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ARTICLE: Art and Culture in Western Siberia by Iona Ballantyne

Posted in: Art, Culture-Dec 17, 2012

When I decided to spend four months learning Russian in the Western Siberian city of Tyumen I had no idea what to expect in terms of art or culture. The Tyumen region produces the majority of Russia’s oil and gas meaning that the much of the city of Tyumen (the region’s administrative capital) is based around its ever growing energy industry. The University I have been studying and teaching English at is called the Tyumen State Oil and Gas University and has students from around the country and from overseas studying everything imaginable do with oil and gas. All around the city the energy industry has an enormous presence with huge buildings of the headquarters of large multi-national energy firms lining the main street. It seemed to me before I came that I was unlikely to find much culture here but four months here have taught me differently.

You only need to walk a little further down the main street when alongside the towering buildings of the oil companies will appear Tyumen’s grand 21^st century theatre complex as well as the more modest but still popular concert hall, the Tyumen Philharmonic. Since my arrival I have visited both regularly and been shocked by the wide variety of events I have found. There have been ballets, both modern and traditional plays and classical concerts galore. Also dotted along the main street are the various departments of the Academy of Culture, the University where students, unlike at the Oil and Gas University, study Art, Music, Drama, Dance, History of Art or Design. Now, having visited all of these departments along with the theatre and the concert hall I have noticed that the culture here that is appreciated is everything non-contemporary and classic. The Concert Hall was buzzing after the National Philharmonic Orchestra performed Tchaikovsky’s 4^th Symphony; there was a standing ovation and encore after encore. At the Academy of Culture painting is taught as a strict discipline of realism, the main subject matter being nudes and still lives and a strong emphasis on going to the local gallery to copy works of Russian masters.

This local Art Gallery is officially named The Tyumen Region Museum of Fine Arts. Founded in 1956 it is a large Soviet building with a surprisingly large collection of works displayed from the local region, the rest of Russia and even a few from abroad. Today despite some financial difficulties the gallery manages to put on several interesting temporary exhibitions a year often in cooperation with other nearby galleries. At the moment the temporary exhibition is called ‘Russian Abstraction’, to me a very broad title but after seeing the art work at the Academy of Culture I understand that anything abstract may seem strange to some here. The gallery has managed borrow a Kandinsky and a Malevich painting which are displayed one at the beginning and one at end of the exhibition. In between are abstract works by local artists and a few from Moscow and St Petersburg from the end of the 20^th century. It was a strange exhibition with the juxtaposition of the early 20^th century, revered Kandinsky and Malevich pieces with local works from the last few years not necessarily of the highest quality but I suppose it shows where their inspiration has come from. In general the gallery has a lot to offer and it’s great that they are able to maintain a large building and be ambitious with their exhibitions.

Wanting to find out more I managed to interview Director of The Tyumen Museum of Fine Arts, Oksana Kostkova:

Iona Ballantyne: I am interested in how popular art and culture are in the city of Tyumen. How many and what kind of people visit the museum in general?

Oksana Kostkova: Mainly our visitors are teachers from the different Art institutions around the city. I myself am also a teacher of Architecture and Design and bring my students here all the time. Groups from the Academy of Culture come here for their lessons every day. Then we also have special programs for schools and nursery to help their development with special child-friendly techniques. We are used to the fact that it’s normally these same people that come to the museum. As in any town people spend time here because of their interest in art and in order to educate themselves. I can’t tell you the exact number of visitors we get each month but of course this is as you know regulated by the Siberian weather. Not many people come to visit when it’s very cold outside and also in the summer holidays the people of Tyumen tend to go out of town to the countryside and the only visitors then are tourists.

IB: How important do you think the gallery is to the people of Tyumen?

OK: Generally you have to understand that Tyumen was originally formed as a city of merchants, industry and trade. Therefore such a museum wasn’t needed so just didn’t exist until the nineteen fifties. This town now has a completely unique museum so we are trying to get through to the locals more and more.

