The Museum as key concept of Museum Science

This article is devoted to the poorly studied question of the scientific concept of museum. The authors of the article collected and analyzed many historical and historiographical sources, and studied the etymology of the word museum. They found out that this term goes back to the Greek word цоиста, which means art, poetry, as well as education, scholarship, science. So this word was used in calling ancient Greece goddesses-patrons of art. (After all, there was a tradition to name museums as Temples of Muses.) At the same time the center of science and art, established in the 3rd century BC in Alexandria, was called as Alexandria Museyon. It became a prototype of all other museums. The traditions of collecting and using natural and cultural monuments in Alexandria Museyon have been preserved in Constantinople and other cultural and religious centers of the Byzantine Empire. The authors of the article suppose that manuscripts in Greek, the memory of museyon and the very term musey became the property of Russian culture in Middle Ages. During the Renaissance monuments of Byzantine culture spread across European cities, and aroused interest in antiquity and created the basis of collecting. During the 16- 18th centuries, a variety of European collections were increasingly marked by the Latin word museum, which came from the Greek word цоиста. For a long time the terms musey and museum were used in Russia almost on equal terms. However, in the second half of the 19th century, the repositories of monuments began to be designated as musey. It was a time, when Russian museum scientists began to develop the scientific concept of the museum. In 1892 the first successful experience of that study took Dmitry Klements. He proposed to consider the museum as a systematic collection of monuments suitable for the study of nature and history, as well as for the education of the population. Some years later Nikolai Mogilyansky claimed, that the museums had an important role in collecting, storing and scientific research of nature and history monuments, as well as in the promotion of knowledge. In 1930 trying to subdue the museums to the decision of state political tasks, narkom (minister) of education of Soviet Russia A.S. Bubnov demanded to put museums at the service of the proletariat class struggle, to use them in the promotion to socialism. In 1950s Soviet museum scholars returned to the interpretation of the museum as a scientific and educational institution developed by their predecessors. There was only difference: the scientific and educational activities of the museum were strongly associated with the construction of communism. Only at the turn of two centuries, an opportunity for a new non-ideological definition of the museum took place. The scientific concept of the museum reflects the historicity of the museum phenomenon, characterizes their functions that determine the structure and directions of museum activity to document the environment. The authors of the article emphasize that the new definition excludes the interpretation of the museum as a temple of muses, but reveals the role of the museum in actualization of cultural heritage. Thus, the modern concept of the museum became the key in the study and development of museum science.

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