Cultural mediation: history and current understanding of the term

This paper discusses the history of the use and specific understanding of one of the new museology terms - mediation. The terms of museology as an academic and university discipline still need perfecting, and this is vividly manifested in the use and treatment of the notion of mediation. The term originated in the French-speaking world, and it entered the Russian language in the 2010s. Currently, it is being developed by theoreticians and is also often used by practical workers describing the experience of a museum's interaction with the surrounding world, there is training in this field for a master's degree in many higher educational establishments in France (over 1,000 graduates every year). It has been noted that mediation is becoming urgent when a museum finally stops being an “ivory tower” focused on its inner life and opened for an exclusive circle of the initiated. In the second half of the 20^th century, the museum turned into an institution opened to the general public. In recent decades, society has been deeply transformed, and cultural institutions in this environment can and should play a special role. Society views them as significant public spaces capable of being a place supporting a certain number of values, inherited from previous generations, and establishing new common values. At the same time, changes in society have touched museums as cultural institutions. They were significantly updated, and a new communicative strategy determined by the term mediation replaced traditional forms of working with visitors. Interactions of the museum with society are becoming more socially focused. And the original understanding of a mediator's importance as an arbitrator dealing with irreconcilable conflicts, harmonizing the dialogue between individuals and organizations plays an important role in this environment in comprehending the special features of intermediary functions traditional for museums in the context of museum items, individual visitors, and various communities. Various forms of cultural mediation both inside the museum and beyond it are reviewed. They are intended for big audiences and single functions if they are such popular parts of events in modern society. Or they are focused on the long-term interaction of a museum with a limited circle. They can be both the traditional for a museum's educational services audience (e.g. children) and previously marginalized population groups (convicts, migrants), with whom the museum had had no dialogue in the past.

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