(Review) Avant-Garde Museology (original) (raw)

Avant-Garde Museology is an anthology of documents, prose, fragments and experiments from the period of post revolutionary Soviet Union museum practice which until now have been dispersed and unavailable in English. The translated collection draws together ideas that share as editor Arseny Zhilyaev suggests a common theme that is the project to reconstitute the museum as an institution of hope as opposed to the old order that ordained their own ideals and objects to the cost of the majority. The unfinished project heralded in this collection – which with the advent of Stalinism reversed what achievements had been made – is an approach to the museum that is active and alive, alongside the undertaking to rebuild a fairer society. The anthology aimed at art historians, archivists and cultural theorists brings together a lightly curated selection of documents and projects. It represents a missing compendium to the movements that are recognisable as the outputs of the Russian revolution such as constructivism and social realism, and to the dominating narrative of the museum as a Western modernist enterprise. The book is divided into six sections – Museum