The manager: Adelina Fileva
The job: Director
The company: Sofia City Art Gallery
In brief: Sofia City Art Gallery was founded in 1928 by the mayor of Sofia General Vladimir Vazov. It now features a range of exhibitions, mostly by Bulgarian artists past and present. Adelina Fileva has been its director since 2005. Much of her time is spent on public awareness of the gallery and seeking out funding and support. She manages a team of 14.
For some reason, people are often surprised at the interest in and appreciation of culture that manifests itself here in Bulgaria. Overflowing cinema salons for the rare screening of that 2005 South Korean masterpiece, hall 1 of NDK with its 2000 seats nearly sold out for a visiting dance troupe and – 3000 visitors a day to Sofia City Art Gallery’s two-month long exhibition Leonardo da Vinci – Scientist and Inventor.
“The good thing is that Bulgarians have a great interest in art,” says Adelina Fileva, director of Sofia City Art Gallery.
And the bad things? Well, those cannot be avoided either. But for now, let’s talk about what’s good.
The entire facility underwent renovation and internal reorganisation in 2006. Now, it operates more smoothly. This year, the heating and cooling system is to be upgraded and new lighting will be installed. (The gallery will be closed this summer to allow for the construction.) These may sound like superficial enhancements, but the truth is that art needs to be taken care of. Proper humidity and temperature are vital to a piece’s preservation; without proper lighting, a piece cannot be noted appropriately, all its facets cannot be highlighted.
The gallery, or as Fileva tends to call it, the museum, has a collection of about 8000 pieces of art, all stored on location, dating from 1888, the time of Bulgaria’s liberation from the Ottoman Empire, to present. Most of the earlier pieces are paintings and some graphics; sculptures come a little bit later.
[As a side note, shortly before she died in 1985, Bulgarian sculptor Vaska Emanouilova willed all her works to Sofia City Art Gallery (SCAG). In December 2006, after a 12-year story of property re-appropriation, with the help of Sofia municipality, they finally found permanent exhibition space in a small annex in Oborishte Park, near the restaurant Pri Fontana. So now, SCAG has a branch location, making art even more accessible to the public.]
Meeting the people
Still, there is more that could be done to alert people to the presence of accessible art in their everyday lives.
“Maybe we need to have more advertising,” Fileva told The Sofia Echo, “on the radio, on television, billboards. Real advertising is missing. There is nothing to meet people.” She goes on to explain that people are presented with offers and products everywhere they go – adverts for a new food product seen through the car window, flyers for new gadgets, radio spots for vacation destinations – why not art?
In Bulgaria, at least, this is still a new concept, though one might have noticed the billboards for the Da Vinci exhibition on major roads in the capital. Fileva points out that art and culture are a bit different than expendables, and need to be addressed in a different manner.
Word of mouth, or word in print, often proves best. So journalists visiting a show and writing it up, families taking their children, tour groups and special events play an important role. Also, to inform the municipality of goings-on, wants, ideas, to obtain its support is another must. “It’s not that hard, because when you find that the best way is to invite them (to the gallery), to show them, (you do it).
You have to know how to divide time, the methods of presenting the gallery, and once many people know it personally, then we can make a plan for the future. There’s no way to improve something if people don’t know.”
Finding the art
Luckily, Bulgaria has produced a number of very good art specialists who know their subject. This benefits the gallery not only for its artistic purposes, but also for bringing what it does to the public: “Specialists have to know what (a show) is about in order to bring it to the public,” Fileva says. “And there is also the other side, administration.”
One of the shows she particularly appreciates that the gallery has put on was called Sofia Sto Litsa celebrating 125 years since the founding of the city. In addition to the noteworthy exhibition of 350 images of Sofia by more than 100 artists throughout the ages of the city, she finds pleasure in the title of the show, a pun on itself: “stolitsa” means “capital (city)” in Bulgarian; “sto (100) litsa” means “100 faces”. And there you have it: the time-tested faces of the second-highest capital city in Europe.
Money for such presentations comes from donations, and from the municipality. Still, more funding is always needed. (The gallery does not charge an entrance fee.) Fileva says that in the years since Bulgaria has become a democracy, most pieces in SCAG’s collection have been donated, few purchased. “We need a subsidy to buy more from the new generations of authors. To have a very good collection, if you don’t buy pieces, you miss a whole period (of expression),” she explains.
The municipality now provides some funding for related projects, like publishing catalogues of exhibitions and advertising. Such catalogues, besides providing visual memories of shows past, serve as a means of publicising a place and also aid future curators when it comes to research and shows further down the road.
Fileva herself is one of these art specialists. She studied art history at the National Academy of Fine Arts, where education is “very serious, with very good professors”. One thing that has changed since she was a student is the opportunity for today’s youth, to travel, and as such, to see who they are and what they could become.
Says Fileva: “When you have contact with different artists in different places, you can evaluate yourself, who you are as an artist.” In addition, “with these contacts, people will find themselves less divided”.
To encourage and provide the chance to become known, Sofia City Art Gallery has something called Myasto za Sreshtane (Meeting Place), where young artists present their pieces in a private setting, and Fileva and her team select the best ones to be supported and shown at the gallery.
