Experience of museum sociology: museums and society

This text contains a brief summary of the contents of the monograph and the authors’ reflections on the museum from a sociological and historical perspective based on its text. The work discussed in this review presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of the activities of the Russian Museum (St. Petersburg) over 25 years in its correlation with the broad social and historical context. The monograph also makes an attempt to go beyond classical studies of museum audiences, that come down primarily to constructing a socio-demographic portrait of the visitor and are often limited to it. The monograph under review contains an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the museum and society, not only from the position of the museum itself, which is typical for most museum studies, but also from the point of view of the audience, and, most valuable, from the position of the state. Using the example of a study of visitors to the Russian Museum, V. N. Koziev and E. V. Potyukova seek to identify the influence of changing political and social landscapes on the evolutionary trajectory and mechanisms of functioning of museum institutions in different historical periods.
The authors of the review critically examine the methodology underlying the study, but emphasise a number of valuable provisions of the monograph for the social sciences that require further study and development. Noteworthy is the hypothesis put forward in the monograph that the configuration and distribution of artistic capital in society to some extent coincides with the demographic structure of museum visitors, which, although it has a number of limitations, outlines the line of the presented research. Given the noticeable lag in the domestic practice of sociological study of museum audiences and the museum itself as a social institution from the Western body of research practices in the field of museum affairs, the monograph under review deserves close attention from researchers, since it not only answers, but also poses new research questions. Further study of museum practices and museum audiences would make it possible to identify the features and trends in the development of museums in modern Russia in the era of widespread digital technologies and museums searching for their purpose in modern conditions.

museum, sociology of museums, museology, museum visitors, museum research