Stages of excursion work of the Russian Museum

Abstract

The historical development of educational services in the Russian Museum is a new topic for research. The Russian Museum (formerly the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III) opened in 1898 and immediately attracted the attention of the public. The museum had three departments: the Art Department, the Historical Department and the Ethnographic Department. The first employees of the museum were Albert Nikolaevich Benua, Pavel Aleksandrovich Bryullov and Petr Ivanovich Neradovsky were the custodians of the Art Department of the Museum of Emperor Alexander III. They, along with the work on collecting, exhibiting, storing and restoring a variety of artistic values of the museum carried out educational work for the public coming in on preliminary requests to the museum, and immediately highlighted the problems of organizing educational work, which individual employees could do at the time indicated by the staff list, for the custodians of the Art Department clearly lacked the productive forces for this work. In 1928, the Bureau of Educational Services was founded in the State Russian Museum, which marked the beginning of all subsequent extensive, diverse, multidisciplinary work with the audience. The text contains links to previously unpublished archival documents. The period in question covers several epochs: from the opening of the museum at the end of the 19th century until the first decades of the 21st century. During this time, the Russian Museum changed its name, becoming in 1925 called the State Russian Museum, and changed the focus of work with the public. Educational work at the museum in the 21st century conducted with the use of new technical possibilities of communication with the audience, but lecture, excursion and conversation are still in demand.