Saint Petersburg Toy Museum
Saint Petersburg Toy Museum is a non-state cultural establishment.
History
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.The Saint-Petersburg Toy Museum was established as an artistic museum with the main task of collecting, storing, exposing and studying toys not only as a unique item of material culture, but also as a unique art form, that includes ancient national traditions and the most recent artistic tendencies.
The toy as an art form, existing as both a functional play-thing and an aesthetic object, inspired the collection.
However artistic toys are not the only direction of activity of the Saint-Petersburg Museum. The museum has collections of folk toys and fabric toys, which are being permanently increased.
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.
The Museum is not aimed purely at children, and works with other institutions to teach educational programmes.