Are museum treasures still intact?

After night clashes on January 25-26, when protesters in European Square forced police to leave the Ukrainian House, the focus turned to the Museum of History of Kyiv’s storage rooms. When protesters entered them, they saw doors to the storage rooms open, and some boxes, which hold exhibits, unsealed. To find out if everything was in right order, the museum’s employees came to the scene. Experts have not been able to give a precise answer yet, because they need a few months to check on the collection, as exhibits are in boxes, requiring removal and careful examination to be checked. MPs, who were also present during the inspection of storage rooms, were more emotional. They shared their experiences in social media and called the police “looters.”

“At first glance, nothing is missing or has disappeared,” the museum’s deputy director Kateryna Romanova, who was among the first to come to the scene, told The Day. “It seems that the police were looking for an escape route to exit the room. The storage room which they opened housed everyday objects from various epochs, from the 18th to the 20th century. These include books, glassware, metal goods which we have collected since the museum’s foundation in 1982. We do not want to put a monetary value on these things, because for us, their greatest value is in their cultural and historical significance, as we show spirituality, culture and life of Kyiv through museum exhibits. Loss of these objects would mean loss of interesting pages of the capital’s history.”

Protesters are now guarding entrance to the fourth and fifth floors of the Ukrainian House where storage rooms are. The museum and the building’s revolutionary governors have signed an agreement to that effect. The Interior Ministry spokesperson Serhii Burlakov, for his part, said that the police’s involvement into setting storage rooms open had not been proven yet, and the first who entered these rooms, in his opinion, were the museum’s employees.

As soon as January 26, the ministry posted a statement on its website denying that any troops or students of its academy had been stationed at the Ukrainian House, and claiming some other police units had been there. It did not name these units, but for some reason, we find it hard to believe that the museum’s own employees are to blame for harming the collection. They face far more pressing issues now, and one of the most important is finding a perfect accommodation for the museum, which would have enough space for the collection and exhibition rooms alike.

Let us recall that the collection of the Museum of History of Kyiv has been stored in the Ukrainian House for about a decade. Two years ago, the museum moved to a new building at 7 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street which was originally built as a shopping center. However, it moved without its treasures, as its entire collection still remains at the Ukrainian House, for the new premises cannot accommodate them.

“When we were working at the Ukrainian House, these rooms allowed us to safeguard the collection, for there was a required temperature and humidity there. It would be better, though, if the museum and its collection were in one place,” Romanova concluded.