“It’s not just a pretty painting on the wall, but something thought out. It has to show a thought process,” she says. In general, it’s hard for young modern artists to get shown in large museums, in galleries, even in modern art museums. People are more attracted by the old masters – but the young also need to be shown to people.”
Addressing the problems
And not only young artists have challenges, but also Bulgarian artists in general. “It’s hard to show Bulgarian artists abroad, because they’re very unknown. People don’t know about them, so we need to create interest. Younger artists might be better known, because they communicate with artists abroad using technologies like e-mail. But for the older generation, they might only be known through museums. But that requires funding – for organisation, transport, curating, advertising, informational materials.”
She gives the hypothetical example of an exchange with the Tait in London. “I have to assure good conditions for their pieces. The gallery would have to assure the equivalent of the high-quality conditions that they have there.”
Things are slowly coming around, as seen through the improvements to the facility, the recently opened filial location and improved municipality financing.
This year’s city budget should allow for the hiring of permanent specialists for the new location, she hopes.
It’s hard, though, not with her employees, she specifies, but outside – not with the municipality, but with the business that has to be attracted. She has to convince the public at large, not only connoisseurs, that supporting a show can be a good thing, to make them realise the value of art.
Twice-yearly cocktail receptions are organised to show appreciation for donors, bringing together firms, people from state and local administration, artists, journalists, sponsors.
And there are other things that could be done as well.
“I want it to be a pleasant place for people to be calm, to appreciate art, for every person, according to his financial situation, to be able to take home a memory – not only expensive catalogues, but also postcards, T-shirts…,” she says.
Currently, the gallery is preparing a catalogue of its complete sculpture collection, and another one of its graphics collection. “We’d like something more like a coffee table book, something that would attract people when they see it elsewhere.”
Once resolved, she is ready to make it happen. “I’ve decided to improve the status of the museum, to have more publications, to bring people’s attention to what the museum really it. In time it will get crowded.”
Going along with this is her aim to make it more accessible and applicable to the public. “The museum depends on people and on society,” she says. “I really want to develop an educational programme for children and youth, because when they come to a gallery from their young years, they will make it theirs. They are the future visitors, donors, supporters.”
Remembering the future
Because Fileva recognises that the gallery, of which she has been the director since 2005, does not stop in the present. “Every museum must think of the future,” she says. And through the future, the past is seen and understood. She quotes a professor: “What we do today is already history,” and explains that we have to think of what we are doing right now, of what the consequences of our actions will be.
“If every day you do something little for collections, for galleries, you’re working for the future,” she says. “It requires patience. I’d like everything to happen quickly, but…”
Patience, and a lot of dedication. When asked how much she works, she laughs. “Six days a week, 10 hours a day. Sometimes seven days. We’re a small team – 15 people in all, including the security.”
She tries to balance work and personal time, but says that it is hard. “Societal work takes a lot of time. I’ve been trying to assure myself one day or rest. It’s not good for a director to be exhausted and irritable.”
Presenting Bulgarian art to the world has become her life.
While most shows at SCAG focus on products of this country, the gallery does have exchanges with international cultural institutions, like the Goethe-Institut, l’Institut francais, Instituto Italiano de Cultura, the British Council. Their international locations show Bulgarian art, and the gallery shows the reciprocal pieces, ranging from classics to modern. In general, when it’s from outside the country, it’s European, rarely American, Fileva says.
Bulgarian or not, a gallery is something national, not based on economic capabilities of its visitors, not influenced by such-and-such a political party. It’s for everyone to enjoy, and Adelina Fileva is working to assure this.
Sofia City Art Gallery is open Tues-Sat, 10am-6pm, and Sun, 11am-5pm. It is located at 1 Gen Gurko Str, tel: 987 21 81, next to Grand Hotel Sofia. [http://sghg.cult.bg]
Vaska Emanouilova Sculpture Gallery is open Tues-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 11am-5pm. It is located in Oborishte Park, on Yanko Sakuzov Boulevard, near the restaurant Pri Fontana, tel: 944 11 75.
A short history of Sofia City art gallery
Sofia City Art Gallery was founded on October 22 1928 by then-mayor of Sofia General Vladimir Vazov. It had three departments – museum, library and archive. A gallery of paintings and other works of art fell under the museum’s jurisdiction.
The following year, Kosta Vulev, the first curator of the municipal museum, began collecting paintings, drawings and sculptures, primarily by Sofia artists and which depicted the city and its people. He found worthy works from a wide variety of places, including a municipal building attic. The director of the National Archaeological Museum agreed to let him take some art for which there was no place in the state museum. Additional support came from King Boris III, who gave Vulev permission to exhibit items from the royal art collection. Thanks to Vulev’s efforts and the support of authorities on so many levels, the collection was off to a good start.
The original library and museum were housed in a building that no longer exists, near the corner of Graf Ignatiev and GS Rakovski streets. In 1941, the library, museum, archives and gallery moved to a building on Ploshtad Banski. There the art collection found home as the first permanent exhibition gallery in Bulgaria, under the name of Sofia City Library and Museum.
In 1948, part of its collection was donated to the new National Art Gallery. Sofia City Art Gallery as an independent institution was founded in 1952. In 1973, it took up residence at its current address of 1 Gurko Str – in a building that once housed the Sofia Casino. It officially opened in 1977.
