Museum as an idealistic phenomenon

Abstract

The article explains some of the fundamental problems of the museum as an ideological and cultural phenomenon from the theoretical positions of the idealistic approach. The author proceeds from the proposition that a human being is the main and only source of culture that he creates on the basis of a previously created idea embodied in a cultural object. One of the results of the ideological creative activity of human consciousness is the phenomenon of the museum. The modern museum was created by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment. Each idea of a museum or the museum direction has a specific creator. These ideas determine the meaning and content of the museum. It is impossible to understand the museum, its contents and exposition without understanding of ideas on which museum based. The content of the ideas that create museums is closely connected with the prevailing worldview, as well as with individual ideological systems — ideologies. Changes in worldview paradigms leads to the inevitable reformatting of museums with a collapse of ideologies. The museum, like any human creation, belongs to the category of subjective-objective reality, which in its entirety exists only in conjunction with the human consciousness, creating and perceiving such an objectively existing reality. Without the man and outside of his consciousness, there is neither a museum nor a museum object. Museum reality gets its meaning, content, meaning and value only in the consciousness of a human being who created and perceived it. Studying a museum as a phenomenon, first of all it is necessary to study the man who created it and the man who perceives it. A human being, not a museum, should become the subject of museology as a science.