Modern transformations of an idea of an open-air museum

The article reflects the peculiarities of open-air museum expositions in the context of sociocultural changes in the late XX - the early XXI centuries. The authorial understanding of ethnographic, artistic and biographical, historical and mili- tary, marginal postmodernist skansens are presented on the basis of which the main transformations occurred with the idea of scansen are shown. From the culturological point of view the answers of a changing museum to the challenges of the changing society are determined. The Historical and architectural-ethnographic museum «Old Sarepta», the State Museum of Sholokhov, the Ground of military equipment of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War at Poklon- naya Gora, Drvengrad (Serbia) are subjected to a comparative analysis. The detection of skansenological characteristics in absolutely different museums forces to determine skansen as an urgent mode of museum existence at modern times. Skansen is unique by the fact that it offers to a visitor the immersion into several semiotic systems simultaneously. The creation of skansens and the process of skansenalization of museums of a different type coincided with structural changes in the economics, culture, and social sphere of the XXI century. They became the reflection of the trends of the modern society development in museology. The peculiarities of postmodern society development determine the practi- cal implementation of the ideas of creating a new type of museum - skansen in many ways. Today skansen claims to be autonomous social institutionalization, and its environment and its features are unique. It is not a museum in a classic sense. Skansen is primarily a semantic environment, which offers a visitor to decline the role of a passive spectator and involves people into active production of new objects, meanings, information and their own abilities.