Вещь в музее. Музейная коллекция как структура
Thing in museum. Museum collection as structure

Summary/Abstract: A museum is a «world of the things». The article deals with the basic signs of things from philosophical point of view. Using ideas of several thinkers (Russel, Rorty, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Patočka, Maure) article shows that we should not see a thing as something isolated, but as a piece of some systems, that is typical also for museum collections, especially from thought point of view. The thing exists only with a relation toward other things and different relations. The museum object can be count as a part of the «three worlds» of Karl Popper. Museum object is an authentic witness of previous reality therefore it brakes the recent spreading of hyperreality (Baudrillard). Because a museum collection is a structure, the article deals with the basic signs of a structure (Foucault, Lord, and Stránský). Museum collection is regarded as a structure of some unit and it depends on inner orderliness, inner malleability, the set of relations between parts of the unit, the form of the unit. Museum object has both structural and cultural elements. The first one relates toward the material substance, the second one toward the context of its applications and using. Museum object is something intentionally taken from functioning connections (Beneš). Hence not any institution holding valuable things can be count as a museum. The set of museum objects creates a museum collection. Useable definition of a collection is that it is a set of things, that belongs together, go together well. Just the «belonging together» makes that the value of the collection is higher than the total of values of single pieces. The curator must rise from deep knowledges both relevant science and museology. He must count the collection as a vivid organism, that should be changed at higher quality permanently. Well prepared collection, a structure as a language, shows: there is an empty place and backwards there is somebody missing. The task of museums is not the collecting of things, albeit valuable, but the formation of the real collection, collection as the system and structure.

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