NEMO Annual meeting 2005

Eduard Dragos Neamu

NATIONAL REPORT ON THE MOBILITY OF COLLECTIONS IN ROMANIA, FOR THE PERIOD 2004-2005

  1. INTRODUCTION

In Romania, the mobility of collections has never been the subject of a full report which would include analysis or punctual statistics, structured in relation with the governmental or institutional attitude; with the evaluation of the movable heritage; with the situation of state indemnities, of insurances exemption, or of the insurances bonus for the itinerant exhibitions; with loan taxes; with the number of temporary exhibitions, itinerated nationally and abroad; with digitization etc.

Up to now, there were only annual thematic reports and upgrades at the level of computerized evidence and inventory of the movable cultural heritage, but never taken as a corpus to reveal an overall image, relevant and convincing, of the phenomenon.

Therefore, the report may seem inconsistent regarding the number of presented data, due to the lack of exercise in assuming such a demarche, but also due to the lack of specialty materials and reports from the preceding years.

Another important handicap of this report consists of the total lack of data and statistics in connection with the private art collections and galleries, regarding the mobility of collections.

The reasons are multiple, but the most important are those connected to the fact that there is not an accredited and recognized institution to be in charge with centralizing the data and with providing statistic information which would cover the whole private sector, and to the fact that these cultural institutions are reticent towards any form or attempt of this kind, which comes especially from individual initiatives.

In spite of the problems which have been pointed out, this report will try to encompass the Romanian reality of the museums life in a concrete shapes, on issues regarding the mobile cultural heritage and legislation.

We also hope this first complete report will open the way for a permanent approach in the field. Thus, we could have an exactly annual evidence of the situation in the mobility of the collections matter, which it will be necessary for a better knowledge of the Romanian cultural heritage.

  1. OVERALL SITUATION

If we are to analyze the situation retrospectively, in the case of the Romanian museums there can be noticed an accelerated tendency towards reforming, even if in some cases only at the level of intention, and their dynamics is stimulated by the attempt to make their heritage as visible and accessible as possible.

Beyond the cultural message transmitted by the museums, a more and more consistent attempt of economic integration also determined the cultural institutions to valorize their impressive potential which they have through the cultural heritage they coordinate.

Therefore, the reorientation towards heritage at the level of cultural policy priorities, generated a series of concerns targeted towards solving some essential problems concerning the heritage valorization, the training of human resources in the field,the museums’ infrastructure and the elaboration of a legislation adapted to the requirements and recommendations of the European Union.

For the cultural institutions which are in charge with movable heritage in Romania, these concerns are also converted in issues which are still in focus for those who try to accelerate their solving.

VALORIZING THE HERITAGE

An important support for the museums’ attempt to exploit their heritage and make it available for the society comes from the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs from Romania.

For the year 2005, the ministry intended, through its specialty directions and services, to make an international itinerant exhibition focused on the Romanian architectural heritage, to edit a series of guides and other information publications, and to conceive a national upgraded system for computerizing the catalogues of the movable cultural heritage (up to now, the computerized database of movable objects registered in the patrimony includes 5.662 entries until 4.11.2005).

DIGITIZATION OF HERITAGE

Strongly connected to valorizing the heritage is also the attempt to find practical solutions for exhibiting the objects of the museums’ heritage. Usually, in the main exhibitions there can be seen only 10-20% of the total amount of heritage objects belonging to a certain museum, the rest being kept in repositories due to the lack of exhibiting space, or to the need to protect and conserve it.

A solution for the increase of visibility and access to the movable heritage kept in repositories consists of its digitization. This initiative begins to contour itself lately through the synchronized demarche between the Institute for Cultural Memory(CIMEC) and the museums of the country, due to the action plan elaborated at a national level.

Furthermore, the process of progressive digitization of the whole cultural national heritage contributes to the increase of reciprocal acknowledgment of the museums’ collections, in order to establish partnerships at the level of cultural borrowings and exchanges of movable goods with heritage value.

HUMAN RESOURCES

In spite of the availability and of the attempts made by the museums and by the institutions holding cultural heritage towards the mobility of the collections, it can be seen a lack of training of the staff in charge with organizing the exhibitions.

Therefore, actions had been taken in order to increase the administrative capacity of the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs and of the cultural institutions in Romania, both through the of young experts, some of them trained through European Union programmes, and through increasing the number of the training courses of the specialists in classing, cataloguing, preservation and valorizing the national cultural heritage.

Aside from that, it is also recommended the establishment of consultative experts groups, at ministry and institutional level, to identify the proper instruments for stimulating as many Romanian cultural institutions as possible to open towards the exchange of exhibitions and art works with heritage value.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The mobility of the collections depends also on the ensuring of proper exhibiting spaces for the borrowed art objects and of a security, protection and illuminating system in accordance with the acknowledged European standards.

