ALAN ASHTON-SMITH

25 January 2012

East European Museums

Although my knowledge of museum studies is very rudimentary, I do know that the relationship between the museum and its visitors is an important part of the field.  Of course, this is something that becomes apparent upon visiting a museum or gallery.  I’m not just talking about the visitor’s perception of their own experience at the museum: whether you’re at the British Museum, the Guggenheim or the Rijksmuseum, it’s impossible not to be extremely conscious of your fellow visitors.  They tend to be busy places.

But this is not the case everywhere, and here I want to focus on the far less crowded condition of museums in Eastern Europe.  That doesn’t apply across the whole region: the Hermitage in St. Petersburg heaves with visitors, as do most of Prague’s museums.  The places I am specifically referring to are the parts of Europe that suffer more from being ‘othered’ by people from the West.  Cities that lack the imperial histories of St. Petersburg or Prague and which are instead thought of as underdeveloped places blighted by their communist pasts.  In fact, they have all the amenities of cities in Western Europe and more often than not the same brand names; cities in Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria don’t actually feel all that different.  However, there is one aspect of these places that has always felt ‘other’ to me, and that is their typically near-deserted museums and galleries.

Skopje's city museum is unusual in looking pretty much the way most people would expect an East European museum to look

A valid response to this would be to say that this is because these East European countries don’t act as tourist destinations in the same way as the cities that are home to the more teeming museums of the West.  In some cases that would be true.  Macedonia’s capital is not a popular holiday spot – if it was, then perhaps the Museum of the City of Skopje would be in a better state then it was when I visited last year.  It consisted of three displays: a room of portrait photography, a poorly lit hall of archeological fragments, and some reconstructions of mid-twentieth century homes.  In Katowice too, tourists are in short supply, but those who do visit have the chance to go to the Muzeum Śląskie.  Katowice doesn’t rate highly on my list of favourite European cities, but where else could I have discovered the wonderfully peculiar work of Kazimierz Mikulski?

The weirdly wonderful work of Kazimierz Mikulski

But many of Eastern Europe’s towns and cities host plenty of tourists.  It’s just that, for some reason, few of these tourists seem to be interested in the museums.  Take Bratislava, for example.  The city’s old town overflows with tourists, but visiting the Slovak National Gallery, I found it to be almost empty.  There were more staff than visitors and, as seems to be the case throughout Eastern Europe, they were far more hands-on than the attendants who sit impassive in the corners of galleries in the West: they are often very keen to ensure that visitors don’t stray from the recommended route through the museum.

The Montenegrin city of Kotor is like a more bijou Bratislava, though the majority of its many tourists are from Serbia rather than Western Europe.  The main attraction for energetic visitors is the long, steep ascent to the city’s fortifications, while those who like to remain sedentary prefer the beaches.  But there is also a maritime museum that chronicles Kotor’s nautical history.  Its custodian helpfully pointed out that, as a student, I qualified for a substantially discounted entry, but then refused to let me in because I didn’t have the right change.  Maybe this explains why the museum was deserted – presumably not all visitors are prepared to go and get a drink and then return with the right coinage.

In Sofia, the amount of English I heard spoken surprised me.  But the museums were predictably quiet, despite the impressive collection of the National Gallery for Foreign Art, where the highlight is surely the ukiyo-e prints.  Down the road in the National Ethnographic Museum, I was literally the only visitor.  A woman approached me as soon as I entered the exhibition space; I assumed that she was there to make sure I viewed the displays in the correct order, but instead she asked where I was from, and on learning that I was British she fetched an Anglophone attendant who gave me a one on one guided tour of the museum.  Afterwards, I wondered whether I ought to tip him, but concluded that this probably wasn’t necessary.

After all, he was simply doing his job, and I’m sure his job is significantly more interesting when people actually turn up to the museum.  And museums and galleries are also a more enticing prospect for visitors when they’re busy – ideally not so busy that you have to queue next to each painting to get a look at it, but at least with some sort of buzz.  Some of these tragically under-patronised museums in Eastern Europe feel like tombs full of grave goods that you’ve wandered into by mistake.  Unfortunately, sitting here in London, I can’t do much to drum up business for museums in Poland or Bulgaria; the best I can do is recommend that you check these places out if you’re visiting anywhere in Eastern Europe.