The Saint-Petersburg Toy Museum is a member of the Union of Museums of Russia. It was established in 1997 as a non-state cultural establishment, subsidised by private companies. It is the second museum of toys in Russia after the oldest Artistic-educational museum of that kind in Sergiev Posad near Moscow, which treats pedagogic problems mainly. Toy Museum The Saint-Petersburg Toy Museum was established as an artistic museum with the main task of collecting, storing, exposing and studying a toy not only as a unique item of material culture, but also as a unique art form, that includes ancient nationaltraditions and the most recent artistic tendencies. Toy Museum It was the insight to a toy as to the synthetic art form, existing in complex connection between the aesthetic and playing functions, and possessing the richest palette of artistic means, that predetermined the allocation of the collection of author's artistic toy as being the main museum fund. It is this very collection that predetermines the specificity and uniqueness of the Saint-Petersburg Museum. Toy Museum According to art critic's of the museum opinion, author's toy born in the workshops of artist, working in different techniques: draughtsman, painters, sculptors, designers, architects etc. was formed only in the last 20 – 25 years, being rather original field of present-day culture, but not yet the sphere of interests of artistic museums or toy museums. We don't possess data about the existence of any significant collections of that kind in Europe. Toy Museum However the author's artistic toy fund is not the only direction of activity of the Saint-Petersburg Museum. Besides it the museum has collections of folk toys and fabric toys, which are being permanently increased. The possession of these three funds makes it possible to study and exhibit a toy more completely and multilaterally. Having united artists, art critics and pedagogues around it, the Saint-Petersburg Museum takes part in working out interesting exhibition programs and artistic festivals, orientated on a broad age diapason of participators and visitors. Not being orientated only on children's audience, it, therefore, proposes close cooperation with different institutions in common working out of complex pedagogic programs and participation in its provision. Toy Museum
