The aim of the article was to conduct research on the evaluation potential of target indicators used to analyze the effectiveness of the implementation of state programmes for cultural development of the regions of Southern Russia, its optimality and sufficiency. New tasks in the field of management activity in the sphere of culture, initiated by a number of factors, are analyzed. The most significant factors are identified: informatization and introduction of innovative methods in the management of cultural institutions, the change of generations of visitors to cultural institutions, the change in preferences of the target audience, oriented towards more modern forms of cultural product consumption.

The study was based on the analysis of strategic planning documents presented on the official websites of the ministries of culture of the regions of Southern Russia: Krasnodar and Stavropol Krai, Rostov and Astrakhan Territories, the Republics of Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia — Alania, and Dagestan. The authors analyze the composition of target indicators used in the state programmes of cultural development of the regions, describe their evaluation potential, and classify them. It is concluded that the target indicators of different groups are connected in a complex system of interdependence and complement each other. At the same time, there is a certain bias towards quantitative methods of assessment, which only indirectly and approximately indicate the quality of work of cultural institutions.

We propose innovative target indicators focused on the qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of the implementation of state programmes for the cultural development of regions. These target indicators make it possible to measure the media and network activity of cultural institutions, their presence in virtual space, positive practices of cultural institutions, the development and operation of historical and cultural, literary, ethno-national, cultural and recreational brands in the region.

The purpose of this paper is to identify modern forms and methods of interaction between a museum and a tourist visitor in new socio-cultural and economic contexts. Museum as a socio-cultural institution is subject to changes occurring in society and reflects in its activities those rules, demands and values that are relevant for a particular period of history. The spread of market relations in the socio-cultural sphere and the processes of digitalization, accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, are directly reflected in the activities of museums. Today, the museum is transforming from a creator and interpreter of scientific knowledge and a guardian of cultural values into an industry that creates a special environment for visitors. Reorientation towards the individual visitor as the main consumer of the museum tourism product poses new issues and challenges for museums. Thus, in the context of individualization of consumer demand, the issue of “including” the museum in the economy of impressions with its emphasis on emotional information, personal experiences of a person and creation of his/her personal experience becomes relevant. Within the framework of the communication approach, the authors of the article investigate the practices of using the basic principles of the impression economy to create a competitive product and build a dialogue between the tourist and the museum on its basis. The latter becomes important in the light of the formation of the visitor’s loyalty to the cultural identity of the city and the region where the museum is located. The application of the system approach allowed to identify general and private practices of museum service in the conditions of a new model of consumption, oriented to meet the increasing demands of the individual tourist. The materials of the article can not only be used in the theoretical and applied activities of museums, but also serve as an analytical basis for regional and municipal state structures in the development of effective programmes and strategies for tourism development.

The idea of applying the experience of cognitive analysis to visual works of art served as a prerequisite for studying the mental representations of hell and heaven on the basis of the most vivid cinematic images. Two films — “What Dreams May Come” (V. Ward, USA, 1998) and “Heavenly Judgement” (A. Zvantsova, Russia, 2011—2014) — were chosen as the research material. The center of scientific interest is the cognition of the “inner man” through art. The article outlines the trajectory of the development of individual and collective artistic interpretations of the afterlife within Christian culture. It is argued that the concept of hell has spread directly through objects of verbal and non-verbal creativity. This has significantly distorted the original doctrine of life as a path of spiritual transformation. By the will of man, the “infernal picture of the world” embraced the sphere of the Earth and was embodied in reality. At the turn of the 20—21 centuries, in the conditions of rapid technical evolution, there is a reassessment of metaphysical experience. A cognitive analysis of two directorial concepts — heaven and hell as a state of consciousness (V. Ward) and as a fictitious form of life (A. Zvantsova) — reveals an important qualitative change. It consists in the transformation of the concepts of the inner world in relation to the traditional vertical structure “heaven — earth — hell”. In the modern cognitive model, “hell” is located between “heaven” and “earth”. In the boundaries of the inner world (soul) hell directly intersects with or absorbs paradise, and heavenly paradise is practically absent. As a result of comprehending the screen images of heaven and hell in the context of the established mental representations, an updated picture of ideas about postmortem existence and the nature of the soul is formed.

