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ТЕОРЕТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСНОВЫ МУЗЕОЛОГИИ
УДК 069.01
M. M. Popadic
THE ORIGIN AND LEGACY OF THE CONCEPT OF MUSEALITY
Introduction: From the idea to posthumous honors
In the ICOFOM's booklet entitled "Key Concepts of Museology", the professional attempt to create Ariadne's thread in the maze of museological terminology, there is no direct entry for the term "museality"1. It only occurs in derivatives or in correlations with terms "museal", "musealisation" and "museology". Thus, under the "museal" we find equivalences in other languages (adj.—in French: muséal; in Spanish: museal; in German: museal; in Italian: museale; in Portuguese: museal) and the interpretation that the word has two meanings in French, one as an adjective that determines "museum", and another when used as a noun, but only one in English, in which it has rarely been used and has a wider meaning than the classic notion of the word "museum", that is, creation, development and activity of the museum, and includes reflections on its foundations and issues2. Museality is mentioned only as the derivative, together with terms "museal field", "musealia", "musealisation". Further, under the term "musealisation" we read: "At most, the work of musealisation gives an image which is only a substitute for the reality from which these objects were chosen. This complex substitute, or model of reality (built within the museum) comprises museality, that is to say a specific value which documents reality, but is in no way reality itself'3. Finally, under the term "museology" we find that "the object of museology is not the museum, since this is a creation that is relatively recent in terms of the history of humanity", but that the object of museology was gradually defined as "the concept of a 'specific relation of man to reality', sometimes referred to as museality"4. All in all, in these definitions it seems that the term "museality" is left on the side, with collegial recognition, but without substantive consideration. Hence, its meaning is somewhat elusive, as well as its origin. Therefore, in this paper we will try to give a modest and synthesized contribution in clarifying the concept, origin and lagacy of the notion of museality.
At the beginning of 2016, François Mairesse, president of the ICOFOM, published the text about the deaths of the two "giants" of this committee and its most important people: "ICOFOM has lost two giants in the space of a little less than a month. On January 21, 2016 Zbynëk Stransky died; on February 9 he was followed by Vinos Sofka who also entered the field of memories. These were two of the most important people our committee has known.
1 Key Concepts of Museology / A. Desvallées, F. Mairesse (eds.). Paris, 2010.
2 Ibid. P. 48. — In Russian translation 'museal' appears as 'музеальность' (Ключевые понятия музеологии / A. Desvallées, F. Mairesse (сост.). М., 2012. P. 43).
3 Ibid. P. 51.
4 Ibid. P. 55.
Many of us met and appreciated them, two giants of museology who probably gave much of their lives in the service of this discipline. They believed in the need for a better understanding of the specific relationship between people and reality, which in our times influenced the constitution and development of museums"5. In the timeless era of Greek myths, giants were those who—in the famous gigantomachia—opposed the Olympic deities in the struggle for the supremacy in the Cosmos. One could say that in the "age of museums" (which often preferred Olympic heights), the giants remained aside, and the question of the cosmos became the question of how to fill the grain of sand with it. Either way, the discipline in question is, of course, museology. Also, in the above-mentioned text, the "giant" is a metaphor of the significance of the person, and certainly not an attempt to mythologize. However, if we borrow this figure, we could ask ourselves what kind of museological gigantomachies Stransky and Sofka undertook. With what, the Olympic and other, deities they fought? And in wich museological milieu?
East of Louvre or "Continental eccentricity"
"The museological milieu seems an abstract speculation in the midst of modern civilization; we are witnessing, in museums, the evolution of a world that is made without us and around us"6. This is the first sentence of the first lecture in Museological course by Germain Bazin held at the École du Louvre in school year 1949/50. The École du Louvre is a higher education institution founded within the Louvre Museum in 1882 with the aim to train researchers in the fields of archeology, art history, anthropology and classical studies by using collections of the famous museum. In 1927, this school will host the first course in museogra-phy, which is often considered the forerunner of formal museology education, that is, the first museological teaching program in the world7.
It will, however, not be entirely true. Professor of Harvard University, Paul Joseph Sachs, art historian, began 1922/1923 with his museum course, whose official title was "Museum Work and Museum Problems". At the same time, 1921/1922, although much closer to Paris, at Masaryk University in Brno, lectures in museology were started by Jaroslav Helfert. Both university programs were also related to direct museum practice: in the case of Harvard classes, it was the Fog Art Museum (which was part of the University), and students of museology in Brno gained practical experience in the Moravian Museum (where Helfert was the director). In other words, the École du Louvre may have been the first higher education institution established in a museum, it could be said the first "museum school", but it was not the first "school about museums"8. Why is this wordplay important? Because this variance outlines what will become differentia specifica of the museological thought represented by Vinos Sofka, and especially Zbynëk Stransky.
