The exhibition 'People in the Museum. Present and Future' offers an unusual perspective; it is running at the Russian Ethnographic Museum until March 9.
This article is inspired by an exhibition about the museum profession. The exhibition is arranged like a journey, where each step is an action performed by museum staff, museum professionals. What are these actions and how can they help explain to a child what a museum is?
The authors start from the idea that the actions carried out by museum workers are actually performed by each of us. For example, as children we love to collect and bring home little stones and sticks found on the street. We choose clothes for dolls, give names to toys. We play in the yard with friends (by the way, what games did you play?). We hide little secrets.
At the same time, the memory of these events that filled our childhood becomes selective. We may remember some events and forget others completely. Perhaps photos from family albums will remind us of them... Or maybe no material evidence remains, and all we have are fragments of memories. It could be the memory of a loved one's voice, a few words, smells.
Everyone's collection of memories will be unique.
Before showing photographs of the exhibition and commenting on the stop-steps, I suggest a few topics for discussion with children. I am focusing on ages 5–6 and up.
What questions can you discuss with a child
Usually a museum is a building where you can see old objects made by people or found in nature. Dinosaur skeletons, stuffed animals, paintings, furniture, armor, costumes.
If you have already been to a museum, you can ask:
1) What can you do in a museum?
2) How is a museum different from a shop, and how is it similar?
3) Who works in a museum?
If you are going to a museum for the first time:
1) What have you heard about museums?
2) What do you think a museum looks like?
After returning from the museum you can draw parallels with what happens in your everyday life, for example with toys.
Here are some things you can discuss:
1) How does the child choose a toy, and why that one?
2) How does a toy get a name?
3) What happens to old toys, for example those that are broken?
These questions will help draw the child's attention to the fact that in museums — where objects are kept — it is people who make decisions. They choose according to certain principles which objects will enter the collection, study them, describe them, name them, preserve those items already in the museum's collection, restore them, and show them to visitors in exhibitions and displays.
You can also play by creating your own museum at home. Yes — from sticks and stones or favorite toys. We'll talk about that in one of the next posts, and for now I'll show some photographs from the exhibition 'People in the Museum. Present and Future'.
At the entrance to the exhibition — a game of hopscotch. This is a reminder that museums preserve not only objects but also intangible cultural heritage. It is also a reference to history. Roman youths once trained their endurance this way.
Stopping by an old doll is an opportunity to talk about how we choose for others. This, of course, is not only or even mainly about objects. Here are the questions the exhibition's authors suggest discussing with a child:
1) Tell me, are you wearing comfortable clothes right now?
2) Do you like that there are people who know how to choose clothes for you?
3) What do you want to choose for yourself?
At this stop you can choose magnetic clothes for the doll.
At the exhibition you can meet such charming characters created by the artist Yanka Mikhalko. The 'vest-characters', as Yanka calls them, help visitors orient themselves within the exhibition space.
The final stop is devoted to the question of how to come to an agreement. Indeed, how do you work with a heritage that belongs to so many people? Those who invented, created, and preserved the objects. Those who preserve and present them now. Those who come to the museum to, by looking at the material traces of the past, see in them... themselves?
Here each visitor has a choice: take a paper balloon with them or place it with the others. Or make a handmade figure?
The questions raised by this exhibition can be discussed in other museums as well. The exhibition website has a description of each step.
The exhibition runs at the Russian Ethnographic Museum until March 9, 2025, and will then travel to other museums in Russia.
You can also leave a message at the exhibition.
Photographs: Gennady Ruslyakov
The exhibition is part of the project 'People in the Museum. Present and Future', which is implemented by the ANO Center for Facilitating the Professional Development of Museum Specialists 'Ideas for Museums' with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives.
