of the political consequences of the epidemic – the problem that masks cause. People perceive them in different ways. In some American states, people are refusing to wear masks because for them it is like the hijab that Muslim women wear. In others, they point to the law banning masks due to the Ku Klux Klan.

Masks make identifying a person harder. I don’t know about other people, but my phone does not recognize me in a mask.

There is a problem with remote working. The way we have grown used to it has its plusses and minuses. Remote working is tempting. Some like it, some don’t, but a considerable portion of our activities will take place in a remote regime. How should it be monitored? How should it be paid?

There are lots of nuances. They are not straightforward and they form the system of our new life.

The world has been flooded with information, some of it unnecessary, dubious or even deceitful. That arouses a cynical distrust among people living under conditions of a pandemic. Many don’t believe that a vaccine will help. They don’t believe and keep complaining about everything being bad.

We live in a culture of distrust. People don’t trust judges or the state; the state does not trust people. Staff do not trust management, or management staff. The presumption of innocence has gone. Each person has to prove that they didn’t commit a crime. That, sadly, has become systematic.

One more culture of life that has become habitual is dissatisfaction. People are constantly saying that everything’s bad and nothing’s right. Again in the USA they have started talking about how Black people are still being oppressed as they used to be; that women are unhappier than before… It’s all true, but we never used to have such a flood of negative emotions.

A sort of infrastructure for complaints and dissatisfactions of various sorts has appeared.

In the Hermitage, we have surveys of public attitudes and a splendid means of communication – the social networks, where people leave their reviews of lectures, tours and all the rest. As a result of the tensions that have appeared in society, themes have resurfaced that were seemingly long gone: animosity towards the monarchy, the imperial family, irritation about religion. One person will write, “That’s enough preaching.” Another gets upset that the word “saint” was not placed in front of someone’s name…

There are different opinions over the fixed routes we’ve organized in the museum too. Some people want order. The signs are not enough. It’s not clear where to go and there definitely should be a guide. Others are indignant that you need to stick to the route, can’t go backwards and that not all the halls are open. That’s despite the fact that everyone is used to going around the first floor of the museum and few go beyond it. Like the joke about an uninhabited island: “And in that spot there’ll be a club that I never go to.”

Nervous irritability is dangerous. The “colour revolutions” in the Arab world began with a street trader setting fire to himself in protest. The government suddenly decided to impose order. If you are trading, then you are obliged to pay tax according to the receipt. That drove the trader mad. On top of everything, it was a policewoman demanding the receipt. In a state of shock, he set fire to himself.

We are all going through casting for how we deal with nervous irritability.

I admire the courage of our guides. During and after quarantine, they ventured to do live broadcasts of their tours. That’s dangerous. You give a tour, and people immediately write to you that they don't like it. One disliked the camerawork. Others think that there was too much of the guide in the shot and not enough of the paintings, someone thinks the exact opposite. The tours are given by researchers who found the information themselves. That’s a rare event. Some people understand that, others don’t.

Some reviews are plain rude. Someone is not happy with the way a guide representing the Hermitage is dressed. They write, “Why on earth is she wearing trousers?” A discussion ensues: how much do museum staff earn, can they afford clothes by Versace... The guides hold their own superbly, knowing what people are saying and writing to them, how they are being lectured.

Viewers are undergoing an important casting test today. The principle that “the customer is always right” is not true in our case. In its dealings with people online, the museum has to accept both declarations of love and a lot of mudslinging. There is a wonderful category of viewers – people who are in love with the Hermitage and with art. They understand everything, don’t complain, and try to overcome obstacles, even if it’s the museum that creates them.

There is a category of viewers who make comments. They politely express wishes about what they would like. Others give advice. Others like to teach. As Galich put it, “Beware of those who know how things should be done.” They write. “Why the fixed routes?”, “Why don’t you make people wear slippers in the museum?”… There are harsher lectures: “This is the only right way…”

I want to say that our partners have come through the casting, too. With the aid of the ministry, we managed to raise the issue of the price of concessions, about how the state ought to cover them. We shall continue to fight for that. With the aid of the ministry, we modified the task that the state sets us. And that is important at the moment, when cultural institutions are without an income. With help from the same place, we have obtained a certain amount of compensation for cultural institutions.

We are managing to work well with our colleagues from the ministry in anxious circumstances. Things are worse with our partners in building projects. There we keep having to cancel contracts.

I recently participated in an international discussion on what museums are doing after the pandemic. Designers are devising ways to turn the restrictions into entertainment. For example, patches of light that allow people to see how much free space there is around each of them. Even without a pandemic, it’s important to understand how much space a person needs to be comfortable in a museum. Everyone knows that being in a crowd is terrible. Lighting methods have appeared that can separate people as they queue up. There are special lamps that can pick out details, as if a person is in the museum on their own.

All these are attempts to make visitors feel that they belong in the museum, that they are welcome guests.

One very important matter is the accessibility of museums for people with disabilities. One participant spoke emotionally about the fact that museums occupy buildings that are architectural monuments protected by the state. You cannot build ramps for visitors in wheelchairs there. How much longer can the interests of architecture be put above those of people? Why can't we come up with something beautiful and acceptable for people with disabilities?

We are constantly hearing from builders: “You forbid everything. We ought to be thinking about people.” It’s true that people ought to be comfortable in old buildings.

It’s complicated, though. We need to think about past, present and future generations.

People recently have been getting the feeling that they aren’t welcome anywhere. They start to get angry and complain. Museums welcome everyone, but as hosts and not servants that are supposed to bow. We listen to advice and think about how to make contact with the museum comfortable and enjoyable for everyone.