“Captain of Flagship in Korbakov’s House”

October 15, 2016

“The Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve is a flagship of museum affairs in the Vologda region. It has wonderful monuments and great prospects. And thirty years of work of its director are an example of active constructive efforts for all of us”, he said.

At present when they generally prefer festival trends in culture, the most important thing often drops off the art amateurs’ radar: constructive everyday efforts of culture that are usually meagerly financed and constantly shrink like La Peau de Chagrin of Honoré de Balzac. The Vologda Regional Picture Gallery has become the largest and most active multicultural complex for our region long ago. It gathers all local creative forces. Rapid “development” of tourism in bureaucratic papers resulted in a strange situation that could be hardly imaginable before: many residents of Vologda and other cities, towns and settlements of the Vologda region have never been to Kirillov and Ferapontovo! And though amateurs of art have visited Kirillov many times, they eagerly attended the meeting with Mikhail Sharomazov.

The organizers of the event - Vladimir Voropanov and film expert Tatiana Kanunova – intended to arrange the meeting as an art review – a museum worker in the changing world. The cultural hero reconsidered the given frames and organized his talk as a personal story of his introduction to art and museum. He began with his origin, the history of his family that had to face all difficulties and troubles that the Russians had survived in the 20th century. The ample narrative illustrated with old and new photographs and video recordings was interesting.

In fact, museum worker Mikhail Sharomazov guided the audience along all conflicts of our permanent period of change and amazed not only with the historicity of his approach to his own life. When you think over that great impression that the two-hour monologue of Mikhail Sharomazov has produced you understand that the museum worker with his special approach to everything that is happening in the world has presented an example of decent standing of the great Russian people at all drafts of our fractures and crossroads. Without pathos and didacticism, telling about his relatives and himself, he practically shared the very simple truth that was always hardly perceptible: to live and to work according to circumstances with total dedication. It sounds like it is the most saving way of life in Russia.

The second large block in the monologue of the director from Kirillov was the museum itself. Being the only federal museum in the Vologda region, it receives its visitors in a confident and innovative way changing usual forms of work, supplementing them with latest and curious things that can attract people to the museum and can make their visits a part of everyday life.

At the end of the meeting, Vladimir Voropanov told about the state approach to the cultural policy that the museum of Kirillov and its director conducted not only in Kirillov, but within the whole Vologda region. The Kirillo-Belozersky Museum-Reserve successfully forms a new cultural environment. This is the reason why art amateurs pose numerous questions to the management of the club, “When will we go to Kirillov again?”

Natalya Serova, art critic