Due to an improper infrastructure of many of the Romanian museums, it’s impossible to organize temporary exhibitions in borrowing-system, because of the lack of trust manifested by the owners of art objects, regarding the borrowing of their properties without guarantees concerning the security, protection or hygiene systems of the exhibiting spaces.

A solution for the development and improvement of the heritage exhibiting and depositing spaces may be the applications for the national and European grant programmes, through projects targeted to the improvement of this field.

The dependence on the state budget allocated to culture, which is very small, is counterproductive and represents an obstacle in the development of museums’ life.

These have to be much more movable and reflective in finding extra-budgetary financing sources. The branching to the financial resources provided by the European programmes creates also a favorable position on the cultural market generally, and an increase of the credibility and visibility of the institution.

LEGISLATION

In Romania there still is an insufficient knowledge and interpretation of the legislation regarding the movable cultural heritage. From this point of view, an issue more and more debated is the lack of essential knowledge regarding the scheme of granting state indemnities, which can support the museums in order to increase the mobility degree of their own collections.

State indemnities can improve the problems related to the insufficiency of the financial resources necessary for the borrowing of exhibitions and art works, especially from abroad.

A very important role is played by the structuring of a national legislative policy to encourage a scheme of granting state indemnities, clearly defined and intensively promoted.

The state should define a set of best practice guides or codes, focused on the actions in the field of collections’ mobility, on methods of insurance or of stimulation of agreements based on reciprocal trust, and on the renouncement to certain insurance bonuses, in the relationship between the cultural institutions which are practicing the borrowings of works or of exhibitions.

EXHIBITIONS

A weak point in the system concerning the collections’ mobility in Romania is represented by the map of the temporary exhibitions’ routes, organized on short or long term, at a national level.

From the point of view of the value of the itinerated exhibitions, there isn’t, yet, an equal geographical distribution. Most of the valuable exhibitions, especially those which come from abroad, are concentrated in the capital, in Bucharest, a fact which may create cultural frustrations and discrepancies at a regional level, leading to a lack of unification of the national cultural level.

During the year 2005, over 90% of the exhibitions which were brought from abroad were opened or hosted by museums located in Bucharest.

The reasons are mainly financial, due to the fact that most of the provincial museums cannot cover the high costs which derive from organizing such exhibitions, especially in the case of those coming from European collections.

Another reason would be that many Romanian museums don’t fit within the standard exhibition conditions, due to the lack of exhibiting space, or to insufficiencies related to infrastructure.

157 museums are functioning within buildings which are considered historical monuments and many of them have problems related to the infrastructure and to improper spaces for depositing and exhibiting; therefore, the borrowings and interchanges of objects are suppressed.

There are also situations in which various museums that own special collections find themselves in a total isolation, with no visibility and disconnected from the collections’ mobility system.

  1. 2004-2005 STATISTICS

The documentation materials which constituted the basis for communicating information and statistics on the museums’ activities, the heritage owned by each museum and the contact, are coming from only two sources which are accredited at a national level: The National Institute for Statistics and the Institute for Cultural Memory (CIMEC).

In Romania there isn’t, yet, a strongly developed culture concerning the statistics and market researches in the field of cataloguing the movable and immovable heritage, including all the implied factors – cultural institutions which own cultural heritage, or which activate within buildings declared historical monuments with heritage value, cultural infrastructure, inventorying and classing of cultural movable goods, the situation regarding the preservation and restoration of cultural movable goods, legislation, computerizing of the databases which include the cataloguing of the heritage etc.

Therefore, there are cases when the information coming from these sources is not always complete or relevant for the reader or for those interested in the subject.

Some cultural institutions are delayed in providing the activity reports in the field of heritage, of cataloguing and classing of the objects or of the cultural movable goods, of the management regarding the improvement of the exhibiting and depositing spaces, of computerizing and digitizing the heritage etc.

Moreover, there is also an insufficient knowledge of the efficient methods concerning the communication and valorization of the image of the institutions and of the services they provide, at the level of the institutional management.

The latest data provided by the National Institute for Statistics from Romania in 2005 are in contradiction with the on-line „Guide of Museums and Collections” from the year 2005, elaborated and edited by the Institute for Cultural Memory (CIMEC), the institution in charge with the management of the databases concerning the computerized cataloguing and the circulation of the movable cultural goods.

Far from being a criticism to any of these institutions, the statistic discrepancies are illustrating the lack of communication at the inter-institutional level, especially regarding the convergence of some consensually established criteria, which would define what could be considered as museum unity or entity, and what could not.

Concerning the cataloguing, there may be different criteria applied by the two analysis and statistics institutions, and therefore appeared confusions and quantitative differences.

