The article considers the role of the museum as an actor of institutional practice in determining the status of contemporary art. The institutional theory of George Dickie and Arthur C. Danto is an adequate alternative to aesthetics in the evaluation of contemporary artworks, though in the last decades the art world became more and more commercialized. Big galleries, art dealers, and art auctions are actively involved in evaluating art. Nevertheless, the museum often remains the last judge to label an artwork as ‘real’ art. If in a traditional museum one expects to see ‘authentic’ works of classical art, in a museum of contemporary art he/she expects to see ‘true’ art, i.e. artworks recognized as art by museum experts. The popularity of the idea, meaning, and symbolics of the museum is demonstrated in numerous curatorial conceptions. The attraction of the museum idea in the context of contemporary art and exhibition practice was shown, for example, in the project “Lc. 15: 11-32” in the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2019), curated by the State Hermitage Museum. The exposition at the Pavilion reflected the tragedy of human being in the context of contemporaneity, the Gospel parable, and paraphrases of well-known pictures of Dutch and Flemish schools of painting at the Hermitage. This and other projects dedicated to the idea of the museum show modern metamorphoses of traditional museum tasks: to collect, to label, to demonstrate, and to educate.