5th Magistralinaja ul, 5

123007, Moscow, Russia

tel/fax +7 (095) 940 0284

e-mail: LKU@ITAR-TASS.COM

Lavrushinsky Lane, 10

109017, Moscow, Russia

tel: +7 (095) 953 3509

fax: +7 (095) 953 1051

E-mail: intelart@aha.ru

WWW: www.tretyakov.ru (under construction)

The State Tretyakov Gallery is the leading museum of Russian art, it is actually a chain of art museums in Moscow. The Gallery was one of the first museums in Russia where computers were used more then 10 years ago. On the first stage of computerisation the data bases were filled with catalogue descriptions of museum items - collections of old and modern Russian painting, drawing, graphics and sculpture. All the computers were gathered in the information department of the Gallery, collection keepers and scientists practically did not use the data bases.

Now the Gallery started the second stage of computerisation. On this stage the Centre of Informatization in the Sphere of Culture (Centre PIC) of the Ministry of Culture of Russia works together with the Department of information systems and technologies of the State Tretyakov Gallery. IBM Pentium computers are installed in all the scientific departments of the museum. There is a net of 4 computers in the Registration department. A specially designed for the Gallery data-base with images is used, The nearest plans are to link computers, situated in different buildings of the Gallery, in a local net.

Information system for museum visitors is designed and soon will be installed in the Gallery halls. There is a growing bank of polygraphic slides, which includes 1500 digital images now.

The Gallery took part in designing multimedia CD-ROM "From the life of Christ" (after the cycle of paintings by Polenov). Last year multimedia CD-ROM "The Golden Century of the Russian Culture" (the first quarter of XIX century) was designed by the Gallery specialists with sponsorship from AT&T. A series of CD-ROM's on the Gallery collections is planned.

In the nearest future the State Tretyakov Gallery is planning to install a WWW-server. The draft WWW-site is designed. The history of the Gallery, temporary exhibitions, exposures, information for visitors are included. The Gallery WWW-site will not be still, there are points of growth, so virtual visitors will come back to it again and again..

It is interesting that the large-scale reconstruction of the Gallery coincided in time with momentous changes in Russian life. The exposition in Lavrushinsky Lane was opened on 5 April, 1995 and thousands of visitors are now able once more to admire the works of their favourite masters in the renovated halls.

The State Tretyakov Gallery is the leading museum of Russian art, it is actually a chain of art museums in Moscow. The Gallery was one of the first museums in Russia where computers were used more then 10 years ago. On the first stage of computerisation the data bases were filled by the information department staff with catalogue descriptions of museum items - collections of old and modern Russian painting, drawing, graphics and sculpture. At this stage the data-bases contained about 30,000 descriptions of museum items and 3,000 images, mostly of the old Russian icons. Image files were not connected with item descriptions. All the computers were gathered in the information department of the Gallery, collection keepers and scientists practically did not use the data-bases. The data-bases were not connected with each other and with the Registration Department. The automated system used DOS platform. As the data were imputed by operators there were a lot of mistakes and museum specialists distrusted the data.

Now the Gallery started the second stage of computerisation. At this stage the Centre of Informatization in the Sphere of Culture (Centre PIC) of the Ministry of Culture of Russia works together with the Department of information systems and technologies of the State Tretyakov Gallery. IBM Pentium computers are installed in all the scientific departments of the museum. There is a net of 4 computers in the Registration department. A specially designed for the Gallery data-base with images is used. This is a Complex Automated Museum Information System based on a core system CAMIS 2.6 (designed by Alt-Soft, Saint-Petersburg). It is considered to be the best designed in Russia, easy to use, flexible collection management package for Windows.

All museum departments are fully integrated into one system. Any type of museum can use it to manage any type of collection no matter its size. All aspects of collection management are covered - including registration of incoming museum items, moving of museum items, imaging, provenance, location control, condition, conservation and restoration, exhibiting and complete querying and reporting including full catalogue of collection.

Incoming objects are tracked from the time they enter the museum "on exam" through their acquisition. Museum objects data-bases with images are accompanied by donors, borrowers and lenders data-bases, authors data-base, exhibitions data-base, bibliography data-base where user can put in pages and annotation, connected with the museum item. User-defined reference pop-ups provide fast and accurate data entry.

