“ FILLING BLIND SPOTS 2.0: NEW NARRATIVES AND THE ROLE OF MUSEUMS IN THE RECOVERY OF UKRAINE”.

“ FILLING BLIND SPOTS 2.0: NEW NARRATIVES AND THE ROLE OF MUSEUMS IN THE RECOVERY OF UKRAINE”.

This was the title of a conference held in Warsaw (Poland) on November 4-5, organized by the Polish OBMIN Foundation, which has been supporting Ukrainian museums in preserving cultural heritage since the first days of the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The main topics of the conference were: defining new narratives, discussing issues of museum decolonization, the role of museums in the recovery of Ukraine, and the implementation of the electronic accounting system of the Museum Fund of Ukraine.

As Malgozhata Lavrovska von Tadden – the founder of the OBMIN Foundation – noted, museums in Ukraine continue to suffer significant losses due to the actions of Russia, which is trying to destroy Ukrainian cultural heritage and identity. Therefore, it is particularly important that museums establish cooperation and support each other, strengthen international ties in order to find ways to overcome the challenges facing Ukrainian cultural heritage.

The conference gathered representatives of about 130 museums from all over Ukraine. In addition to Ukrainian museum workers, there were also representatives of partner institutions from Poland, Germany and other countries. Anastasia Bondar, Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitization, took part in the conference.

The Khortytsia National Reserve shared its experience of preservation and research of archaeological monuments in the conditions of martial law and the consequences of the Kakhovka HPP explosion. The report of Svitlana Okhrimenko within the intervention “Museums have a voice” revealed the main directions of reserve’s work on preservation of archaeological monuments in 2022 – 2024. The speech was held within the panel: Challenges for museums in the 21st century: how to respond to the changing needs of society.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the organizers and colleagues for the fruitful cooperation and the opportunity to discuss common problems and find ways to solve them!

Thank you @OBMIN for your continued support of the Reserve.