"Too many visitors is not an indicator of success"

In a world where artificial intelligence compiles reports and forms rules, the most important thing is the human figure. He is the tuning fork that can preserve the meaning of museum work. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum, told Izvestia about this, as well as about the construction of the "second St. Petersburg", the federal project for the development of museums and international exhibitions on the sidelines of the SPIEF.

"The Hermitage is a cultural ecosystem"

— The first question is about what you call "the second Petersburg." Earlier, you stated that the city needs to preserve the historical center, and the new "second Petersburg" will help to cope with this task. In your opinion, after the appearance of Gazprom's towers, is there a chance that others will also decide to go up in height and thus create a new point of attraction for the city?

— First of all, I never declare anything — I say and propose, this is a very important thing. Indeed, the only way to preserve the city center is to create a second center. The architects of St. Petersburg have always known this, and they tried to create it, in particular, in the Lakhta area. Now such a center has emerged: it is not only the Lakhta Center, but also the stadium (Gazprom Arena), the second Hermitage Museum in the Old Village. There may well be a certain St. Petersburg version of high-rise construction in a separate location. I think the Lakhta Center is doing it well.

— As I understand it, the space of the restoration and preservation center of the State Hermitage Museum will expand?

— Yes, we created it a long time ago, and it represents a point of attraction. There is almost a second Hermitage there: six buildings, the open form of the vault is a unique thing. Like the Hermitage, there are lectures, guided tours, conferences and everything else. Currently, 13 floors of the library building have been built. By the way, 13 is already a high—rise building. It turns out that there is a "second Hermitage" and a "second Petersburg".

— After all, the Hermitage is not just a museum. This is a broader concept and a gigantic cultural space.

— As it is fashionable to say now, an ecosystem. The Hermitage is a cultural ecosystem.

"Complex and strict academic rules"

— The building of the former prison ["Kresty", located in the city center — approx. Ed.] predicted a wide variety of new exploitation options. In your opinion, what would be the most preferable location in the city?

— Now there is an investor for both Krestov and the Stable Department. We have samples, and we will do everything with the active participation of the public and cultural institutions.

Now we have a [development] scheme for New Holland and Sevcabel, where exhibition activities are combined with cultural ones, as well as business ideas and restaurants. By the way, St. Petersburg has practically become a restaurant and gastronomic capital. As far as I know, a similar concept is provided for both Crosses and the Stable Department.

— There are scientific, museum and exhibition activities, and businesses actively seek to interact in these spaces. How do I create a balance?

— This is very important, because, of course, the museum is about science and restoration, complex and strict academic rules. But in order to preserve the exhibits, you need to be at the height of all the latest technologies and techniques.

The Hermitage always has everything for every taste. We show modern art, but if a person doesn't like it, you can go and get acquainted with classical art. Do you want clouds? Please, we are creating a heavenly Hermitage. Yesterday, we launched a wonderful project with VKontakte, which combines different guides to the Hermitage: a QR code, a chatbot, and three media figures who lead through the halls of the museum in electronic space.

— You will find an artificial intelligence application ...

— We are developing schemes that will help combat artificial intelligence. He needs to be put in his place, because he has been very arrogant since his creation. He always allows himself to make some comments if you give him assignments and so on.

Neural networks need to be adjusted in the same way as the Internet in general, like Wikipedia [the portal's pages were included in the lists of banned in the Russian Federation], which is terrible in itself, but also necessary. All the latest technologies are terrible somewhere, you need to be able to adjust them.

— You are growing and educating new generations who will automatically be able to edit the same encyclopedia by accessing it and filtering the information.

— Yes, the word "filter" is very correct. They have to filter, be ready for it. To do this, you need to go to the real Hermitage, and it is advisable not to go through it virtually. Although when you have a phone in your pocket and you can watch everything virtually, it's also very good.

But you have to be prepared to visit the Hermitage in person in order to understand the charm of being able to stay in the present. After all, we don't always understand this without preparation.

"A man will be a tuning fork"

— Vladimir Putin has appointed you and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to be responsible for the implementation of the instructions for the development of a federal project for the development of museums until 2030. In your opinion, how should this document be developed, in which directions?

— Once upon a time, together with the Ministry of Culture, we created the Union of Museums of Russia so that there would be feedback from the museum community. Because the Ministry administers and manages, it has other approaches that are related to numbers, artificial intelligence and technical things.

We have a more spiritually uplifting approach, which should be combined with an administrative one.

We will be offering three triads. The first triad represents museums as the cultural code of the nation and everything related to it. The second triad is the educational work of the museum, as the creator of a sense of patriotism and spiritual loyalty to Russia. Conventionally, the museum tells "where the Motherland begins", develops horizontal links between museums. The third triad is financial. We have both fundamental things in museums, such as government orders, as well as the creative industry, and the monetization of cultural activities. These three parameters should have their own "shelves", they are included in the budget.

There are also two top five — these are, on the one hand, the main areas of development that I proposed to the president, from which the assignment was born. And this is the development of a powerful restoration network in the country, because it is necessary to save the collections that we have.

It is also the development of a system of criteria for determining quality and success. This is very difficult in museum life. Now everyone knows that the number of visitors is not an indicator of success if there are too many of them. There should be as many visitors as the museum can accommodate to make your stay comfortable, and so on. This is also a personnel problem: the personnel must be more or less constant. This is a problem of government guarantees, including travel exhibitions and their insurance within Russia — it is incredibly expensive. And the last thing is the benefits system and understanding how it is built. This is a very practical five.