Image files can be stored on hard disk and/or CD-ROM in BMP, PCX or JPEG formats, the State Tretyakov Gallery uses JPEG. They are automatically linked to the appropriate collection records. Several image files including general views recto and verso, author's signature and other fragments, conservation details may be linked to an item. The image then may be browsed on the monitor and printed on any report: lists of museum items, inventory cards, catalogues etc.

Full search on any text field in the record, on reference fields, on authors, exhibitions or bibliography data-bases, on provenance, dates, sizes, location etc. is rather quick. Results appear in seconds and may be viewed onscreen and browsed before selecting the desired records or generating the report.

All needed documents may be inputted using fill-in-the-blanks technology, lists of museum objects may be linked to them from the data-base and then corrected before printing using text-editor. The feature allowing to create and save object packages for future use or to link an object package from one document to another makes creation of documents easy and fast. Client-server variant is under development.

The standard variant of CAMIS was adopted to the needs of the Gallery, new functions specific for the Gallery were added. All data from the old data-bases were converted and corrected by museum specialists.

The State Tretyakov Gallery data-base contains 16,000 descriptions of museums items and 4000 images by now and it constantly grows. The nearest plans are to link computers, situated in different buildings of the Gallery, in a local net.

A very important stage of introduction of the new automated system into departments of the Gallery was the training of the personnel. A large part of the staff, mostly aged world-known specialists in Russian Art were computer illiterate and some of them never used a typewriter. So the main problem was psychological.

Training of the Gallery personnel was the responsibility of the Centre PIC specialists. A special training programme was designed. It was based on solving everyday problems of museum keepers and scientists with the help of computer system, and the lessons were organised at the working places. Now 65 museum specialists use automated museum system and WORD text processor in everyday work, and some of them started from studying how to use mouse.

The installation of modern computers with easy-in-use automated system at the Gallery departments and training courses for the personnel prepared the next step in the Gallery computerisation programme.

In 1998 the Gallery started the project "The State Tretyakov Gallery in INTERNET" with the sponsorship of assistance foundation "Open Society Institute" (Soros fund). "Open Society Institute" finances communications, hardware, and system software. The main idea of the project is to organise a computer class with open access to INTERNET for the Gallery staff. In future the net must bring world information resources to the personal computers of museum specialists.

When choosing system software for INTERNET server and working stations in computer class it was decided to use software familiar to the Gallery staff so that museum specialists could use it practically without any additional training. As the majority of computers in the Gallery departments are IBM PC compatibles working under Microsoft systems such as Windows 3.xx, Windows 95, Windows NT it was decided to install Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 with Microsoft Internet Information Server 3.0 (IIS) and Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 for INTERNET access.

The other part of the project is to present the Gallery in INTERNET.

Web pages are designed by the Information Systems and Technologies Department of the Gallery with the help of all scientific departments of the museum after thorough studying of the sites of other museums - the State Hermitage and other sites of Russian museums, Louvre, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art etc.

The main menu contains the following items:

• History of the Gallery
• News
• Information for the visitors
• Exposition
• Educational programme
• Scientific works

The History section tells about Pavel Tretyakov, the foundation and development of the Gallery, reminiscences of contemporaries about Tretyakov, his methods of work with artists, the photos of the Gallery exposition in early years, the development of the Gallery halls from the personal apartments to museum complex.

The News section announces the nearest events in the Gallery and on the Gallery server.

Information for the visitors keeps the reference information - addresses of the Gallery expositions, working hours, cost of tickets etc.

Educational section brings information for teachers - lectures, educational programmes, dedication material.

The Gallery Shop contains the list of the Gallery editions - albums, catalogues, guides, post-cards, posters, compact-discs, video, CD-ROM's etc. In future it is planned to include fragments from video, audio and multimedia products.

Exposition is sure to be the main part of the site. It is divided into several sections:

• Masterpieces of the collection
• Exhibitions
• Guide
• Panoramas
• Image bank

The section "Masterpieces of the collection" demonstrates the well known and easily recognisable paintings. "Exhibitions" will keep temporary exhibitions of the Gallery so that virtual visitors could plan real visit to the Gallery. "Guide" shows floor layout, the plans of exhibition halls and descriptions of the halls with several paintings. "Panoramas" shows circle panoramas of some halls. "Image bank" is an index of artists, schools and trends.

