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Baiburin A. Object in Museum Dialogues

Albert Baiburin
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0002-7357-0333
E-mail: abaiburin@yandex.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The world of things has been and remains the foundation of museum work. The article deals with the peculiarities of interaction with museum objects in an ethnographic museum. Such interactions (dialogues) are aimed at constructing ideas about the past and the alien, since an ethnographic museum is focused not only on the past (like any museum), but also on other (alien) cultural traditions. When considering things, the starting point is that they are used as exhibits due to their semiotic characteristics. Symbolic and practical content is “laid” into them, starting from the process of their manufacture. The transition of things to the status of museum exhibits means that they lose their previous cultural context, but at the same time, they acquire a new, museum status, which allows them to be considered as signs/symbols of the cultural tradition to which they belonged. To develop museum exhibitions, two forms of functioning of things should be taken into account: everyday and ritual. Usually a museum presents the everyday order of interaction of things. Ritual order can significantly change the way one looks at things and expand their meaning. The peculiarity of the visitors' dialogue with the exhibited things is that it turns into a dialogue with themselves about these things. It is in this dialogue with oneself that the exhibits are endowed with their content.

 

KEYWORDS: ethnographic museum, dialogue, thing, exhibit, symbol, sign, semiotic status, museum status

 

FOR CITATION: Baiburin A. Object in Museum Dialogues. Kunstkamera. 2024. 3(25): 6–15. (In Russian). doi 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-6-15

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2024-3(25)-6-15
UDC 069:39

 

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