Modern technology based methodologies for visitor studies at the museum exposition

In the second half of the 20th century, important changes took place in the relationship between the museum world and society, which led to appearance of new approaches in museum theory and practice. First of all, they affected the principles of interaction between museums and their audience. The evolvement of communication approach to museology, where a visitor is considered the main figure in museum activity, dates back to this time. The peculiarities of museum audience behaviour were studied from the beginning of the 20th century. The exposition is the main channel of communication between a museum and its visitors, therefore, the use of modern technical means that allow an objective assessment of the quality of such communication is a priority when studying the museum audience. Due to the development of technical progress by the beginning of the 21st century there is a possibility of using technological methods of qualitative and quantitative recording and analytics of main indicators of interrelation between museums and their target audience. The present research considers new technical means of studying specific features inherent to visitors behaviour at exhibitions (tracking, eye tracking, video analytics). Such studies have been carried out in some of Russian museums in recent years.