The Gallery WWW-site will not be still, there are points of growth, so virtual visitors will come back to it many times.

The authors of the WWW-site believe that this project will help to bring the treasures of the Gallery nearer to people; and this was the main idea of Pavel Tretyakov when he presented his collection to the city of Moscow: "For me, a true and ardent lover of painting, there can be no finer wish than to found a universally accessible repository of the fine arts, which will benefit many and give pleasure to all" - wrote the collector in 1860.

Some years ago the Gallery took part in designing multimedia CD-ROM "From the life of Christ" (after the cycle of paintings by Polenov). It was the first multimedia project on the Gallery collections.

Last year multimedia CD-ROM "The Golden Century of the Russian Culture" (the first quarter of XIX century) was designed by the Gallery specialists with sponsorship from AT&T. This disc is proclaimed to be the first in the series "The History of Russian Art for children". It contains 220 biographies of writers, artists, musicians, about 600 images, 70 publications, chronological table (1799 - 1838), 30 musical fragments, 12 sounding poems. Well organised hypertext makes navigation easy and full of sense. Children like the quiz: when they answer the questions correctly, they are promoted according to the table of ranks. As the edition was sponsored the print-run is spread free at Moscow and Saint-Petersburg schools.

As this non-commercial electronic edition with limited budget was highly estimated at Spring and Autumn Multimedia Festivals, where large multimedia publishing houses exhibited their commercial products, this year it was decided to improve it and produce a new version of the CD-ROM with commercial perspectives.

The second version will include high resolution true colour images, animation, hypertext, better sound, possibility of printing out texts and images, possibility of saving results of the quiz for every user. Navigation and design of some sections will be improved, bibliography will be added as the edition is a sort of encyclopaedia.

The original software of the edition is designed by the programmers of the Information Systems and Technologies Department of the Gallery on the base of Microsoft Visual C++ and DirectX.

It was decided to design the second version of multimedia CD-ROM using high technological level of the staff of Information Systems and Technologies Department of the Gallery in spite of the fact that several large Russian and foreign commercial multimedia publishers proposed to produce CD-ROM's based on the Gallery collections. The reason of such a decision lies in the fact that commercial firms consider the Gallery only as a source of images and propose royalty less than 10% for the right of electronic publishing of the collection.

The State Tretyakov Gallery plans to publish a series of multimedia CD-ROM's using its own technological potential.

Nadezda Brakker is the leading specialist of Centre PIC, graduate of the Philological Faculty of the Moscow University and post-graduate of All-Union Scientific and Research Institute of Information. She works over software design, installation of museum information systems and teaching museum personnel from 1980. From 1994 she is active in multimedia CD-ROM project on Kunsthalle collection, in 1995 - 1996 - in multimedia CD-ROM "Encyclopaedia of 500 masters of art". From 1996 she leads a project of installation of database for archiving and retrieval information with images in Russian museums. Her current interests center around the use of visual arts and networks in museums.

Leonid Kujbyshev was graduated from the Moscow Institute of Radio-electronics and worked over design and installation of automated documentation systems in tourist business. From 1989 he was a chief of software department of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and then, from 1992, is the vice-director of Centre PIC. Leonid is a member of the Russian branch of ICOMOS and a member of the Russian branch of CIDOC. . He is one of the founders of the Union of multimedia publishers and is now interested mostly in CD-ROM publishing, on-line systems (WWW), the problems of "piracy", intellectual property and legislation in the sphere of electronic imaging.

Constantine Serov was graduated from the Moscow High Technical School after N.E.Bauman, works in the State Tretyakov Gallery from 1989. Constantine Serov is the chief of Information Systems and Technologies Department of the Gallery and is responsible for hardware and software, new information technologies in the Gallery, the bank of electronic images, designing of multimedia.

Sergei Belov was graduated from the Moscow High Technical School after N.E.Bauman, works in the State Tretyakov Gallery from 1994. Sergei Belov is the deputy chief of Information Systems and Technologies Department of the Gallery and is the head of the INTERNET project and the multimedia CD-ROM project of the Gallery.

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