Consequently, if in the year 2005 there were recorded by CIMEC 766 active museum entities of public interest, for the year 2005 The National Institute for Statistics recorded the activity of 557 public museum entities, which altogether summed up an exhibiting surface of 9.981.000 sqm.

28 of these institutions are museums and public collections of national importance, 14 are of regional importance, 42 museums and public collections are of district-level importance, and 217 of local importance. The difference up to 557 is represented by the branches and sections of each category of museums and collections.

An explanation for these statistical differences would be the delay with which the museums provide for the central certified institutions all the necessary data in order to be included within the specialty catalogues.

Nevertheless, these statistics incompatibilities may bring second thoughts upon the certainty of the catalogues and reports, regarding the real number of the heritage pieces owned by these institutions and of the exhibitions and art works itinerated at the national and international level by the Romanian museums.

Therefore, the report cannot provide an exact index of the increase or, eventually, the decrease of the mobility of collections in Romania for the period 2004-2005.

STATISTIC DATA

- the number of movable cultural goods (museum pieces) on the 31st of December 2004 was of 16.496.000;

- the number of visitors of museums and public collections was of 10.446.000 persons, increasing with 3,3% in report with the precedent year, but much more under the level recorded by other European countries. It is important to specify that the number of visitors in the museums depends on the offer of active and valuable exhibition programs, but also on a strategy adapted to the visitor’s profile, depending on the activity field of each museum. The number of exhibitions which applied these above-mentioned criteria was very low, and the rule regarding the increase of the number of visitors directly proportional with the value of the exhibition was clearly confirmed. Therefore, the National Art Museum of Romania recorded, for the international exhibition of great success and impact „Shadows and Lights. Four Centuries of French Painting” a number of 61.000 visitors for the period 15th of July – 2nd of October 2005;

- the number of specialty stuff within museums and public collections, up to the 31st of December 2004, was of 4.519 persons, an insufficient number for beneficiating from an efficient national system at the level of institutional training and capacity, in order to organize temporary exhibitions in borrowing system, especially exhibitions which come from abroad;

- 784 experts in mobile cultural heritage registered until now on CIMEC on-line database;

- in the year 2004 there were organized 2.479 exhibitions – 682 permanent exhibitions, 1.711 temporary exhibitions, and 86 exhibitions abroad.

According to the statistics provided by the Institute for cultural Memory (CIMEC), in the report on heritage for 2005, it is known a maximum number of 12 exhibitions organized with objects or art works coming from abroad.

It must be mentioned the fact that this latest report doesn’t cover all the museums and public collections in Romania, but only a number of around 53 museum institutions.

Other statistic data taken from this cultural catalogue regarding the heritage for 2005 also indicate:

- 5 exhibitions itinerated abroad, focused on the valorizing of the national cultural heritage (in two of them the organizer was The Service for Historical Monuments of the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs and the Museums, Collections, Indemnities Department);

- 8 temporary exhibitions from abroad were hosted by museums from Bucharest;

- 4 temporary exhibitions from abroad were hosted by regional museums;

- 11 temporary exhibitions organized in Europe with works of art or collections from Romanian mobile cultural heritage;

- around 19 museums reported, for the year 2005, activities regarding inventorying, cataloguing, classing and digitizing of their heritage;

- one national training programme for the specialists in classing, cataloguing, preservation and valorizing the national cultural heritage (organizer The Center for Preparation and Training, Permanent Education and Management in the Field of Culture).

- around 14 museums reported, for the year 2005, activities focused on the improvement of the infrastructure.

  1. THE NATIONAL STRATEGY CONCERNING THE MANAGEMENT OF THE MOVABLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Lately, Romania is attempting to structure its cultural policy in order to increase the access to culture for as many citizens as possible, and one of the methods to accomplish this objective is valorizing the movable national cultural heritage.

Within this national scheme which would grant the development of the cultural life, the museums hold an important role in implementing these foreground activities, due to the fact that they are owners of cultural heritage.

The managers of Romanian museums begin to understand more and more the fact that the increase of the national and local collections’ mobility and the increase of the short or long term borrowings are leading towards the promotion of an integrated cultural policy and towards the knowledge and highlighting of the Romanian culture at a European level.

It is also necessary to support and organize a sustained campaign to promote the museums’ image, integrated within a larger policy of national branding; through culture, it is possible to create an identity as a country, which may bring cultural, tourist and economic benefits.

The signals come also from the recent openness towards the organizing as a national network of museums which will be in charge, among other priorities, with promoting and valorizing the movable cultural heritage and with integrating the museums and the institutions with museum value within the national tourist circuit.

In the national strategy concerning the management of the cultural movable heritage, the permanent communication between museums, or the communication of the museums with the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, through its specialized directions, services and departments, is also seen as a priority whose solving greatly influences the increase of the collections’ mobility.