Representation of icon painting in the expositions of church museums

Abstract

The article is an analysis of the conceptual features of the exposition of works of religious painting in the expositions of museums of the Russian Orthodox Church. Over the past two decades, the number of museum institutions attached to religious organizations of the Russian Orthodox Church has increased significantly. Today they represent a separate, actively developing segment of the national museum network. The implementation of joint exhibition and educational projects with church institutions involves familiarization with the practices and principles of the formation of expositions existing in this environment, which are largely non-standard. These practices also relate to the issue of displaying iconography, especially in confessional museums of a complex thematic profile, as well as military-historical and memorial ones. This problem has previously attracted the attention of art historians and museologists (N.P. Zheleznikova, E.A. Polyakova, P.S. Kovalenko, L.S. Alekseeva, ets.). Among the latest research E.V. Volkova carried out the classification of modern ways of exhibiting church art, depending on its interpretation. However, the mentioned studies either reflect purely regional experience, or consider the totality of exhibits of church museums without isolating pictorial monuments, or fix the exposition and exhibition solutions of secular museums. In the proposed work, for the first time, an attempt is made to characterize the principles of including icon painting in the subject range of church expositions, based on their thematic profile. The work is based on the method of included observation, as well as the analysis of information on the websites of church museums. As the author states, in the museums of the Russian Orthodox Church of non-artistic profile, the significance of the icon as a work of fine art is secondary; iconography is presented as a monument of religious culture, material evidence of events in church history, and is also used as auxiliary materials for missionary and educational work.