Музей как институциональная форма личных и публичных экспериментов: проект художников русского авангарда

Abstract

Museums as cultural institutions certainly reflect the sociocultural transformations of the new era and are changing with the new reality. Except for that, a museum is, by definition, an institution of memory, a keeper of history, it is based on adoption: the collection, successiveness and actualisation of past experience. What is perceived as innovation by contemporary society may have historical roots and be an actualisation of innovations of a bygone era. Modern museum development recalls a global project undertaken by Russian avant-garde artists in the early 20th century, and implying the institutional modernisation of museums. This study addresses a project taken on by avant-garde artists for the modernisation of museums in the context of general cultural construction, in cooperation with the Soviet Government. The research methodology is based on a conjunction of a historical study and culturological analysis, primarily the concept of the institutional approach. The study consisted in looking through archival documents: The Fund of the People’s Commissariat for Education and its departments (declarations, provisions, resolutions, decrees, minutes of meetings, correspondence, protocols and statements of estimates, inventory books of the State Museum Fund etc.), personal funds of artists and cultural figures, their theoretical works, articles, correspondence. A holistic inter-disciplinary approach combining historical and culturological analysis with prospects for contemporary sociocultural development and the role of museums is seen as a promising novelty of the research. Russian avantgardism as an artistic and sociocultural phenomenon has remained of great interest for a century. Different studies shed light only on separate aspects of this vast topic in different scientific contexts. The examination of the museum project by avant-garde artists under this study allows us to conclude that they were the first to undertake the institutional modernisation of museums by considering them in the focus of new demands of time and society, innovative programmes as forms of personal initiatives and experiments expressed in the broad public space of artistic culture.