Museum Director: Job, Profession, or…? A Hundred-Year Long Experience of Directorship at the Peterhof State Museum-Reserve

Abstract

When studying the history of museum work, modern cultural scholars have not paid enough attention to the issues of museum management, which are of great importance for every museum. The museum consisting of the palaces and parks of Peterhof, established after the nationalization of the imperial residence in 1918, were initially headed by a curator and later by a director. The director determined museum policy, organized scientific, conservation, financial and economic work, and maintained contacts with government officials. In the early stages of the museum’s development, the director’s responsibilities included organization of educational work, inventory of palace collections, and preservation of architectural monuments. Later on, the area of responsibilities expanded and changed to keep up with the historical process. Workers of culture and people with a more democratic background held the director’s position. Numerous Party bureaucrats later gained the position, and during the last stage historians with a special education served as directors. Having gone through the transformation of palaces and museums into “museums of noble life”, the conversion of historical landscapes into parks of “culture and recreation”, through the tragedy of political repressions and wartime evacuation, through the difficulties of the post-war revival of the complex and many other things, the directors of the Peterhof museum created an amazing historical and cultural phenomenon known all over the world today.