Numerous cases, including the projects, implemented by the relocated museums, such as Luhansk Museum of Local Lore from the temporarily occupied territories or the frontline museums like Sloviansk Museum of Local Lore, on the basis of western Ukrainian museums in Lviv and Khmelnitsky demonstrate the unifying effect such interregional collaborations have on previously polarized by Russian/Soviet imperialistic propaganda parts of the country, which other cultural institutions and media failed to provide.
The recent research demonstrated that the cultural heritage sector and specifically – the museums became the second most resilient sector of culture in Ukraine during the ongoing war, as according to the statistics, the majority of museum workers remained at their working places, regardless of the intensity of military threat. Since the first days of the full-scale invasion museums all across Ukraine transferred themselves into humanitarian hubs: those in Central and Western Ukraine, like Khmelnytsky regional art museum self-organized to host refugees and help evacuate their most threatened colleagues and museum collections, while museums close to the forefront like Dnipro Historical Museum named after Dm.Yavornytsky or those under siege, like Chernihiv Historical Museum named after G.Tarnovsky provided humanitarian aid and shelter to the local communities and refugees. That established trust between the museum personnel and the communities, which included internally displaced people that required assistance in adapting to their new surrounding and social status.
At the same time, documenting the ongoing war by the teams of regional local lore museums and the War Museum helped establish trust between the researchers and the military, including veterans and the families of the fallen soldiers, which at present are a rather inclusive hermetic group. The further challenge will be to become trustworthy mediators between the veterans and the society, as well as platforms for open discussion regarding social and cultural unity of the Ukrainian society.
Biogprahy of Milena Chorna
An art historian and a cultural heritage expert. Co-founder and Head of the Ukrainian Museum Association. At present works as an expert of the subgroup on safeguarding cultural heritage of Ukraine at the European Commission. Volunteered for the Museum Crisis Center (March 2022 - January 2023). An expert on cultural heritage of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation since 2020. Guest lecturer at the Kyiv-Mohyla School of Government named after Andriy Meleshkevych on "Tourism and preservation of cultural heritage". Master’s degree in Journalism and in Art history.
Authored over 40 scholarly articles and three white papers. Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (art critic).
More about the Ukrainian Museum Association
The Ukrainian Museum Association recently joined the Network of European Museum Organisations and in connection, NEMO asked a few questions about their reasons for joining. We would like to share Milena’s responses in full below since only a snippet could be included in the social media welcome under #NEMOmember.
Why did you decide to join NEMO?
‘We, a number of national museums, were planning on joining NEMO in 2021, but by the end of the year there was already the feeling that a full-scale war was about to break, so we were forced to focus on urgent matters of getting ready to face the challenge. Sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we lost... Since then we've developed a strong network of institutional contacts on national, regional and local levels, as collegial support was and remains the main key for museum survival in Ukraine nowadays. Through 2022-2023 we've upgraded our operational skills and learned to deal with force-majeure circumstances, and in 2024, after acknowledging the fact that the war might take years to win, we started reflecting on how much we require improving our scholarly and exhibition methods, revising our museum narratives, and forming sustainable and trustworthy partnerships with our colleagues abroad. In order to do that jointly we've established the Ukrainian Museum Association.
European museums and cultural heritage institutions were extremely helpful to us since the start of the full-scale invasion by providing us with packing materials to rescue and safeguard our museum collections, and now we would like to express our gratitude by sharing our experience of museum work during wartime so that our European colleagues would be best prepared for such challenges, which hopefully they will never have to face. At the same time, Ukraine being a part of European history and culture for centuries and having proved that we are adamant in protecting our shared values, it is extremely relevant for Ukrainian museums and cultural heritage institutions to reintegrate into the European cultural context, and joining NEMO is not only a privilege, but the best way to fulfil that mission.’
What are you looking forward to the most from being a NEMO member?
‘Ukrainian museums at present are facing numerous challenges not only of technical/material nature, but strategic ones - revising colonial, Soviet and post-Soviet narratives; researching and developing museum audiences; engaging local communities in safeguarding cultural heritage; integrating innovational technologies into museum exhibitions, and many others. Thus we require upgrading our professional skills, and we are very much looking forward to doing so together with NEMO. At the same time, Ukrainian museum collections have numerous precious artifacts, which prove Ukraine to be a part of European history and culture for centuries, thus networking in order to reintegrate into the European cultural context would be highly appreciated and could be insightful for our European museum colleagues as well.’