If an explanation is needed, let's say that in the first case—in case of "museum school" — the emphasis is on the knowledge that is in the service of the institution, and in the second ("school about museums") on the knowledge that questions the existence of the institution, that is, identifies
5 Mairesse F. Two ICOFOM Giants. URL: http://network.icom.museum/icofom (accessed: 25.05.2016).
6 "Le milieu muséologique semble une spéculation abstraite au milieu de la civilisation moderne; nous assistons, dans les musées à l'évolution d'un monde qui se fait sans nous et atour de nous" (Germain B. Museologie: cours de Mr Germain Bazin. Paris, 1950. P. 1).
7 The history of the École du Louvre is available at URL: http://www.ecoledulouvre.fr/ecole-louvre/ histoire (accessed: 01.10.2017).
8 Maroevic I. Uvod u muzeologiju. Zagreb, 1993. P. 62; Alexander E. P. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. Nashville, 1980. P. 239-241.
and examines the values that the institution embodies. It seems that both approaches are needed and complementary; first is applied, the other theoretical and critical. But behind this "consensus" came the fundamental division in contemporary museology, which has been developed to such an extent that it might be justifiable to ask whether there is anything that could be called common "contemporary museology".
If we bring this issue to a pragmatic plane, the division in question can be illustrated on the example of two contemporary textbooks in museology. Five years after the original Croatian edition, an English translation of the "Introduction to Museology" by Ivo Maroev-ic, professor of museology at the University of Zagreb, was published in 1998 in Munich. In the translation, the title of the book received one clarification. In addition to the original title ("Introduction to Museology"), the subtitle "European Approach" is added. Editor Christian Muller-Straten notes in his Preface the scientific foundation and "ice-clear selection of terms and definitions" of Maroevic's book, that author goes beyond the idea of museology "as a science about museums" and emphasizes the focus on "Museology as modern science"9. On the other hand, let's pay attention to what the professors of museology at the University of Liège André Gob and Noémie Drouguet say in their globally recognized textbook "La muséologie: Histoire, développements, enjeux actuels" ("Museology: History, Development and Contemporary Challenges"). The authors clearly emphasize that the object of museological studies is a museum, but then they notice that "some researchers, especially in Central Europe, favor a broader and more theoretical view", where "the object of museology is no longer a museum but rather the 'museality', a specific relation of man to reality, a relationship which is both knowledge and value judgment: it leads to the selection of objects worthy of being preserved indefinitely and transmitted to the future society. Thus defined, 'museality' seems to correspond in French to the concept of patrimony or what might be called 'patrimoniality'"10. In this context, we can mention one more book, which is often taken as some kind of unofficial museological textbook. Namely, Peter Vergo, on the first pages of the "New Museology" (1989), points out that "old" museology paid too much attention to methods, and too little to the purpose of the museum ("...what is wrong with the 'old' museology that is too much about the museum methods, and too little about the aims of the museums")11. Such, "new-museo-logical", approach opened the stage for "museum studies" in the academic sphere, which do not presuppose the necessity of the existence of museology as a discipline, but the existence of dialogue about museums among many other disciplines12.
All in all, it seems like that there is still an iron, or at least velvet, curtain between "Western" and "Eastern" museology and their learnings. Interestingly, Polish museologist Wojciech Gluzinski—whose contribution remained even less visible than the one accomplished by Sofka
9 Müller-Straten C. Editor's Preface // Maroevic I. Introduction to Museology: The European Approach. München, 1998. P. 9.
10 "Certains chercheurs, surtout d'Europe centrale, privilegient une vision plus large et plus theorique de la museologie. <...> L'objet de la museologie n'est plus le musee mais la „musealite", une relation specffique de l'homme avec la realite, relation qui est ti la fois connaissance et jugement de valeur: elle conduit a selectionner des objets qu'elle juge dignes d'etre conserves indefiniment et transmis a la societe future. Ainsi definie, la „musealite" semble correspondre en frangais au concept de patrimoine ou de ce qu'on pourrait appeler la „patrimonialite"" (André G., Drouguet N. La muséologie. Histoire, développements, enjeux actuels. 4e édition. Paris, 2014 (Édition Format Kindle de Armand Colin).
