Vizitatorul de ieri și de azi al muzeului –reflecțiile unui muzeograf
The Yesterday’s and Today’s Museum Visitor – a Curator’s Reflections

Summary/Abstract: The present study is a theoretical reflection based on the museum practice of what such a phenomenon as the museum audience – categories of visitors – means. The contemporary visitor is a determinant factor, the key element for the museum’s change in terms of structure, functions and destination. Today, the traditional museum focused on the object, on collections and their research, on acquisition, preservation and interpretation, co-exists with the modern, human-oriented museum, becoming an agent in disseminating information. The museum’s social efficacy is also determined by the number of its visitors, so the museum focuses on the visitor to meet his expectations and aspirations. In the last decades, the portrait of the museum visitor has changed radically. The transformations refer not only to the visitor, to his motives, expectations and interests, but also to the museum’s attitude in relation to the personality of the person visiting it, and therefore the mission, the working strategy with the museum’s audience. Museum statistics record different categories of visitors: locals and tourists; in groups and individual; young and elderly people; thoughtful and relaxed; real and virtual; dissatisfied and disoriented; potential and real audience; the target audience and the ideal visitor; visitor and client. The author of the study analyses the changes in the composition, the structure of the museum audience, identifying certain categories of visitors with their specific characteristics and draws some conclusions:- the contemporary museum is entertaining, not instructive;- the museum gradually turns into a cultural center of education, recreation and entertainment;- the contemporary visitor does not come to the museum to learn but to look;- the development of information technologies will bring radical changes in the composition of the museum audience in the coming years, new categories of visitors will appear.

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