The ongoing economic downturn is having an impact on the culture and entertainment industry, with local theaters, museums and galleries adjusting their plans in response to possible problems with funding and uncertainty about the exchange rate.
Vasily Tsereteli, executive director of the city-funded Moscow Museum of Modern Art, said some of its projects had been cancelled or postponed. "The Moscow government promised to keep the funding at the previously agreed levels, but that is not enough, when it comes to major projects that involve a lot of installations, especially by international artists," he said.
According to Tsereteli, late last year the museum had to cancel its plans to run the Art Hysteria exhibition in cooperation with MoMA New York and instead organized an exhibition of video installations by Andy Warhol, while also discarding plans for a few other international projects. "But so far, the funding has been coming in as expected, and we don't see any radical changes to our program," he added.
But while big state- or city-run museums depend on their sponsors and ticket sales for revenues, smaller private art galleries have to sell art to stay in business, and that could be a problem for some of them, as collectors cut down on purchasing paintings and sculptures. "The crisis has certainly affected us," said Yelena Selina, the owner and general director of the XL gallery. "Sales have slowed."
Last summer, paintings by popular artists with a price tag of around 20,000 euros sold very quickly and collectors were practically lining up for them, but these days, such paintings sell much more slowly, Selina said. "Now, smaller and cheaper items, like graphic works as opposed to paintings, sell better," she said. "Still, as we never tried to drive up our prices too much, our situation is not dismal."
Although there may be some truth to the idea that in times of crisis people tend to turn to entertainment as a means of diversion, most contemporary theatrical performances are so expensive that ticket sales could hardly pay for them, especially when a theater's seating capacity is limited.
"We do generate some revenues from ticket sales, and our performances are normally sold out," said a spokesperson for the Bolshoi Theater. "But with the main building still under renovation, we have fewer than 900 seats at our New Stage."
Earlier this year, the Bolshoi announced that it was canceling the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Othello," which was previously scheduled for late April 2009 and would have become the theater's most expensive performance in several decades, with a budget of more than 2 million euros. The theater decided that staging such an expensive performance would be unreasonable in the current economic climate.
But although the theater's budget for this year was curtailed by 15 percent, the Bolshoi's other four premieres scheduled for this year are expected go ahead, at least, this is where things are now, the spokesperson confirmed. "The sponsors have promised to keep their obligations but have not yet provided any money," she said. "At this point, we are ready to go ahead with our premieres, but it is not clear what the situation will be, say, by the summer."
The management of Moscow's other major theaters share this uncertainty about the future: even if the promised funding arrives, the recent devaluation of the ruble against the dollar and the euro is set to drive up production costs.
"We are especially sensitive to [the devaluation of the ruble] because we use a lot of imported materials," said Vladimir Urin, general director of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko musical theater.
According to Urin, the theater will soon have to make decisions about how to operate in a situation when cutting costs is unavoidable. "We have to decide what to do," he said. "Shall we stop producing new plays? Or shall we make fewer of them? But people wouldn't want to watch the same performances all over again. So, we're looking for ways to keep our schedule, because if we don't produce new plays, we'll have problems keeping our soloists, as Western theaters would gladly offer contracts to them."
The ruble's weakening has also had a negative impact on performances of touring Western artists. Russian promoters say that there will definitely be fewer shows by top-level international acts this year, compared with 2008, especially those at venues with larger capacities.
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