The Museum of Nature dates back to 1990, when the Vladimir-Suzdal
Museum-Reserve opened in Vladimir the first "natural" exhibition
dedicated to the world of animals, which, after a re-exposition in
1997, became known as "Native Nature". After the completion of
exposition and repair at the end of 2008, the Museum of Nature was
opened. For the Vladimir region, its creation is of particular
relevance.
The Vladimir region is a fairly densely populated
region with a developed transport and industrial network. The nature
of the Vladimir region is experiencing a serious anthropogenic load.
That is why the development program of the museum-reserve says that
in connection with the difficult environmental situation, the
problem of environmental and biological education is particularly
acute. The time has come to educate both adults and children in
harmony with nature and readiness to protect common natural values.
Thus, the purpose of the new museum is environmental education and
the upbringing of a loving and careful attitude to nature.
Modern man spends most of his life in the
city and becomes more and more isolated from nature. Urban civilization
forms in man a distorted idea of his dominance over nature. The created
Museum of Nature solves one of the most important tasks - to return a
person to nature.
The museum uses an unconventional collection
method of arranging the exposition, where museum exhibits are an
illustration of some natural pattern and visitors get the feeling of
complete immersion in nature. This is a year-long journey, ending in an
hour.
The journey through the museum begins with a “passage”
through sawn limestone blocks, which symbolize the layers of time, the
compressed life of nature over the past three hundred million years. The
guide meets the visitors. Having overcome the layers of water-glacial
deposits that are exposed on the cliff of the Oka River, and the sheer
wall of a limestone quarry, the museum guest begins to realize the
global scale and the influence of past geological epochs on modern
reality. "Travelers" are supplied with tablet maps, where the plan of
the exposition is combined with the landscape of the Vladimir region.
The museum composition called "The Tree of Life", located in the
center of the hall, is the personification of the cosmic significance of
solar energy for life on planet Earth. It is a model of a tree that
stretches its branches to the Sun and embraces the Earth with its roots.
The journey continues in the dense spring forest. The frozen moment
of the battle of the bears appears before the visitors. Fascinated by
the singing of forest birds, the guests come to a beaver dam with noisy
water and end up in a gloomy wolf's lair on a swamp mane. And again on
the road - on the road to the south of the Vladimir Territory - to
Meshchera and Opole in the north. The winding route passes next to
curved shop windows, the plasticity of which resembles natural reliefs.
When designing the exposition, no geometrical mechanical structures were
used.
Here, large forms of trees and animals are found side by
side with enlarged images of fauna and flora. The technical means used
make it possible to combine the admiration of details with a panoramic
view. Animal voices, exhibits, texts, a radio guide, a guide's story,
video films are designed to reveal to museum guests a very complex
system of biological patterns existing in nature.
During the
journey through the exposition, the seasons and natural landscapes of
the Vladimir region change.
At the end of the journey, visitors
do not leave the museum, but go to the "Forest School" - the museum
laboratory, where they can make small discoveries. The principle “Be
sure to touch with your hands!” applies here. The museum provides an
opportunity to try, touch, experience.
After visiting the
exposition, the visitor should involuntarily have the idea that the
preservation of natural wealth and of man as a biological species, as
part of nature depends only on man.
The recreated "corners" of
Vladimir's nature instill in visitors a sense of beauty and arouse love
for their homeland. The museum is interesting for schoolchildren and
students of both the Vladimir region and guests of the region.