There are five "combat" ones: There is a trend towards the abolition of museums in the world right now. There is talk that museums are not needed, that they take things out of context. There is a problem of appropriation, when people start saying, "Don't you dare borrow our cultural things, this is our culture, ours doesn't concern anyone." All of this is extremely popular now. There is an attribution problem when trying to determine which people and country an artist belongs to. For example, is Aivazovsky an Armenian, a Russian, a Ukrainian, and a Turk?

There is a problem of participation — the museum's participation in public life. We need to understand when it's decent and when it's not. There is also the issue of restitution — which exhibits should or should not be returned to the places where these things came from.

We can propose a set of issues to be resolved together with the Ministry. There are a lot of pain points that you don't have to be shy about. We need to talk about them and start working with them. Otherwise, we will be captured by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence often plans everything. And then he takes the report, evaluates what is right or wrong. There must be a person in the middle of these processes. The person will be a tuning fork that will edit, manage, change, and create rules. The rules should be completely mechanical.

"Relations with Moscow cultural institutions have been resumed"

— A question about the Exchange building on Strelka Vasilyevsky Island, where the restoration is underway: the opening dates are postponed. According to your information, will we see an opening this year or maybe next season?

— First of all, there is no need to rush with such things, the example of the Stock Exchange shows this. At one time, at a large public forum, I asked the president to release the Ministry of Culture and members of Culture from construction projects. So that the Ministry of Construction builds everything, since we cannot cope with the builders. The president said, "No one can handle them."

During the reconstruction of the Exchange, we changed several contractors. Moreover, all these contractors ended up in criminal cases after we kicked them out. Our builders do not want to go to government facilities, because the control there is different and the prices are different.

Now we have saved the Exchange, as the contractors were changed. Now a new contractor is working there, the Ministry of Culture is the customer now, let's see how it will be. Then there is the issue of maintenance, and now, as in conventional construction, contests are being held and various ideas are being proposed.

You know, the Stock Exchange is an amazing building. They've saved it now, it's not sinking, it's whole, it's standing. There is a picture of St. Petersburg.

— A question about the project of the Hermitage branch in Moscow. In your opinion, is there a chance to resume it?

— You see, it didn't work out there, because a private investor is not the state. He couldn't handle and didn't like what the super project offered. We, in turn, needed a super-project. That's why we didn't extend the agreement.

We assumed that this place would be a space for displaying contemporary art projects that are being made at the Hermitage. There's a problem with contemporary art right now: we don't have any big projects of world contemporary art yet, so that's kind of gone, too. In general, the interest of both the investor and ours has disappeared, so we will wait. Moscow is a very culturally saturated city, and you need to find the right niche there.

We have now resumed contacts with Moscow cultural institutions. Exhibitions and dialogues take place from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. In other words, this is not just an exhibition in two places, but two exhibitions that are in dialogue.

In Soviet times, everyone traveled to exhibitions from St. Petersburg to Moscow and back, then it was interrupted. It is now resuming again. People come to the exhibitions. For example, I was in Moscow for half a day and managed to visit two exhibitions, although I came on business.

— Since we're talking about exhibitions, maybe you can tell us some creative exhibition plans. How many exhibitions are being prepared at the Hermitage, and how complex is this process?

— The process is very complicated, it takes many years. Therefore, when they sometimes say that it is necessary to "do it quickly, quickly," it is impossible. If possible, it will take a million efforts.

Our Hermitage exhibitions have several special features. Firstly, we do exhibitions inside the Hermitage, we do not have a separate entrance to the exhibitions or a separate ticket. Our exhibitions are all integrated into the Hermitage space, they assume that a person is watching both the exhibition and the museum.

Secondly, we do exhibitions in bursts. We open four or five exhibitions at once on Museum Day and Hermitage Day in December, and they run simultaneously.

We have an exhibition strategy, and we have expositions, for example, Russian history, relatively speaking, imperial history. The second theme is the "Dialogue of Cultures" of the Museum of World Culture. The third theme is masterpieces. Things that come out of restoration. This year, after the restoration, we will have the exhibition "The Three Saints of Sebastian". "Saint Sebastian" by Titian and two more Saint Sebastians who have come out of restoration.

As part of the "Dialogue of Cultures" we will have a large Buddhist exhibition, an exhibition of portraits. An exhibition dedicated to dueling is about to open, where they will talk about the origins of the dueling tradition and its evolution. Also, a one-day exhibition has now opened in St. George's Hall. There are gold and silver coins in a large cube, which were given to us by a patron of the arts.

We are opening the Bahrain exhibition tomorrow. Bahrain is a guest of SPIEF 2025, Bahraini daggers and swords will be presented. The day after tomorrow, the Russian Style exhibition opens in Muscat, Oman. We actually have a corner of the Hermitage Museum in Oman and a corner of the Omani Museum in the Hermitage.

The main thing is that we still have the third part of the strategy, so exhibitions are held both here and in the Hermitage centers. There are six Hermitage Centers in Russia. The Western centers are now frozen, but in Russia they exist and are functioning. We are bringing an exhibition dedicated to the Order of St. George and the image of St. George to Vladivostok. An exhibition dedicated to Belle Epoque— French art of the late 19th century, is being held at the Hermitage Kazan Center.