MUSEUM IN THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Museums all over the world are experiencing a period of renaissance due to the expansion of technical opportunities, and therefore, fundamentally new programmes to work with visitors and cooperate with each other. Azerbaijan is also actively using world experience in this sphere. The first sign in this direction is a major joint project by the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan and the Russian Museum.

Without leaving Baku

"This year was marked with a whole string of interesting projects for our centre - both exhibitions and education projects," says the director of the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan, Liana Vazirova. "But the most important project is one relating to innovation technologies. The conference of museum workers held in St Petersburg in the first half of this year was a turning point in this issue. I made a report at the conference on the role of Azerbaijani museums in forming a creative taste for children and teenagers. I spoke about educational museum projects that have been launched in our country. At the same time, exchange of experience with our foreign counterparts showed that there are numerous new opportunities in this direction - "bringing museums closer" to the growing generation. We have to move on to a new level - the next stage in the development of the museum business - and to place this business on a super-modern basis."

One of the cornerstones in this direction was laid this year by a joint project between the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan and the Russian Museum of St Petersburg called "Russian Museum - Virtual Branch". Its basis is the establishment in Azerbaijan, or to be more precise in the republic's Museum Centre, of an information-educational centre. The project is overseen and financed by UNESCO and should start in the first ten days of January next year.

Now the Museum Centre is completing the process of installing the equipment of the "virtual branch". It will be equipped with a multimedia cinema which will allow viewers to take virtual strolls in all palaces of the Russian Museum complex and to see its exhibits (all in all, there are more than 400,000 exhibits of all types and styles). At the same time, various programmes will make it possible not just to visit St Petersburg palaces, but also to see their reconstruction options which take viewers to various epochs and allow them to be present, though virtually, but in a real time mode, at the opening of exhibitions in any branch of the Russian Museum. All this is absolutely free for viewers who will be able to visit Russia's northern capital without leaving Baku.

Integration into space

The semantic "cement" for cooperation in the sphere of multimedia museum innovations are programmes designed for the growing generation. The project "Russian Museum - Virtual Branch" provides for special programmes for pre-school children, school children and students. They have been drawn up by employees of this museum and are based on programmes of the youth educational centre of the State Hermitage. This centre, which was founded eight years ago, is a new museum area where unique educational and cultural programmes are being created for Russian and foreign youth. Its programmes cover literally all spheres of importance to the modern museum business. Round table discussions, conferences and symposiums on modern arts, cinema, arts market and media art, master classes for specialists and the wider audience are held there. All this will be presented in the joint project as well, so our young people will also be able to join in to discuss all important problems of modern arts and museum business. This is how the new stage in the integration of modern museum into a single world cultural-information area is being implemented.

As is known, the language of arts is international, but still when you familiarize yourself with the essence of the virtual museum project, there is a reasonable question - will the language barrier become an obstacle to young people in establishing such links? Liana Vazirova said the following on that score: "We have been working on this issue. Soon we will start cooperating with the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan to translate these programme from Russian and English into Azerbaijani. But the most important thing is that we have started preparing for a return step - creating a virtual branch of our Museum Centre in Russia. This part of the project will involve the best arts specialists of Azerbaijan, web designers and other specialists.

No matter how important this project is, it is far from being the only project that is being implemented by employees of the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan right now. Another project of this centre, which involves Norwegians as well, is also widely known. It must be said that Norway is very actively cooperating with Azerbaijan in the sphere of culture and arts. This project was drawn up by the museum section of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism. We are talking about cooperation between the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan and the Museum of Archaeology in Stavanger in Norway. Most of the expenses on the project are covered by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and Statoil. In essence, this is an educational project as well. But it is designed not for a young audience like the one we spoke about earlier, but for experienced museum staff as it is aimed at increasing their qualification and exchanging experience. It started recently and will last till next spring.

This project is designed for three stages - seminars in Baku, Oslo and a final meeting. The main subjects of discussion will be management of museum collections, ethical practices in museums, as well as the role and duties of museums before their audience. But all this is just a theory. In practice this will look like communication with the audience (holding all sorts of exhibitions, organizing museum cafes and museum shops) and exchange of experience in the sphere of preserving exhibition halls and equipment. As a sphere of activity, preservation of exhibits is very important in this stage of developing the museum business all over the world, and four of the 15 people who will represent our country in this project specialize in preserving exhibits.

Thus, these two major joint projects - with Russia and Norway - cover both sides of the problem of the interactive development of modern museum. This includes both working with the audience and increasing the qualification of museum staff. In any case, participation in such large-scale projects does not reduce the level of pressure on the centre in its daily work. In the last month of this year, the Museum Centre will host two international exhibition projects. The first one will be the traditional festival of modern arts Aluminium. And then, the central exhibition of this festival will be held in the gallery of the Museum Centre within the framework of the Rostropovich festival.