11 New Museology / P. Vergo (ed.). London, 1989. P. 3.
12 As an example of such an approach: A Companion to Museum Studies / S. Macdonald (ed.). Wiley -Blackwell, 2006.
and Stransky, with or without all the posthumous honor—noted that the theoretical question of the founding of museology as a scientific discipline, alarmed particular interest of museolo-gists from socialist countries because important cultural, ideological and educational role was attached to museums13. Could it be that the very idea of museology as a scientific discipline had this "ideological" omen? In his appealing memoir notes, Vinos Sofka recalled that after his departure from Brno, the idea of museology as a science discipline in the West was presumed with reserve, or even with direct repulsion. Often, Sofka recalls, he received rough responses like the one about "quasi-science" or just "continental eccentricity"14. On the other hand, the concept of museality, which Zbynek Stransky introduced as one of the basic concepts of museology, was once criticized as a "bourgeois" in the (socialist) East Germany, since it tends to problematize the concept of museum values, but not from position of the "class interests"15. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 deviated these ideological prejudices, but it seems not all of the professional ones, where science-based museology is often seen only as the theoretical surplus.
The Concept
After this extensive introduction, which was necessary in order to see the general context of contemporary museological research, let us now focus on our problem. If Vinos Sofka played the role of the main promoter of the Czech/European concept of museology (hence, museology as a science, and not the systematization of museum activities), the central place in the theoretical reflection of this concept belongs to another "giant", Zbynek Stransky. And it is precisely at the center of his theoretical determinations that we find the term 'museality'.
In the report from an international seminar on museology, organized by the Department of Museology of Purkyne University in Brno in 1969, Zbynek Stransky in the text named "Foundations of General Museology", explained the concept of 'museality' in the following way:
"In short: the museality is a quality of reality essential to man, personal, and therefore it is necessary to protect carriers of museality from general and normal disintegration <...> The activity of museological thought must be at first focused on the cognition of the museality and its identification.
<... >
In the museological sense, the aim is not to find a confirmation of reality, but to reveal such confirmation in carriers of museality. At the same time, museality is based on an assessment of the relationship of a man with reality, but in order to discover it, it must first be introduced. <...> The museality does not appear, however, independently. It is always connected with its carriers. But, like reality it self, the character of carriers is very complicated.
<... >
However, the museality can not be identified either directly or immediately. Cognition of museality is approached gradually, as our knowledge deepens and completes"16.
These few explanations were the beginning of the attempt to define the museality. In other words, it was the wellspring, and here are affluents. In the opinion of the Dutch museologist
13 Gluzinski W. U podstaw muzeologii. Warszawa, 1980.
14 Sofka V. My Adventurous Life with ICOFOM, Museology, Museologists and Anti-Museologists, Giving Special Reference to ICOFOM Study Series, 1995. URL: http://network.icom.museum/fileadmin/user_ uploadminisites/icofom/pdf/ISS0/o20fflSTORY0/o2019950/o20V.0/o20SOFKA.pdf (accessed: 01.10.2017).
15 Hanslok A. Die Kontroverse zwischen Klaus Schreiner und Zbynek Z. Stransky // Museologie und Archivwissenschaft in der DDR. Marburg, 2008. P. 109-20.
16 Quoted according to: Stransky Z. Z. Temelji opste muzeologije // Muzeologija. Zagreb, 1970. № 8. P. 37-74.
Peter van Mensch, the problem of interpreting the notion of museality is, first of all, that Stran-sky, as the "author" of the concept, on the one hand, indicated at least two models of this term, and, on the other, he used the term museality for the intent of museum "users" and for the properties of the museum object. As Mensch points out, Stransky initially described the museality as a special documentary value, conditioned by the quality of the carrier, assuming under the museality of document its concrete and perceivable properties, its informational value (as source of original information), regardless of its nature or character. A decade later, according to Mensch, "Stransky explained his concept of museality as value category, as expression of the special relationship of man to reality connected with the wish to preserve and to use selected objects. Although the museum object is the carrier of museality, the term refers to an attitude of the observer rather than a quality of the artefact"17. As a particularly valuable developed form of the new concept, Mensch recognizes the interpretation offered by the Czech museologist Vera Schubertova. Schubertova made a distinction between the two levels of museality: the levels of potential museality and the level of the topical museality. Potential museality is "the valueableness of the sensorially concrete aspect of reality—museality as a possibility founded in objective properties of objects", while topical museality "is the objec-tification of human adoption of the reality—museality realized in the form of musealies"18.
