Abstract:

The nascence of the educational feature among the activities of a museum is directly related to the free access of visitors to the museum and the cultural consumption becoming popular. The struggle for the equality of educational opportunities has become one of the activities of the European enlighteners of the 18th century. Concurrently, another phenomenon was developing namely the establishment of the art exhibitions. At this point, the very idea of the primacy of public opinion arose over the opinion of a connoisseur being a collector and over the opinion of a custodian. It is the combination of these two that gave rise to the awareness and design of the educational principle in the museum practice resulting in new features of the museum – sociocultural and educational – in the late 18th – early 19th century. This was most clearly manifested in the cooperation of museums with academies and universities.

At the same time, the idea of publicity of collections as implemented in the practices of the Kunstkamera of Peter's times and later influenced by the ideas of the Great French Revolution spread in many European countries, including monarchical ones.

Two concepts of the museum were simultaneously developing in Russia of the first half of the 19th century. The first proclaims the model of the museum as an elite sanctuary of science and art. The second related to enlightenment, democratization and philosophy of positivism considers the museum as an instrument of education and enlightenment emphasizing mainly the social aspects of the cultural process. The dominant influence of the concept of the museum as an educational institution took hold in museum practices in the second half of the 19th century.

In the conditions of the democratization of society, the enlightenment and dissemination of knowledge among the people was one of the main ideals of the social movement, and the museum was considered as a means to make this ideal happen. A peculiar phenomenon of the museum movement in Russia was the formation of a group of museums specifically focused on teaching activities. This gave rise to the pedagogical and school museums, which for the first time became a place of joint creativity of the pupil and student, the place of the birth of museum pedagogy.

Keywords:

Education, educational feature, museum, enlightenment, museum pedagogy.