"Culture itself cannot be taken for granted"
Slovenia Times: Why is Slovene contemporary history particular interesting for you? As director of the National Museum of Contemporary History, there is probably a little bit more than the average interest for history behind it.
Kaja Širok: The first thing that happens is, that you become a historian, either more interested in stories or in history itself. I wrote my bachelor thesis about Italian history in medieval times, so I always thought I will be dealing more with this issue. But when I came back home to Nova Gorica, I changed my mind...the life with the border always had a strong influence on my, also in terms of how I perceived life around me. When we entered the EU, I saw that the border was disappearing. I grew up with the stories of my grand-mother, when the border was put up in 1947 and around 2002 there were a lot of projects about the Slovenian-Italian border in which I also took part. Later I did some research on Serbian migrants who came to Nova Gorica in the 60s and 70s, and were all of a sudden foreigners when Yugoslavia fell apart. That's what got me really interested in Slovene contemporary history, also when I discovered the methodology of oral history. It was completely new for me, that I can do my research just by listening to people and to their stories.
Let's talk about the museums in general. In fact you have all the information, all the knowledge on the internet, on webpages like Wikipedia. What's the magic, that makes people still wanting to visit museums?
At first place, there is the desire to learn...and to see! But this is an old-fashioned way to look at it. In museums, it is more about seeing objects, and then you get interested and read or hear the story about it. But basically people go to museum, because they want to learn more about a certain topic.
But when talking about learning: Children learn in school to go on the internet to get information about history, physics, chemistry etc.
Yes, because it is the easiest way to do it! I am still working on the faculty and the students there are using Wikipedia as a source in their papers. You cannot use Wikipedia as a source! Twenty, thirty years ago, you maybe had an encyclopaedia at home, with the most important things you should know. Now you just check on the internet for the basics and then do further research with books, but even they are for the most part available online because of the digitalisation.
So why then go to the museum?
Talking about Slovenia now, there is this strange situation, that people here take the museums and exhibitions for granted, it is nothing special. But when visiting Paris or London, they are visiting a few museums for sure, because they don't want to miss anything. Slovenian museums don't have the same worth in their eyes, because they are always there. On the other hand we also have this big exhibitions, also coming from abroad or from people who not working in the cultural sector like the Leonardo da Vinci or the Tito exhibition. And people pay a quite high entry fee, around 10 euros to see these exhibits. So what does this mean? That these big, commercial exhibitions are better? Or are there a lot of visitors because the exhibits are only for a short timespan? Or because it is cool to go there and a lot of people visit it? I don't know. But I can also see this trend in public museums: people visit the exhibitions only on special days, for example on the museum summer night. Because everybody is there and it's some kind of event! I think that museums should evoke emotions, they should attract and they should educate. When I go for instance with my children, I need something that amuses them. But if I go with my grandmother, I need a lot of chairs. So as a museum, you have to be here for everyone and you have to serve everybody's needs, this is very difficult sometimes.
Since youngsters are not the typical museum visitors, apart from school excursions: What could attract more young people to museums, what is it that a museum has to offer them?
Besides immigrants and people with special needs, youngsters are the most important groups when we are developing our museum agenda. Yyoung people get pushed into museums to fulfill history lessons. And they will only come back to the museum if it is adapted to their needs. Two years ago, we had this exhibition about the history of computers, which especially young people really liked. Because it is something they are confronted with every day! It is important for them to see, that we care what they have to say about certain topics. We have to establish connections for them also to issues like World War I and II, or the period of socialism, in order to tell a story that also concerns the young and make them a part of the exhibition activities.
Your museum is participating in a European project called "Museums exhibiting Europe", an international cooperation of artists, curators, museums and architects. What's the major aim of the project?
It should open museums and the objects they have on a broader scale. For example national museums, they are known for showing an exclusive and dominant historical narrative on what happened to their nation. With the EMEE project, we are trying to open the exhibitions also to other visitors, to give the objects more than one meaning. Basically the project is here to open the museum to all kinds of visitors and to make it more participatory.
Back to Slovenia: which grade would you give the cultural landscape in terms of quality, activities and accessibility?
I think that the Slovenian museums try really hard to remain active and full of activity, also when they don't have enough money to survive. The national museums are doing great things, for example MAO, the Museum for Architecture and Design, they are doing amazing things. So I guess, I would give them a high grade. There is also some change going on concerning the cultural programmes, those are developed now more and more by young people, who finish their studies and do not find a job. They are now working on different cultural projects, most of them small and local projects. And they are trying to connect themselves with similar projects abroad.
You mentioned the shortage of money in the public cultural sector. How do Slovenia's cultural institutions deal with this increasing lack of money? Is it still possible to maintain this high standard with less money?
No, it is not about the standard that we need to preserve. We need to preserve the idea that culture is accessible to everyone, as well as the quality of the exhibitions. And because we don't get enough money to do so, we have to find new sources, not only financial ones. We have to keep in mind that in Slovenia, there is no tradition of fundraising, no tradition of donating money to museums to increase their cultural productivity. And there is also no tradition of working for free in the museum, for example people who already retired or young people could have their own programmes in the museum. Why not? The main problem for me is: how to preserve the jobs in the museum. I also try to open job opportunities for youngsters who want to work in the museum, especially on the European projects. Actually, I am much more concerned about what happens to people under thirty, because they finish university and don't have any job opportunity.
What kind of sources do you take into account when talking about new financial sources for museums if the cannot rely on state money anymore?
Mainly donations, fund raising, maybe also doing research and putting up exhibitions for firms, as well as more workshops and activities in the museum, there are loads of possible ways, but no one secures the needed money for the many years to come.
What is your opinion on the privatization of culture? We were talking about these big exhibits, financed by investors and orientated towards making profit, for example the Tito exhibition in Ljubljana this year.
I was kind of disappointed of this exhibition. It promised a lot with the name of Tito on it and in the end did not provide any information about Tito as a dictator, as a lover, as a happy or as a sad person. It was just full of huge pictures, without a clear connection to Tito's history. To say in another way: there are some exhibitions from outside, which are really good and you want to absolutely see them. But at the same time, most of them are lacking a good curator.
When thinking about the increasing shortage of state money given for culture and the private investors taking over this work, is it even possible that the cultural sector works profitable?
No, it is not. What does profitable even mean? When having in mind that the greatest achievements of mankind are writing, reading and talking, they are not connected to profit, but more to art. I don't want to see it from the perspective that houses of culture need to be profitable, but that we as a society have to give more to culture. And that culture itself cannot be taken for granted.
