Decree of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation “On the confirmation of Unified Rules for the organization of the acquisition, recording, storage and use of museum objects and museum collections”

The document, long-awaited by museums, emerged in the course of a “regulatory guillotine”* as the result of close joint work by the Ministry of Culture, and a working group on the implementation of the “regulatory guillotine” mechanism in the sphere of culture and the museum community – the Union of Museums of Russia and ICOM Russia.

The unified rules bring the record-keeping system into accord with the new circumstances of museum life and the emergence of new types of museum objects and data storage media.

The previous regulations were issued in 1985 (Decree of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR from 17 July 1985 №290 “On the confirmation of Regulations for the recording and storage of museum objects kept in the state museums of the USSR”) and their incompatibility with present-day requirements caused great difficulties in the work of museums, of the Ministry of Culture itself, and also of the inspecting bodies.

The unified rules drafted with the support of the Union of Museums of Russia, museum specialists of the highest professional level, set down the procedure for the organization of the acquisition, recording, storage and use of museum objects and museum collections for museums, organizations and private individuals that have in their possession, keeping or use museum objects and museum collections included within the Museum Fund of the Russian Federation or other stocks.

The new rules regulate for the first time:

• the possible existent in a museum not only of the main, ancillary research and raw material stocks, but also of experimental stocks that contain works of contemporary art made from short-lived materials
  
• he registration, storage and classification of works of media art and digital art
• the presence in museums of registration data bases and their interaction with the State Catalogue of the Museum Fund of the Russian Federationm
• the procedure for the preliminary registration of museum objects: the entry of museum objects in inventory books with the possibility of keeping inventories of collections within the stocks in electronic form.

The Unified Rules are also supplemented by sections important for museums on the work of restoration laboratories/workshops; rules for the keeping of museum objects in the stores and the displays by type of material; rules on the maintenance of an optimal climate and the need to counter biological damage to works of art; rules for the packing of museum object for transportation.

Monitoring of the implementation of the decree will be carried out by Alla Yuryevna Manilova, Secretary of State, Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation.

The Russian text of the document is available on the official Internet site for legal information – http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202011060011.

* The “regulatory guillotine” mechanism entails the large-scale analysis and revision of old normative legislation.