olgabirsed/placesmuseums

•Updated over 5 years ago

olgabirsed/placesmuseums repository overview

5 facts about the origin of the museum, classical and modern exhibitions and love for collecting antiquities

The Museum is an institute of social memory, designed to preserve, update and transmit to subsequent generations the most valuable part of the cultural and natural heritage. At a certain stage of development, society recognizes an object as a value that must be removed from everyday life, which it must stop using in order to preserve it and pass it on from generation to generation. It was for the study and presentation of such objects that society created a special social institution - the museum.

When and why museums appeared Many associate the museum with ancient times. Therefore, it seems that the museum itself is something ancient, coming from the depths of time. In fact, the museum in its current form arose at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, that is, not so long ago, about two hundred years ago. The prehistory of museums is associated with collecting (the first collections known to us appeared in antiquity: a person has always had a passion for collecting). Since the Renaissance, people began to present such collections to other people, and these were a kind of "proto-museums". In the 17th century, the so-called cabinets of antiquities, ancient depositories began to appear. But the most common is the term "cabinet of curiosities". The Kunstkamera is almost a museum. But the Kunstkamera has one significant difference from the museum in the modern sense, since it is a collection of "wonders" that are presented unsystematically. There is no what we now call the exposition - the semantic sequence of the arrangement of objects. The visitor must consider them, understand them, and at the same time show a special quality, which in English is called "curiosity" - curiosity. Another meaning of this word is "eccentricity." It is interesting that this very meaning has been preserved in the modern Russian language: "curious" is eccentric, strange, frivolous. The Kunstkamera were made for such eccentric and inquisitive people. Then came the Age of Enlightenment, and museums began to create their collections on some systematic basis.
The difference between modern museums and their predecessors Today, many old museums are based on the educational museum model. For example, Vienna has a Natural Science Museum. It contains a bronze plaque on each display case with the words "Systematisch" in German. This is a classic educational museum, where everything is laid out on shelves, drawers, and departments. This natural science museum is designed like a Linnean table. A historical museum of an educational type is arranged like a history textbook - from ancient times to the present day. In its purest form, the educational model of the museum was realized in Germany, and from there it spread all over the world. Most modern Russian museums still carry the features of this model. In the State Historical Museum, for example, the exposition is structured according to the chronological principle. In the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum - according to the historical and monographic principle: there are both chronologically and by the names of the artists.
Hedonistic museums This systematic approach to the museum has existed for many years. But there was another line in the development of the museum business, although earlier it was not very popular. This is the so-called "hedonistic museum", focused primarily on pleasant pastime, enjoyment, and not on the transfer of knowledge. Today, some museums, primarily art museums, are beginning to evolve towards a hedonistic museum.

One of the clearest examples of this kind is Insel Hombroich, a modern art museum located in Hombroich near Düsseldorf. The museum was founded by a private person, a businessman. This man, having earned a lot of capital as a realtor, ceased his activity and invested all his money in the creation of a wonderful museum. He bought a piece of land and declared it an island, calling it Insel Hombroich ("Hombroich Island"). In this agricultural wasteland, he planted gardens, and this was done by landscape architects. All this is very beautiful, thoughtful, special pavilions have been set up there, built, by the way, from old Dutch bricks from dismantled buildings - this is a very environmentally friendly project. And inside these pavilions, he housed a huge art collection. And at the same time, the collection ranges from works by the founder's contemporaries to etchings by Rembrandt, from Calder's mobiles to Khmer sculpture. All these items were presented in a jumbled manner, and there is not a single label on display. The point is that a person comes to the museum not for knowledge, but for pleasure: to listen to the murmur of a stream, look at beautiful works of art and get aesthetic pleasure from all this.

Interactivity of contemporary museums Changes also began to take place with natural science and science and technology museums. The didactic system of the educational museum does not work well for the modern visitor. Today's visitor can be characterized by the well-known Chinese saying: "Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, let me do it and I will understand." Therefore, in museums, elements of interactivity are increasingly used. In museums of historical reconstruction, visitors are given the opportunity to live in a cave like primitive people, or to forge a nail in a forge. Understanding and memorization occurs through direct participation. Even art museums have elements of interactivity today. “Even” - because art is the most difficult for such active interpretive techniques. After all, works of art, as a rule, should not be touched.

For example, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has the so-called English Gallery. There, in the 18th century section, there is a portrait in which a lady in appropriate dress is standing next to the service. In the same room there is the same service in nature, the same dress hangs in the window. And next to the service is a battle of porcelain that you can touch with your hands. A copy of this dress hangs, any visitor can wear it and take a photo. These are examples of interactivity in an art museum.

olgabirsed/placesmuseums

olgabirsed/placesmuseums repository overview

Tag Summary