In the last decade of the 20th century, Ivo Maroevic gave a seemingly comprehensive definition of museality as a feature of the object that makes it a document of one reality in another, that is, "to be a document of the past in the present, a document of the real world in the museum world, a spatial document in some other spatial relationship", and, finally, to be an accomplished document of space, time and society. This interpretation, which could be recognized in Mensch's terms as "old" concept, Maroevic expanded by relying on the model Schu-bertova suggested. However, Maroevic points out that Schubertova offered a three-step model, in which the first degree is primary evaluation, the second recognition (where the significance of the object for a certain scientific discipline is discovered) and the third is secondary evaluation, in which the museality is determined19.
It seems there is an avalanche of interpretation of the notion of museality, but at the same time we are not sure what is in its core. On the one hand, it shows a certain, intuitive understanding that "there must be something in it", on the other, it opens space for the necessary critical reflections. In fact, one very strong and argumented critical outlook was given early on, in the late seventies of the 20th century, but it seems to have remained ignored. Its author was already mentioned Polish museologist Wojciech Gluzinski. Through interpretation of the foundations of museology as a scientific discipline, he spotted and demonstrated the problem in determining museology as a "science of museality". Due to the content of his comments, we preserved it for the end of this review20.
Gluzinski departures from the basic questions: What "unquestionable" features of the object should one keep in mind when claims that it possesses a feature of museality?; Where should one look for it?; How should one act and to what to pay attention in the given object
17 Van Mensch P. Towards a Methodology of Museology: PhD thesis. University of Zagreb, 1992. URL: http://emuzeum.cz/admin/files/Peter-van-Mensch-disertace.pdf (accessed: 01.10.2017).
18 Schubertova E. K ujasneni metodologickeho vyznamu pojmu muzealita a muzealie [Explanation of the Methodological Meaning of the Terms Museality and Musealies] // Muzeologicke sesity. 1986. 10. P. 111-116.
19 Maroevic I. Uvod... P. 96.
20 Gluzinski W. U podstaw muzeologii. Quoted and translated into English on the basis of the Serbian translation by Ivana Bokic Saunderson (edition in preparation for 2018).
in order to verify existence of the museality? Gluzinski concludes that Stransky does not give an answer to any of them and ends only with the subject's intention, where "the lack of construction on which the concept of the Stransky is based lies in the true characteristic of the museality: it is the result of the impossibility of indicating those specific 'unquestionable' features of the object that could represent the essential basis of the relative quality in question". On the other hand, Gluzinski is very suspicious of the possibility of existence of such quality as mu-seality and its purposes: "It is never, however, possible to determine in advance which particular set of qualities meets these needs, since it counts on an unparalleled set of qualities and the enormous quantity and variety of needs and the intents of choices. Taking into account one or another quality, in essence, they will cover the overall reality of the given object". Noting that Stransky claims that the museality of the object comes from its integrity, Gluzinski comments that "this would mean that the museality would find its essential basis only in the whole object, in all of its many qualities; however, this would, at the same time, mean the dissipation of this feature in all features of the object, and the annulment of its specific quality. If, therefore, we use the only remained option, then the museality will be revealed as nothing else but the total reality of the object, and it would not stand out in any way". Gluzinski concludes as follows: "In summary, it should be noted that the concept of the Stransky is derived from the instrumental understanding of the museum; it is based on random set of methodological directives, and introduces a central theoretical term without a true, clear definition. This term, without any connection with observative terms, remains only the conceptual fiction; it has neither empirical content nor operational meaning. If the object of museology should be 'museality', then it should be noted that museology is a science of fiction. If one accepts the original concept that its object is an original document, then, regardless of how we have determined it, it will always be the result of a documentary relationship, and in this connection, museology will be only a specialist segment of documentarism". Nevertheless, at the very end, Gluzinski emphasizes: "However, interesting and productive remarks and formulations, which are included in Stransky's discussions, will be a valuable contribution to museological knowledge and they can not be overlooked".
