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ICON IN A MUSEUM: VISUAL ORDER OF EXHIBITING AS FORM OF INTERPRETATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 1 (23). P. 193-207

The article examines the historical trends in icons display throughout the entire period of its existence as a museum object. Museum display of icons which started about a century and a half ago has always reflected relations between museum, society and power as well as changes in understanding of the phenomenon of a museum item as such. Throughout all this time, the status of an icon in a museum space, its interpretation and various ways of display have always been under discussion. The uniqueness of an icon lies in the fact that it gives a vivid opportunity to trace the transformation of meaning of an object when it becomes a museum item, i.e. is transferred from one context to another. The present museum analysis declares that museum is not a neutral storage space for monuments or information. It actively shapes the frames of perception, endows the exhibits with meaning and even grants them the status of the norm and obviousness, actively forming cultural identity. When an object is removed from its initial environment and included in a museum exhibition as a museum item it loses its original meaning, thus acquiring a new, different interpretation. The display policies and museum design have always been the tools with which a museum developed new meanings. As for icons, the opportunity to trace the change of their meaning depending on the ways of display is of interest. For example, how an icon is removed from the sacral context and acquires its secular meaning, how the sacral context is recreated within the secular space of a museum exhibition. Several periods can be distinguished in the history of museum existence of icons. In the 19th-century display the icon detached itself from its sacral space and was regarded as an object for collecting or academic research, thus confirming the value of rational perception. In the early 20th century, museums made first attempts to return to icons their sacral context, but not the ceremonial one, but the philosophic and esthetic. In the 1930s, the exhibitions maximally levelled both the connection of an icon with its native sacral context and its interpretation as a philosophic and esthetic phenomenon. It turned into a historical document, an illustration for educational stories or ideological thesis. By the end of the 20th century, Old Russian Painting items were perceived as masterpieces of art affording an opportunity of aesthetic enjoyment. The current approach synthesizes all previously used ways of display. Nevertheless, placement of icons into their sacral contexts recreated by means of various exhibition methods has become common practice. Thus, all the above mentioned ways of display of icons at different stages of their museum existence show, nevertheless, certain recurrence. Under their impact, an icon is perceived either as a sacral or a profane object. Explanations underlying the exhibition methods of sacralization/desacralization of icons were certainly absolutely different, though they don’t hamper the ability to see typological similarities between common strategies. For all that, only the values forming predominant visual strategies of particular time can influence display practices.

Keywords: museum design, boundary, icon, context, display policies, sacral, secular.