IB: Tell me about your temporary exhibitions and your permanent collection.

You will be interested that we have a very strong collection of art from the West; we have works from Great Britain, Germany and Holland and even a few from Spain, France, Austria and Italy. As for the rest of our collection, we have a great variety of classical painting and a large collection of local art from the Tyumen region. There isn’t space for us to display everything we have so we have organised the collection in this way; half of the ground floor is devoted to our permanent display of classical art and the other half to temporary exhibitions, the first floor is entirely taken up by exhibitions which we change every month, and on the second floor we have regional collections such as the famous Tobolsk carved bone crafts and also a small display from Northern Siberia. Our regional displays have no specific concept in their layout but are simply an opportunity for people to view these pieces as well as possible.

In terms of our temporary exhibitions, we have ties with other galleries. In our current exhibition, ‘Abstraction’, the most famous works have been borrowed from other towns and in the same way we also let other museums and galleries display some of our works. We put on exhibitions on behalf of our town’s administration and officials who feed our budget. We have been working with officials and discussing possibilities of expanding and buying new collections. However, right now this is too expensive so we have been left with the task of working with what we have to create various themed exhibitions and interesting programs. Something else interesting is ‘The Night of Museums’, a nice event we participate in each year at which students are pleased to have the opportunity to visit the museum at night free of charge. Overall we plan for the museum to expand and I am certain it will.

IB: I heard from some local people that the museum may be moving to a more modern building, is this true?

OK: Speaking truthfully, we don’t have the authority to comment. This more modern building you speak of was built as a regional museum complex but we have slightly different requirements. However, the museum has never been financially independent and therefore we’ll just have to agree to what is decided. In any case our task is just to preserve what we have and therefore we can’t say anything for or against the idea.

IB: So how much support does the museum receive from local government?

OK: We are a regional institution under local control so that is how we are funded to keep going. However, at the same time we have the obligation to make some money because storing these works and maintaining a museum is always going to be very expensive.

IB: Thank you so much for speaking to me. I have to say that before I came to Tyumen I had no idea the town had so many cultural things to do. I, like many, only knew the town because of its oil and gas industry.

OK: It is good that now you have spent time here you haven’t taken the opinion of the 17^th century Europeans who came here and wrote articles about how Russians just spend their time riding around on bears in our harsh climate! Now people are free to find out more about a place because generally borders between countries are becoming more blurred. However, bare in mind when you say that this is a cultural city that while you have been in Tyumen you have been talking only with people from certain circles. As is the case everywhere there are of course also people that are not at all interested in culture.

From the interview it seemed to me that oil rich Tyumen doesn’t give its gallery as much support as it should and perhaps the gallery is not as popular as I had thought. Perhaps Oksana Kostkova was right when she said that my view of Tyumen as a pretty cultural city may have been skewed by the fact I am a foreigner only mixing in ‘certain circles’. However, an experience I had while teaching English at the Oil and Gas University gave me the opposite impression. When I asked for a class’s thoughts on their favourite festival during the year they all agreed it was this ‘Night of Museums’, when museums are open all night and are free to get into. It struck me that at this Siberian Oil and Gas University the students were more excited about visiting their local museums than some Arts students I know in London. Yes, culture in Tyumen still has a long way to go in terms of developing to the standards in Moscow and St Petersburg. Here there is more emphasis on maintaining the traditional and classical in terms of both art and music, rather than pushing for new experiments in creativity. However, in a city which has developed through the oil and gas industries there is still a place for culture of all sorts for those who are willing to explore.

Iona is studying for a BA in Russian at the University of Bristol. As a third-year student, she is currently studying in the Western Siberian city of Tyumen and in February will be moving to St Petersburg to volunteer at The State Hermitage Museum. Iona also has a keen interest in Art having completed an Art Foundation at Chelsea College, Pimlico.

http://www.museum.ru/M1493

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