Survival Kit: New Institutional Models and Goals during and after the Pandemic with Garage Moscow
By Holly Howe
Sasha Obukhova is the Curator of Archive Collection at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. An art historian working in the field since 1997, she has previously held positions at the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), State Tretyakov Gallery, and National Center for Contemporary Art.
Katya Inozemtseva is Senior Curator at Garage Museum. Her field of expertise is Russian art history in the 20th and 21st century and has previously held positions at the National Center for Contemporary Arts, Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Proun Gallery, and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow.
Together they shared their thoughts with our members on the impact of the pandemic on both Garage Museum and the wider arts community, and how it has provided an opportunity to really think about the purpose of cultural institutions and the communities they serve.
Swinging into action to support communities
As soon as lockdown started as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art mobilised their people and started to think about how they could best serve the community in a rapidly changing situation, as people started losing work and entering financial straits. Katya explained:
“The pandemic has transformed not only the operational activity of an institution but also it’s led us to a different understanding of what a museum is. What we found in the first days of lockdown to be relevant was one single thing: We must now operate in terms of direct help for the community.”
And when she says community, she isn’t referring to people with shared ideologies or friends of the museum – she means geographical community, “the people in need around us”. The Garage Café has always had a sustainable and community focus – it uses local ingredients and children’s meals are served on plates created by students of Russia’s only education and creativity centre for adults with autism spectrum disorders – but they realised they needed to do more.
They set up a programme called “Everything is going to be alright”, and temporarily converted the café into a grocery, providing food boxes to artists and families in need. Katya said:
“It’s essential to answer operatively to the real needs – it’s not about pleasure, it’s not about entertainment, it’s about providing very direct help.”
The museum also quickly launched programmes to support the artistic community. The first was a digital platform which was called “Self Isolation”. As well as publishing texts and archival documents which are not usually available, they also launched an open call for texts from artists, writers, and critics to reflect on this present situation we’ve never been faced with before. The winners then received money to support themselves during a time when they needed it most. Sasha elaborated: “We wanted to support professionals who are around Garage who lost their jobs.”
Another programme was “Reflections”, where researchers, artists, curators, and staff of cultural institutions were invited to enter into a creative dialogue with artists and produce a joint chronicle of current events. Those who were chosen to write pieces were also paid for their work.
Sasha sees this as a vital aspect of their work:
“We are not only a place to meet but we have a social mission to be a virtual place to connect people and support those who cannot come to the museum. This focus of our institution is very interesting, especially for Russia which is quite conservative in terms of cultural politics. Usually museums are seen as bring just collections.”
The difficulty of a digital world
Katya acknowledged that the move into the online sphere was tricky:
“We all experienced the increasing disappointment with online activities. In the first weeks everyone was enthusiastic of new possible modes of online activities that museums could provide. By end of first month of lockdown you could clearly feel the disappointment and boredom from all kinds of online activities.” However she believes that the pandemic situation will cause reconsideration of how museums can operate online, while pulling together a real community.
How will it change museum programming?
Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has had a massive impact on the budgets of all cultural institutions. Understandably, many sponsors and donors have moved their resources to urgent social and humanitarian needs. But Katya believes that this lack of funding will lead to a significant reduction of the kind of blockbuster art exhibitions we’ve become used to seeing, due to issues around transnational cooperation which is needed for these shows which will be reduced due to lack of budget or even travel restrictions. This could cause a seismic change in museum programming worldwide.
Due to this shift, she envisions that museums may look to within their own national collections for future shows. While this can be a good thing, she argues “this general national turn is also synchronised with the current political convention I feel is potentially dangerous.” Hopefully this potential for focusing inwardly won’t cause an increase in nationalism and a distrust of the ‘foreign’. Katya closed with: “It’s crucial for institutions like Garage which are visible not only in Russia and Europe to keep on going – to move forward international cooperation and cooperation with international artists.”