Russia
 Museum tour

Museum tour
© Goethe-Institut e.V.

Russian experts travelled to discover the museum scenes of Berlin and Dresden – here they reveal their visions of what the ideal contemporary museum should be like.

  • Tamara Lutsenko, Coordinator of Exhibitions and Cultural Projects Polytechnic Museum Moscow © Goethe-Institut e.V.
    “First and foremost, what makes a good museum impressive is a good team that collaborates towards achieving a vision and an objective. What I particularly liked at the Old Museum in Berlin was the critical ambition. After all, a museum’s aim should be to make visitors think and ask questions – not just to give them information they could get by going to Google on their smartphone. As far as critical thinking is concerned, my generation unfortunately has become very lazy, not only in Russia. It’s a worldwide trend.”
    Tamara Lutsenko, Coordinator of Exhibitions and Cultural Projects Polytechnic Museum Moscow
  • Anastasia Patsey, Deputy Director of Education and Public Programs, Museum of Nonconformist Art St. Petersburg © Goethe-Institut e.V.
    “Museums today have to be social organisms that react to the permanently changing world while at the same time conserving the past. That means that museums not only have to deal with the past and the present, but also with the future. On this tour of the museum scenes in Berlin and Dresden, I found lots of good ideas that we can borrow. I am also convinced that some German museum experts left our meetings with new ideas.“
    Anastasia Patsey, Deputy Director of Education and Public Programs, Museum of Nonconformist Art St. Petersburg
  • Sergey Konevskikh, Museum Director, Interactive Museum of Physics, Physical Cabinet of Curiosities, Troitsk © Goethe-Institut e.V.
    “Official history is written by historians. In museums, people have an opportunity to form their own view of history and to understand their own history. That is why it is so important in particular that museums teach visitors how to research things that do not seem so clear at first sight. I will make a lot of changes in our museum when I get back.”
    Sergey Konevskikh, Museum Director, Interactive Museum of Physics, Physical Cabinet of Curiosities, Troitsk
  • Vera Royter, Project Manager of Development Department, Polytechnic Museum Moscow © Goethe-Institut e.V.
    “During my visit to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, I once again realised how important it is to move visitors emotionally. Rather than just exhibiting things behind glass and giving explanations, a museum also has to take visitors back to a certain time in the past and to enable them to feel how life was then. A good museum requires visitors to take up an attitude and to reflect – but also to have feelings.“
    Vera Royter, Project Manager of Development Department, Polytechnic Museum Moscow