Origin and legacy
But where from, in general, does this foggy concept of museality arise? When it comes to the "science of fiction", Mensch noted that the Brazilian museologist Maria de Lourdes Hor-ta expressed the opinion that the concept of museality Stransky may have taken from Tzvetan Todorov. And indeed, in her doctoral thesis "Museum Semiotics: A New Approach to Museum Communiction" in the chapter "The Concept of 'Museality'" she writes: "Tzvetan Todorov (1966) proposes to redefine the object of literary research, as the study of 'literality' and not of 'literature'. In the same sense it is possible to justify the concept and the study of 'museality', redefining the object of museological research, and proposing the study of the 'virtual qualities' of museum works and discourses, which make them possible. Only in this way, we believe, will it be possible to develop a science of museology (as Todorov proposes in respect to literature); for this purpose, one must not limit oneself to the 'description' of works or texts (what could not be the object of a science), but to identify the traits and the specific qualities of 'museality', which distinguish this particular domain from other possible fields against which the many museum texts could be checked, as those of history, anthropology, aesthetics, psychology and so on"21. Is the origin of the concept of museality in Todorov's 'literality'?
21 Horta M. de L. Museum Semiotics: A New Approach to Museum Communiction: PhD thesis. Leicester, 1992. P. 41.—"The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms recognizes" this term as "literariness".
Let's remember that Stránsky studied philology and law at Charles University in Prague, and that he could have been informed about or intrigued by contemporary literary theory. But it's equally interesting that actually 'literality' is not originally the concept of Tzvetan Todorov from the 1960s. "Literariness" was introduced in literary theory by Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, almost half a century before Todorov. In the period between the two world wars, Jakobson was a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle and a university professor in Prague and Brno22. With all this in mind, it can be safely assumed that Stránsky was familiar with the concept of 'literality/literariness'. However, in his texts there are no direct references to the works of Jakobson or Todorov, although it is possible to notice the connection between the two theoretical concepts. Namely, both the museality and the literality try to determine the object of scientific study, one in the museal, the other in the literary world, that is, in the worlds where relation of a man and his reality is expressed indirectly. However, in order for this connection to be confirmed, definite arguments are certainly needed. Until they appear, the connection of museality and literality remains possible, but not obligatory.
Similarly, although closer to the material world, one could say that there is a possibility that museality has something to do with the concepts of protecting the monuments of culture developed by Czech art historian Max Dvorák. Namely, in the Dvorák concepts of the significance of cultural monuments, there is a tendency to expand the quantity of these values. For example, in the book "Katechismus der Denkmalpflege", published in Vienna in 1916, Dvorzak writes that the protection of monuments must be not only stretch to all the styles of the past, but it must also maintain local and historical distinctiveness of a monument, which by any rules should not be corrected, because such corrections destroy what exactly gives monuments, even modest ones, an irreplaceable value23. Although settled with his service in Vienna, Dvorak's influence in Czechoslovakia was certainly not a small one. After the First World War, Dvorák was officially offered professorship at Charles University in Prague, which, however, remained unrealized, but he could have indirectly influenced the founders of the Czech muse-ology school, Jan Jelinek and Jiri Nesputny. Dvorák's subtleness and refinement in recognizing the value layers of monuments is certainly close to Stránsky's ideas about carriers of museality and their complexity. But, like in a previous case, there are no direct references.
If the origins of the concept of museality are in the realm of possible, its influence is absolutely concrete. In the preceding section, we have already quoted authors who accepted Stránsky's starting points and, by interpreting them, further elaborated on the subject. With these examples, several more items could be added. We met Gluzinski as the most essential critic of the concept of museality. However, his M-factor, as the concept of "museum sense", that is, factor that connects various aspects of museological reality, although methodolically more precisely derived, still largely owes its origin to the concept of museality24.
It is interesting that Gluzinski's remark that the museality is nothing more than the total reality of the object gained an affirmative tone in another theoretical approach. Croatian museologist Tomislav Sola writes in the mid eighties of the 20th century: "Perfect, noble memory (museums or social mechanisms similar to museums) and unconstrained, artistic creativity
22 "The object of literary science is not literature in its totality but literariness, that is, what makes a given work a literary work" (Jakobson R. Novejsaja russkaja poezija, Viktor Khlebnikov. Prague, 1921. P. 11).
23 Dvorak M. Katechismus der Denkmalpflege. Wien, 1916.
24 Gluzinski W. 'Basic paper' // Methodology of Museology and Professional Training. ICOFOM Study Series / V. Sofka (ed.). Stockholm, 1983. № 1. P. 24-35.
has a distant point of convergence in a highly-technologized media environment: a total muse-um"25. Sola's concept of a total museum is complemented with his ("Copernican") shift from museology to heritology, where the basic object of scientific research moves from the institution of the museum, and indirectly from the museum, to the notion of patrimony as the totality of the cultivated heritage26.
