The museum utopia of academic I.E. Grabar: conception and reality

The history of museological thought of Russia of the early 20 century will be incomplete and inexact without knowing the ideas and projects of outstanding cultural workers who quite often overtook even the revolutionary time. It is the question of projects of creation of a National Art Museum by academician I.E. Grabar. One of them, developed before 1917, suggested making the Moscow Kremlin a museum territory, which would serve as a base for an architectural small museum town complex. This colossal museum was to preserve the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Rumjantsevsky and the Historical museums, A.A.Bahrushin's Theatrical Museum; alongside with the collections of private museums of national and universal importance whose owners have already stated desire to present the collections to the city of Moscow. Operating churches and cathedrals were to make up a separate museum unit, simultaneously preserving the cult mission. The small museum town complex would also have included other Moscow and near-Moscow property - the Neskuchny palace, the Peter's Palace, village Kolomenskoye, village Izmailovo, village Tsaritsyno etc. The collected museum property was supposed to create the first-class exemplary expositions on the basis of outstanding monuments of culture; the remains were to become a part of auxiliary scientific fund for experts' work or fill up the collections of regional museums. The value of such a museum complex for Moscow and for Russia could be significant. The project was not realised. Grabar's second project assumed creation of an exemplary museum on the basis of buildings and collections of the Russian Museum in Leningrad. In 1933-1934 Grabar made an attempt of reconstruction of the Russian Museum by joining the buildings of the Mikhailovsky palace, the Rossi Wing and the Benois Building into a uniform architectural complex to create a direct, extended exposition territory. New social conditions dictated a necessity of construction of a museum exposition, which in linear chronological sequence would show the history of development of national art. According to Grabar, the museum, as a cultural filter, should filter the streams of dark human material, educating and socializing it. Due to skilful combination of his own ideas with ideological problems of time, Grabar with adherents got permission from People's Commissariat of Education to reorganize the Russian Museum. However, this time the poverty of the state and the necessity to concentrate effort on creation of industry and collective farms failed Grabar's plans. The project supported by the order of People's Commissariat of Education, by the plans of scientific and administrative activity, architectural and civil work budget was only partially realised, without having solved the main task. Again the idea of creation of the National Art Museum as the main treasury of the state was not fated to come true. The projects of academician Grabar were dictated by his strategic plans on creation of a uniform centralized state museum structure, with the model National Art Museum in the capital and a network of equal quality expositions in regional museums, for he stated, Just as it is impossible to think of a state without a foreign, financial or internal policy, it is also impossible to think of it without a museum policy. Unfortunately, centralization took a turn for bureaucratization and ideologisation, and the National Art Museum similar to the Louvre, has not been created.

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