«Museums have crazy people working in them!» For some reason, this phrase from the director of a small Russian museum has stuck with me forever. It appeared in one of the first documentaries in the «Provincial Museums of Russia» series, conceived in 1999 by People’s Artist of Russia Alla Surikova. «A museum helps a person discover themselves. For me, at least, that was true. In the summer of 1999, the newspaper «Kultura» invited me on a trip along the Volga. I discovered amazing museums: Yaroslavl, Uglich... Fantastic in their wealth of material, captivatingly interesting. I felt like someone who had found a treasure and wanted to show it to everyone.

Multimedia storytelling and embodying images have become increasingly popular and in demand in recent years thanks to several significant projects in Russia: International RUSSIA EXPO, Games of Future in Kazan, the International Festival of Media Art INTERVALS in Nizhny Novgorod, Forum-festival «Territory of the Future. Moscow 2030», Wonder of the light Festival in St. Petersburg and others. The interest of the Russian public in multimedia formats raises the question for museums — whether there is something in the experience of spectacular events that is applicable to exposition activities. Moreover, how to keep the interest of modern visitors who are used to bright interactive installations?

This article presents the experience of integrating modern technologies into an exhibition at an Orthodox church. A unique exhibition has opened in the Epiphany Cathedral in Yeniseisk, dedicated to the completion of a multi-year project to restore Yeniseisk icons — a distinctive layer of Russian spiritual culture. The exhibition not only showcases the restored relics but also details the painstaking work that brought them back to life using interactive digital technologies.

An overview of the Victory Memorial Museum’s exhibition, where traditional exhibits are harmoniously combined with modern technologies. Multimedia solutions have made accessible layers of information that were impossible to display in the limited museum space. Interactive installations have attracted the attention of the younger generation.

Presenting a writer’s text in a museum exhibition is one of the most challenging tasks for a curator. The experience of the V.P. Astafyev National Center in Ovsyanka, Krasnoyarsk Krai, demonstrates how this can be done in a modern, varied, and engaging manner for all types of visitors. This is a colossal achievement of Valentina Mikhailovna Yaroshevskaya, Director of the Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local History and a close friend of the writer’s family, who developed the detailed exhibition concept, including multimedia solutions.

The division of the historical and cultural heritage of the Russian Federation among three related funds (Archival, Museum, and Library) is enshrined in Russian legislation and bylaws regulating the activities of each of the three areas. However, these funds are not isolated entities and are distributed among the relevant organizations in varying proportions, such that all three types of cultural institutions hold some portion of the «non-core» funds in their collections. This specificity of collections was taken into account in all regulatory documents governing the activities of archives, museums, and libraries throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. The corresponding «cross-sections» of industry-specific instructions and regulations for the accounting of historical and cultural heritage items required the mandatory accounting and description of such objects, considered «non-core» for the type of organization in question, according to rules appropriate to their nature. This, on the one hand, created additional burdens for curators, while, on the other, allowing for the overall number of items in each of the aforementioned collections to be controlled.

The RGALI memorial collection contains about one and a half thousand items of the greatest figures of culture and art, which are displayed during excursions to the archive and at its own exhibitions. The description of memorial items is carried out according to museum rules, and the accounting is based on archival legislation. However, the basis of the RGALI exhibition activities — both in its own exhibition hall and on the sites of the country’s leading museums — are archival funds.

Archives and museums are two similar institutions: in their goals, functions, and organization. Both preserve memory and communicate it to the general public through accessible means. The only difference is that museums preserve objects, archives, and documents. Archives and museums constantly interact with each other — conducting research and complementing each other’s knowledge on various historical topics, jointly participating in conferences and seminars, and organizing joint exhibitions. Today, exhibition work is the primary link in the interaction between archives and museums. Almost any historical exhibition organized by a museum cannot do without the inclusion of archival documents. Documents not only complement the exhibition, they imbue it with meaning; their text allows us to hear and feel the historical era.

Archival museums play an important role in preserving documentary heritage and shaping historical consciousness. As we rethink the role of archives in 21st-century society, we return to the idea of integrating the functions of archives and museums. This article traces the development of the archival museum concept in Russia — from the early example of the Rumyantsev Museum to the innovative projects of the 1920s, such as the Archival Museum at the Senate Archive and N.P. Likhachev’s Paleography Museum. These initiatives were ahead of their time, but today they are being revisited and revived — both in physical and digital spaces.