Reflections of the academician of AUAS Fedor Schmitt on the museum audience of 1910-1920s and the relevance of their study in the context of museum sociology in Ukraine (1990-2000s years) - Статья

National museum of history of Ukraine Reflections of the academician of AUAS Fedor Schmitt on the museum audience of 1910-1920s and the relevance of their study in the context of museum sociology in Ukraine (1990-2000s years) Т.О. Thus, in the period of the first wave of sociological studies of museum audiences, even though it was initiated by the Tretyakov Gallery, Ukrainian museum scientists contributed already to the development of this actual direction of the museum activity [9, p. 488; 12, p. 43]. There is no surprise that the mentioned problem had its place in the activity of the scientist and the heritage saver. Creation of the Ukrainian school of museology, where the leader was Bilyashivsky M., the director of the Kiev Museum of Antiquities and Arts, (nowadays it is the National History Museum of Ukraine) happened within the museology section (its head was Bilyashivsky M.) under the Archaeological Commission of UAS (its chairman was F. Schmitt). The draft statute of the Archaeological Commission, which was developed by F. Schmitt in 1921, prompted the study of the theory and practice of museology in all its spheres [3, p. 26-32; 10, p. 38-II]. On this basis, the aim of this article is to analyze the scientific heritage of F. Schmitt in order to separate the milestones of his activity. These milestones can be regarded as certain foundations of the study of the museum audience, in particular in Ukraine. It is interesting that this happened mostly during the «Kharkov period» (1912-1921) of his work [15, p. Schmitt’s position on museums, which had to be built on the territory of the Russia empire and which had suffered from the First World War, was formed under the influence of his travels to cultural centers of Europe. Thus, in his essay on the history and theory of museum activity on historical, ethnographic and art museums (1919), a generalization of the oldest public museum center of Alexandria, Naples, Pergamon, Rome was given, some of these places were marked as the inspiration sources for the development of museums in the 20th century [17, p. 7, 24]. This work of the scientist is perhaps the most interesting in terms of analysis of the museum audience. For example, understanding the educational level of the society, he didn’t placed the form of the state on the first place, but trying to assist the Enlightenment, F. Schmitt both in 1916 and in 1919, said that art should be understood not only as fashionable whim of wealthy and indolent people [16, p. 5]. He supposed that there must be a public museum with a large masses attendance and, as the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, had an utopian dream to turn even streets into museums [17, p. 33]. One of the key aspects in this paper became his reflections on a special category of the museum audience: «... undoubtedly proletarian, working man, a man of physical labor» [17, p. 56-57]. F. Schmitt pointed out that after the understanding of such audience, a new form of museum work, art promotion, had to arise. As the only one, understandable and welcomed to museums was the urban intelligentsia, the audience with the «cultural childhood» (those, who were brought before the Soviet regime - K.T.) [17, p. 45-57]. The social (class) approach to the visitors was not associated with the denial by F. Schmitt, for him all people were the source of the society’s development.