‘Come to my museum, adventures are waiting for you!’ This is the invitation of cultural expert Todor Petev who is devoted to the cause of Bulgarian museums. He has graduated cultural sciences in the USA and has worked across different museums there for quite some years – such as the Metropolitan and the ones with the Princeton and Harvard universities. After his return to Bulgaria Mr. Petev has always tried to contribute the most to the development of museums here. He has created his own foundation, named My Museum which tries to find partners among the major and small institutions of that kind in this country. According to him, the time has come to support museum experts, so that the latter can implement the social and educational function of museums. The idea of the foundation is Bulgarian museums to be viewed as an institution which might join the educational process in a modern and adequate manner. How can that become reality? Mr. Petev gives us examples:

“The foundation’s mission is in its name: My Museum – the museum where everybody can find something interesting, responding to any personality. We would really like people to feel museums as their own. What can a museum do, in order for any visitor to be able to identify with it, with the collection and the messages that it carries? The museum can offer options for artistic, social experiences of empathy and that is why we say ‘my museum’.”

The circle of Todor Petev has till now cooperated with the Regional History Museum in Plovdiv and another four in Sofia. A program has been held for a few years now on their initiative, called Family Museum Saturdays, covering four Sofia-based museums with huge collections.

“The program was really well accepted at the National Polytechnic Museum in Sofia,” Petev says. “One of the persons that I trained, Vasil Makarinov was a probationer with the foundation back then. The museum management rushed to offer him a job as a curator. The initiative started at that time has been developing ever since and last year it was distinguished with the national award for a social program, handed by Parliament”, Todor Petev says and adds that there are options, but the process is slow and hard. The complicated administrative mechanism is the one that creates obstacles for the museums’ work with children, as the kids’ stepping out of the school area requires permission. That is why teachers are not very motivated. Family visits are the alternative. In the words of Todor Petev Family Museum Saturday can be developed for any practical case.

“Wherever there are people, there is interest shown towards history and tradition – it will be enough if the museum is open and enterprising and a program of this kind can be implemented. We started with 10 – 12 children and some 130 would comenowadays. This shows the potential of an initiative which makes museums closer and more interesting to people. However, that is not the only problem, there are plenty of others too. There is a lack of well-trained museum experts. There is no full program in Bulgaria, preparing experts in museum pedagogy and no positions for such experts are opened at museums. The function of museum pedagogue in most of our museums is taken over by curator, chief curator or an expert in public relations. There is no good result in such case, as we all know well,” Todor Petev says in conclusion.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev