"A burden or an easy loot? The Ukrainian museum crisis" Żanna Komar

Directors of the most important Ukrainian museum institutions are being frantically replaced.

This operation is causing extremely emotional reactions, and periodicals abound with such titles as “cultural revolution”, “museum conspiracy” or “museum war”. It all started in Crimea where during the summer of 2011, new directors were appointed to Vorontsov Palace (the Alupka Palace-Park Museum-Reserve), the Bakhchysarai State Historical and Cultural Reserve, the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos, the picturesque Swallow’s Nest castle and the famous Livadia Palace.

January 2012 brought similar changes to Kyiv’s national museums: the National Preserve of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the largest Ukrainian complex of this type, the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine, the National Preserve of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko. The causes of the previous directors’ dismissals are unclear, and the decision-makers have no intention of explaining the reasons for or the expected benefits of these moves for institutions, visitors or society as a whole. On the Ministry of Culture’s website, the changes have been dealt with in very general terms – marketing inefficiency of the previous management, as well as the need to rejuvenate the staff. Under this pretext, the museum world of Ukraine has been “beheaded” and the new managers, appointed in order to take up the challenges of the new era, as it is exaltingly put, are people with various backgrounds, with limited or nonexistent experience of the museum world.

This is all set against a backdrop of the increasing mistrust of society towards the government, which has made many blunders in other areas. It is commonly believed that the current Ukrainian regime is a practical instrument for achieving the personal goals of the new elites.

Museums are in an especially dangerous situation. Three possible motivations for change are suggested in the numerous comments on the museum revolution. Most obviously, it is said that museums are attractive properties on large, attractive, and very expensive pieces of land, and the whole operation is aimed at making “dereban” easier. “Dereban” is a word which entered the political vocabulary of post-Soviet countries in the 1990s and means legally dubious acts by the government resulting in stateowned property – real estate, companies, land, budgetary resources – ending up in private hands. The term is borrowed from the Soviet criminal slang where it means the “division of the stolen loot”.

There is another motivation, particularly visible in Kyiv, which we may call ecclesiastical. This is based on the growing ambitions of one of the Orthodox Churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is expansive and hungry for privileges.

The third reason for replacing museum directors, as suggested by commentators, is connected with the attempt at “putting on the market” the national treasures hidden in museum collections or allowing unhampered and uncontrolled access to the exhibits.

The spectre of commoditisation of museum resources is rampant in Europe and is becoming a peculiar feature of the times we are living in. The question remains where such ideas will actually take shape. The political situation in today’s Ukraine seems perfectly suited for such experiments. A “pioneering” attempt at turning museums into department stores or banking vaults, as experts on the socalled art management would have it, could be successful. Some of these experts have found their way into training sessions and conferences held under the auspices of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture. In October 2011 the ministry quietly organised some training for managers of cultural institutions, without the participation of museum workers, under the intriguing title: “Practical actions for introducing cultural values into financial and economic transactions of the state”.

The centrepiece of the system intended by ministry officials, who eagerly listen to the sirens’ call, is the unambiguous message that if the dustcoated collections remain outside the realm of “financial and economic transactions”, they will constitute an increasingly heavy burden on the government, and will become of no use at all. It is striking that such a notion coexists with the post-Soviet model of thinking about culture, still alive and kicking after two decades of Ukrainian independence.

It is difficult to ascertain which of the three motivations plays the most decisive role for the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, and even if we do manage to find the answer, it may turn out that it is an issue of secondary importance. The evolution of a system has its stages and each of these stages exhibits some logic, even if this logic may seem peculiar. We simply have to put it behind us. It is said that touching the bottom often becomes a turning point, sometimes necessary for society to perceive the need for new standards. But today the risks seem enormous, as we are dealing with works of art, invaluable national and cultural landscapes, and monuments of history. What more do we need to put at stake for future generations to be able to say that such was the price of Ukrainian transformation?

Żanna Komar – PhD, born in Ukraine, lives in Poland, art historian, theoretician of architecture, and museum curator, member of the academic staff at the Institute of European Heritage, part of the International Cultural Centre in Kraków. Author of numerous publications on the history of architecture and art, including the book „Trzecie miasto Galicji. Stanisławów i jego architektura w okresie autonomii galicyjskiej” [The third city of Galicia. Stanisławów and its architecture in the period of Galician autonomy, 2008]. She writes about Art Nouveau, historicism, modernism, contemporary art, and totalitarian and modern architecture in present‑day Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.