This paper is a kind of response to Prof. Irina S. Semenenko’s article “New Dimensions of Identity Politics: Contested Memories in History Museums of the 20th Century” (Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (World Economy and International Relations), 2020, vol. 64, no. 5). The paper attempts to ground the notion of institutions of culture and their necessary, though sometimes ambiguous role in social, cultural as well as political dynamics of the current history. Studies of the present experience in economic, information and demographic globalization, digital technologies, pandemics, etc. offer new opportunities for rethinking the role of cultural institutions in the whole socio-historical process, including the current history. The complex of these problems is displayed not only on macro-historical or global level, but also on the levels of micro-histories and everyday history in different social and cross-cultural contexts. The field of cultural institutions seems to be responsible for the whole shifting of basic human values in history as well as for the “subtle customization” of interpersonal communications and “le phénomène humaine” itself.