Problem of the Survival of Literary Museums as an Example of Institutional Survival

The master’s thesis is devoted to the problem of the survival of literary museums. We proceed from the idea of changes taking place in the modern world and ask the question, how state museums fit into this modernity, as they are experiencing the regular shortage of money. The object of our research is the literary museums of Moscow. At the same time we are only interested in those literary museums that correspond to two parameters: they are state museums; they are museums dedicated to the work of a writer or poet. The theory, which is running as a common thread through all our work, is the institutional ecology approach of E.C. Hughes. Accordingly, we regard museums as social institutes, and we find such concepts, as “environment”, “resources”, “competition”, “survival”, important for our thesis. The main research question is: how do literary museums survive? Due to the analysis of the data collected through interviews we construct a “resource map” that reflects the surviving practices of literary museums. Practices related to “internal” resources include, for example, the organization of high-quality and interesting exhibitions, timed to coincide with a memorable date. Practices related to “external” resources include, for example, visitors capture through state-developed projects, such as Olympiad called “Museums. Parks. Homesteads” or the lesson called “Lesson in the Museum”.