"About 30% of visitors come to museums for free"

More than a quarter of visitors go to museums for free, but there is no compensation system for benefits yet, said Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum. He hopes to change this state of affairs. Other plans include the opening of centers in Oman and South Korea, as well as the development of an art token (NFT) project for Hermitage works related to the restoration of physical exhibits. Mikhail Piotrovsky, whose powers were recently extended for five years, told Izvestia about this on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Forum of United Cultures.

"There is no benefit without compensation"

— Last year, the United Cultures Forum hosted a meeting of the Museum Council, where the problem of lost funds due to benefits was discussed. Has this problem been solved in a year? Is there any progress?

— No progress. And it's not just about the lost funds. This is a more serious issue that we keep talking about. Now it has become one of the main ones in the draft national program for the development of museums, which we are submitting to the Government. In fact, we do not have a system of benefits for visiting cultural institutions. There are separate orders and resolutions that are not supported by compensation. And without compensation, there is no benefit. It either becomes a heavy burden for the museum, or the museum itself must introduce benefits, which the Hermitage and many others do, but based on their own earnings.

— What percentage of visitors currently get free tickets to Russian museums on average?

— Approximately 25-30% of visitors. But it was the museums that paid for them! Now we are trying to put this in a more serious direction. So far, we have no results, no specific laws. We have discussed this many times in the State Duma, and we will discuss it again. There are some projects, for this we need legislation and an understanding that everything free must be paid for and compensated. So far, we have a situation where we pay for everything, and demands are coming from all sides: "Come on, let those in for free, let these in for free..." Everything is very noble. Children, large families — we do everything. But it turns out that museums are suffering, and those who ask look like good people.

"With art tokens, we study psychology"

— Please tell us about the plans of international projects in friendly countries. Will the museum exchange be resumed?

— We currently have a moratorium on any exhibitions abroad in our country. We live in a world where there are wars all around, there is no security. We live in the era of the collapse of the international guarantee system. They were good. They worked at a time of crisis for the Hermitage and our museums, but the current ones don't work. Until all this happens, such exhibitions will be of an exceptional nature.

But there really should be cultural ties. We are negotiating exhibitions, but we put interaction and people at the forefront. We have several exhibitions planned in and out of China. But the main thing is that our colleagues are currently in China, and colleagues from China are coming to visit us. People in museums know each other and know their collections, and then they can come up with something like that. We are currently signing an agreement on the establishment of the Hermitage Center in the Sultanate of Oman. Oman is a place where we can do more than in any other country. There are guarantees there. The center will be in the south of Oman. There will be exhibitions and scientific research, our school of Arabian studies is very famous in the world.

We are creating a completely different center in South Korea: an electronic one. In general, the countries of the East are much more developed than the countries of Europe, America, and us in terms of various electronic means of communication and digital representation of images. And the audience perceives it all there. We will start with the Magnificent Hermitage exhibition, which was previously held in Nizhny Novgorod. It tells in a new language about the museum, about those things that you won't see when you look at the painting. They say, "Oh, we always need the original." But in the original, especially if you see it for the first time, you will not see 90% of what they can tell you with the help of various new technologies. That's what everything will be built on.

We have the Hermitage and our centers, of which there are many. In Russia, all of them are functioning, in Europe they are frozen. And we have a "heavenly" Hermitage, the Hermitage "in the cloud", which is absolutely accessible to everyone when the Internet is online, which has now become a means of such an active exchange of impressions and stories with museums and with every person on Earth in general.

— On the issue of digital technologies: at the United Cultures Forum, a lot was said about artificial intelligence, about art tokens (NFTs), and their use by the Hermitage. Can you explain how this process happens in the case of the museum?

— Figuratively speaking, the image is "shackled". This picture becomes owned by a single person. The picture is not physical, but electronic. But the verification system ensures that only this person now has access to it and owns it. He has this thrill of being the only owner. It's a strange pleasure. An ordinary person of the 19th century would not understand — well, it's "in the air", how to own? It turns out that it is possible, and in fact, with the help of the history of art tokens, we are studying this psychology.

We have come up with a scheme on how to make an art token interesting. When a physical work of art is being restored, there is a state in the middle during the restoration that does not exist either before or after. But we can make a picture, and it will be unique. It will remain, of course, in the Hermitage, and it can be donated or sold. There is interest in this.

Thus, we are financing the next restorations, and there is a whole interesting story around this. There is a lot of museum activity, which is not really related to any new technologies. With the help of new technologies, we discuss philosophical issues.: What is uniqueness, what are copyrights and intellectual property rights?

In fact, uniqueness does not exist. There are unique ideas. Copyright is a new invention. But if it's something creative, then it comes from God. And the big question is what rights the person who made it has to his work, what rights the family and his people have. It's also a question of collecting — is that what a collector is guided by? An art token is kind of intangible, but people collect them and pay money. And then they show it, they make exhibitions out of it.

In general, many different things related to what culture is in general are highlighted through discussions of artificial intelligence.