Science-art is seen as an artistic practice that uses scientific theories, concepts and laboratory equipment as its main tools, and the creative method of artists is based on the principles of scientific experimentation. Using the methods of the sociology of science and technology of B. Latour and S. Woolgar to study science-art, it is found that scientific experimentation becomes the basis (medium) of this direction of contemporary art. Thus, science-art borrows not only material objects of the scientific world, but also ways of constructing scientific knowledge, which, according to B. Latour’s research, are hidden in the specifics of laboratory practices. Key in this case are “recording techniques”, which replace various data, diagrams, samples and materials in the production of scientific knowledge, and which become an argument in academic discussions. For science-art, the analogue of such written documents are curatorial texts and explications of works, which can be placed both directly in the exhibition space and form a complex system of references to various research materials, interviews with scholars, podcasts, etc. These texts and media texts allow us to use them in the exhibition space. These texts and media texts allow the viewer to perceive the context of the artist’s creative experiment and form a specific artistic complex “artobject — text — audience”. Together with laboratory practices, science-art brings the art and mechanics of constructing scientific knowledge into the sphere of art, unwittingly fulfilling popularizing and educational tasks. However, the conceptual complexity of the works and the focus on the process of scientific investigation rather than on the presentation of results bring back to the viewer the doubt of philosophical quest and a critical view of scientific research as basic elements of academic enquiry.

Immersive art is a new form of media art that relies on the theory of stream of consciousness, on the stimulation of various human senses, often using light to achieve a deep psychological and physiological immersion of the audience in a trance-like empathy with the art. From the point of view of technical means it can be divided into virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and expanded reality. The article analyses the problems of using technical means of immersive art, considers the advantages and disadvantages of its application in various cultural expositions. The questions arising when applying the means of immersive art to traditional culture (in this case to shamanic culture) are considered. The study finds that works of immersive art demonstrate contemporary culture much more often than traditional culture. Using the example of four technical tools in analysing works of immersive art, the author describes the problems that exist at this stage of its application. The aim of the work is to identify and consider the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating traditional meanings into virtual reality. The tasks of the work include: analysing technical means of immersive art, peculiarities of embodiment of traditional meanings in immersive art (on the example of shamanism). The author argues that virtual spaces created by immersive art are currently gravitating towards purely sensory experience and are not able to carry information about the connotation of meanings. In the process of creating works of immersive art, artists have their own understanding of shamanic culture and cannot reproduce shamanic rituals, so there is a problem of inability to interpret the cultural connotation and show the depth of the rich traditional shamanic culture.

The miniature painting class at the Imperial Academy of Arts existed for more than half a century, but no researcher has examined the prerequisites for its formation. Information about the class’s activities is sketchy, and the names and number of students remain unknown. From a review of the historiography on the subject it becomes clear that there are almost no documents devoted to the problem of teaching miniature painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Since the reign of Peter the Great, the miniature portrait has gone through several stages: a reward portrait depicting reigning persons (a distinctive sign that speaks of the special position and status of the awarded person); a fashion accessory, along with fans and snuff-boxes; finally, a portrait that can always be taken with you to preserve the image of your favorite person. By the middle of the 18th century, the chamber portrait was particularly popular among city dwellers, which met the new ideas about the value and special significance of private life and a person’s inner world. However, not only the fashion for miniature portraits contributed to the opening of the miniature painting class, one should not forget about the economic side of the issue, which was very relevant for the Academy. Children from poor families were accepted to study in the classes of the Academy of Arts, so that in one class, which was not the largest, the sons of apprentices, soldiers, church servants, merchants, musicians could study, and the material issue was not of secondary importance for them. That is why the question of transferring miniaturists to work at porcelain factories becomes very urgent. The creation of a class of miniature painting was a kind of response to the needs of the time, when with the advent of the XVIII century. Russia is gradually included in the pan-European development of artistic culture.

The paper discloses the unusual treatment of duplicates and defective copies, characteristic of European libraries at the time when Haebler’s works were created and published (beginning of 20th century) and stresses the necessity of correct bibliographic treatment of the valuable printed materials in modern libraries. The paper also presents the famous album of West-European incunabula (Der westeuropäische Wiegendruck in Original-Typenbeispielen), compiled by Konrad Haebler in 1928, two copies of which are held in Moscow at the Russian State Library and the State Public Historical Library of Russia.

This fundamental work in the history of typography by the prominent German expert on incunabula, one of the inventors of the Proctor-Haebler method in bibliography and founder of the world incunabula catalogue Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, is analyzed in the aspect of the specific early 20th-century bibliographic principles underlying the composition of the album and the way the original old prints are presented in it. The album consists of a collection of 15th-century original fragments enclosed in a 20th-century overall structure (text booklet, case and set of labeled passe-partouts).

This unusual composition can present classification problems in some modern public libraries, when the album is recorded as a whole, whereas the separate incunabula fragments are not catalogued. Moreover, a comparative study of several copies of the album available for analysis on- and offline, carried out in the study, proved that their sample collections were composed of different authentic incunabula leaves, thus making each album unique.