Finally, let's add to this legacy the "theory of testimonially" articulated by the Serbian museologist Dragan Bulatovic. Starting from Stransky's concept of museality and recognizing its origins "in the Germanic linguistically logic where musealitat is what is to be documented as meaningful potential in the material that lies in the museum", Bulatovic builds a "theory of testimoniality" that tends to avoid the traps of scientific formalities and its methodological web in wich museality finally collapsed. Developing the model of cultural treasury, based on the prosperity of the heritage process ('heritagisation'), Bulatovic offers as his central concept the notion of "testimoniality", recognizing this notion as the one "that should reduce the uncertainty that remained after the introduction into the thesaurus of museology the key terms for museum values"27. The effectiveness of this approach is convincingly demonstrated in the treatise "Art and Museality", where theoretical aporias and cynicisms of practice are placed under the magnifying glass28.
Conclusion: Nostalgic need
The perceptible Gluzinski once noticed that it seems like "that the Stransky's term 'museality' was introduced by the same principle as, for example, historical term 'flogiston'. Something is burning, therefore, there is a mysterious element of inflammation called flogiston —a museum collects something, therefore, it possesses a certain feature of museality"29. Recently, in 2015, Peter van Mench wrote that the concepts from museological school of Brno, like museality and musealisation, have become a unique museological heritage, where "we may treasure the concept of museality as heritage of our own professional field, worth to be discussed with a little touch of nostalgia during breakfast"30. So what, in the end, could be said about the concept of museality, so symbolically trapped between a scientific fantasy and a professional nostalgia?
Museality really remained an elusive concept, just like a flogiston. But, let us remember, from the concept of alchemical flogiston—a mystical element that makes combustion possible —the notion of oxygen as chemical element was born. It happened in the 18th century. (According to an old joke, it is not known how people before that, that is, prior to the discovery of oxygen, breathed.) What would that mean in a museological context? Perhaps that, in essence, it is not the problem of finding, establishing or accepting a concept that would survive under a scientific loupe (which is not without its distortion). It is primarily about the need of a man, and even the nostalgic need, which can be traced all the way back from stories about Noah and his Ark, to Flaubert's bunglers, Bouvard and Pécuchet. It is a need not to forget the
25 Sola T. Prema totalnom muzeju: PhD thesis. University of Ljubljana, 1985. P. 257.
26 Sola T. Essays on Museums and Their Theory: Towards a Cybernetic Museum. Helsinki, 1997.
27 Bulatovic D. Nadrastanje muzeologije: heritologija kao opsta nauka o bastini // Jovanovic Z. Me-dunarodni tematski zbornik Umetnost i njena uloga u istoriji: izmedu trajnosti i prolaznih-izama. Ko-sovska Mitrovica, 2014. P. 637-654.
28 Bulatovic D. Umetnost i muzealnost: istorijsko-umetnicki govor i njegovi muzeoloski ishodi. Novi Sad, 2016.
29 Gluzinski W. U podstaw muzeologii.
30 Mensch P. van. Museality at Breakfast. The Concept of Museality in Contemporary Museological Discourse // Museologica Brunensia. 2015. № 4/2. P. 19.
relationship of man and his reality, and need to arrange and present that relationship. And in the absence of a better word, the concept of museality can be recognized as the answer to that need. The fact that this concept is imperfect, means only that it is close to man and his nature.
Information on article Author: Popadic Milan M. — Associate Professor, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, [email protected].
Title: The origin and legacy of the concept of museality.
Abstract: At the end of the seventh decade of the 20th century, Czech museologist Zbynëk Stransky introduced the notion of "museality" (chez. Muzealita) in the theory of museology as a designation for that aspect of reality which is studied by museology. The aim of this paper is to examine the origins and legacy of these ideas. On the one hand, some elements which Stransky used in defining the museality can be recognized even in the texts of the Vienna school of Art History from the beginning of the 20th century, especially in the texts by Max Dvorak, who was Stransky's compatriot, and could indirectly influenced the founders of the Czech museology school, Jan Jelinek and Jiri Nesputny. Also, the relationship between the concepts "literal-ity" (Roman Jakobson/Tzvetan Todorov) and museality is examined as a possible inspiration. On the other hand, the legacy of the concept presented by Stransky could be recognized in the development of museological ideas that have emerged since the eighties of the 20th century, such as, for example, the works of W. Gluzinski, I. Maroevic, P. van Mensch, and the concepts of "heritology" (T. Sola) and "theory of testimonially" (D. Bulatovic). Keywords: museology, museality, Zbynëk Stransky, museological theory, heritology, theory of testimoniallity.
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