Университетские музеи Украины: стадия возрождения

Abstract

University Museums of Ukraine: the revival stage

Liliya Kazantseva

PhD, Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University

Young Section UMAC in Ukraine, which was created only in 2011, set a goal to change societal attitudes towards university collections for their conservation. To do this we are exploring the world experience to overcome the problems of volume, typology and current savings of academic heritage, the basic needs of museums. In addition, we pay much attention to promotion of university museums and their educational work, looking for partners for interdisciplinary research in the collections.

By the beginning of 2012 a total of 495 museums and collections housed in 147 educational establishments in Ukraine had been mapped. Just 96 of these also cover the history of the educational establishments, and only 180 have their own websites. The museums are also trying to raise the level of education of employees who are dealing with collections. Unfortunately, because we are confronted with mistrust, we have to unite ourselves as many preserved collections have the sad experience from the past with the collections of regional museums being scattered and most valuable exhibits removed from regional museums to the central museums. We hope that we will overcome temporary difficulties in the future and the collections of unique national university will become more accessible, understandable and useful not only to the Ukrainian community, but also the world community. It is important for a museum or collection to be widely known and frequented and influential because a combination of these factors makes its status more secure. And we have much to be proud of – the history of education in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years. Contact with Estonia and the University of Tartu dates back at least two hundred years.