Since his youth, Valery Babanov’s professional activity has been connected with the art of book design. He is a graphic artist, illustrator of classic and modern prose, poetry of domestic and foreign authors. The search for his own line in art revealed the proximity of his individual creative nature to the monotype technique. The history of the creative path of the outstanding master of prints E.S. Kruglikova, thanks to whose activity it was in St. Petersburg in the early twentieth century that the Russian school of monotype was born, had a great influence on his choice. Prominent Leningrad artists K.A. Kordobovsky, G.D. Epifanov, D.M. Plaksin became mentors in mastering the “pictorial” graphic printing technique. But an example of virtuoso artistry in working with monotype was K.I. Rudakov. A true fan of monotype in book illustration, Babanov strives to create subtle professional graphic works that reveal the essence of the literary work. Long practice has honed the techniques used by the artist in his work: the base — perfectly smooth plates of plexiglass of different sizes with slightly rounded edges, black paint layer, squirrel brushes, cotton paper. In addition to the visual interpretation of literary texts, the master actively works in easel graphics, in particular, realizing a project of plastic interpretations of the world’s artistic heritage. The artist’s solo exhibition “Striving for Perfection” (2020), which became the intermediate result of his activity, presented selected monotypes, in which Babanov reflects on the work of the great masters of painting, passing the history of art through his perception. A visual narrative of contemplation and plastic retelling of the legacy of the old masters and artists of the twentieth century — interpretation by means of monotype — in personal sensations there is a reflection of creative individuality, a fuller disclosure of natural identity. The more the artist understood, penetrated, felt the sample of copying, the more he presented himself. Turning to the past, V.V. Babanov continues to follow the eternal path of apprenticeship.

The article considers animalistic art as a significant historical and artistic phenomenon, which has become a field of research of foreign and Russian authors. The article analyses important questions concerning the specificity of animalistics and related reflections of world outlook. The author discusses moral issues, asks the question about the role of animals in human history, notes the negative results of the consumerist attitude of man to wildlife and, in this regard, the need for a positive and careful attitude to it. The reader’s attention is drawn to animalistic art as a fertile sphere of influence on human feelings and thoughts, especially in the era of global change. The position of the artist, researcher, looking at and studying the world of living nature is revealed. In this aspect the historical stratum of separate epochs is emphasized, in which the figurative nature of animals and in it the qualities of iconicity, symbol as identifying, concentrated meanings are vividly revealed. The first group of questions considers animalistic art from an educational point of view, allowing us to look at the images of animals and birds from the position of a scholar, study. The second group is related to the method of work of the animalist artist, revealing the peculiarities of the genre. The worldview aspect, determined by the artists’ views on the animal world, is inseparable from the pictorial aspect, i.e. the embodiment of animals and birds in the artistic image. This aspect also implies a conversation about the specificity of animalistics, which in the works of Russian researchers found a clear and precise expression. The relevance of the topic is denoted by the importance of talking about the problems of ecology, which have acquired a pronounced character in the modern world. This universal concept of preservation of the natural world, which has become universal, has opened a new layer of significance of animalistic art. At the present stage, when the main principle — the relationship between man and nature — is being reassessed, the reference to the world of animals, including in the historical and artistic aspect, acquires high significance.

The article examines the historical and cultural aspects of the processes of formation of artistic tradition in Russian decorative and applied arts and folk crafts from the XI to the middle of the XV century. Using the example of outstanding pieces of various types and directions of decorative art, the main periods and stages of the formation of the general stylistics of the masters’ creativity and the ways of spreading similar artistic and figurative solutions are determined. The examples given by the author touch upon issues directly related to the processes of integration of Russian traditional crafts and decorative art with the creativity of Byzantium, Scandinavia, Central Europe and the culture of the peoples of the European part of Russia, which were subjected to the expansion of the Northern Slavic tribes. The author defines the development of the Russian artistic tradition as the active introduction of individual elements and figurative solutions of various sources into the basic Slavic culture, based on the preserved monuments of architecture, art and printed writing. The research is based on the works of archaeologists, art historians and artists, which are fundamental works on the history and theory of decorative and applied arts (A.N. Kirpichnikova, M.A. Orlova, B.A. Rybakov, etc.). A comparative analysis of the current state of certain types of Russian decorative and applied arts, traditional and folk crafts, taking into account the influence of technological transformations on authentic techniques and materials. The author’s conclusions are based on many years of experience in studying decorative and applied arts as a factor in the development of professional competencies of students of art universities and institutions of additional education in the process of becoming independent masters and artists.

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