Promotion of historical knowledge in museum practices (using the example of Museum Complex named after I.Ya. Slovtsov)

The author of the article explores the issue of the promotion of historical knowledge in the museum practices. The introductory part analyzes the forms of scientific knowledge (mainly on the national history) representation in the modern media landscape and the impact of this knowledge on the formation of historical memory. Taking into account the fact that not only historians are involved in this process, we further develop an idea of popularization of scientific knowledge among wider public. This idea is usually considered in the framework of science and mass media cooperation, meanwhile the options for the popularization are much wider. Thus, one can act via culture: cinema, theater and, of course, museums. In contrast with academic institutions, the former imply a wider range of emotional stimulation for different categories of museum goers. The main body of the article dwells on the forms of the promotion of historical knowledge and describes other ways of presenting it used in Museum Complex named after I. Ya. Slovtsov. These ways are implemented in the framework of exhibitions and expositions, excursions and other forms of cultural educational activity. Simultaneously, specific peculiarities of the Museum complex are described. The Museum carries out scientific research, realizes projects in collaboration with higher educational institutions: topic-based research and practical conferences, monograph presentations, discussions. The Museum collections are historical resources themselves. Specialists study them and this is in fact the first step towards the promotion of historical knowledge. In the past the access to the Museum collections was granted mainly to professional researchers. Today everyone can get free online access to the State Catalogue of the Museum. During the high-alert period all museum content was transferred online, the museum interacted with visitors online, thus, the popularization of history was carried out. Furthermore, the author provides examples of the projects created specifically to be posted on the Internet. In conclusion, vulnerabilities and perspectives of the promotion of historical knowledge in museum practices are analyzed. The author considers a number of issues: the development of the expertise of the museum workers; interaction with Universities; searching for the balance between spectacularity and scientificity, i.a. in the frameworks of participatory projects; dealing with the consequences of the technological breakthrough connected with representation of historical information; co-relation between history and media; “virtualization of history”. The author considers the cooperation between representatives of museum community, professional historians, IT and other kinds of specialists and also visitors of the museum to be perspective. Such a cooperation might contribute to the creation of a quality product that will not only popularize historical knowledge, but will just be popular. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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