Moscow Crushes an Uprising, This Time an Artistic One (original) (raw)

Europe|Moscow Crushes an Uprising, This Time an Artistic One

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/europe/russia-perm-culture-art.html

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Perm Journal

People near the Boris Matrosov artwork “Happiness Is Just Around the Corner,” on the banks of the Kama River in the center of Perm.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

Aug. 24, 2016

PERM, Russia — Perm, a provincial Russian city on the western edge of Siberia, is defined these days not by what it is, but by what it was supposed to be by now and isn’t.

By now it should have had a new sleek opera theater, designed by the British architect David Chipperfield, a shining contemporary art museum in a refurbished landmark building and a gallery of celebrated local wooden statues — an imposing white cube standing over the wide expanse of the Kama River.

The central esplanade — proudly described by locals as longer than the National Mall in Washington — should have been full of avid visitors from around Russia and beyond, taking in theater on pop-up stages and progressive street art. But none of this has happened.

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Boris L. Milgram, who was fired as minister of culture in Perm, Russia. “We realized that we had this unique chance to make Perm into a place where people would want to live,” he said, “but there is always this fear in Russia that creative freedom makes people too difficult to control.”Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

In 2008, Perm became a laboratory for an audacious social and cultural experiment. Oleg A. Chirkunov, the regional governor at the time, decided to use art projects to try to propel the modernization of provincial life. An ambitious and forward-looking politician, Mr. Chirkunov invited Marat A. Guelman, Russia’s pre-eminent arts impresario and an occasional spin doctor for politicians, to direct the project.

“We destroyed this stereotype that there cannot be anything interesting in Russia beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg,” said Mr. Guelman, who has since left Russia for Montenegro. “Locals realized that their status had changed and began to demand more. When you have a contemporary art museum in town, people want clean roads, too.”

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