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The “Arsenal SOS/Museum Collection” project aims to prove to the general public that Mystetsky Arsenal (MA) museum with an enormous repository. It will be recalled that the General Affairs Department (DUS) excluded last March such important divisions as Museum and Construction Directorate from this institution’s statute. This endangers the very existence of Mystetsky Arsenal’s collection that numbers over 3,000 items. Another aspect that outraged the MA team and the public is a delay in advertising a vacancy for this institution’s director general.

“WE WILL ONLY CALM DOWN WHEN WE SEE THE STATUTE’S FINAL VERSION”

The opening of the Mystetsky Arsenal exhibit drew a lot of museum people, artists, public activists, and even DUS and Minister of Culture representatives. They debated on the institution’s future for about two hours among the chimerical Ukrainian avant-garde works by Anatolii Petrytsky, Viktor Palmov, and Vasyl Yermilov.

As a result, the DUS people promised not to exclude the Museum item from the Arsenal’s statute. The officials also promised to advertise the director’s vacancy, but they failed to name a concrete date because this depends on the explanations the DUS is supposed to receive from the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Culture, and the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Spirituality.

“The General Affairs Department insists that deleting the museum clause from the Arsenal’s statute is a misunderstanding. I wish it were so,” says Olha Melnyk, in charge of MA’s museum development section, sharing her impressions of the meeting. “Should the Arsenal change its statute, we will lose the right to keep items from the State Museum Fund. We will have then to request the Ministry of Culture, the fund’s manager, to advise us about the museum to which we should hand over our collection. And, accordingly, we will never be able to launch a museum project here. Yet there was a very positive atmosphere at the meeting, so I am inclined to believe the assurances to keep the museum clause intact. But we will only calm down when we see the statute’s final version.”

ANOTHER 15,000 OBJECTS NEED TO BE ATTRIBUTED

Mystetsky Arsenal began to form its collection in 2007. The first arrivals were 62 works by the Ukrainian-born American artist Yurii Solovii. “The Arsenal, then under construction, faced the question of how to keep these museum-related artworks on legitimate grounds,” Melnyk recalls. “We searched for a way out for a long time and concluded that we needed a museum. But as the Arsenal reflects different cultural initiatives, we decided to classify this direction as a separate structural division. Thus a museum was established inside Mystetsky Arsenal. This supposedly departmental institution has the right to keep objects from the Museum Fund of Ukraine and form a collection of its own.”

In addition to MA’s basic holdings, about 15,000 objects still need to be attributed scientifically. For, as Melnyk explains, a lot of archeological artifacts have been found on the national complex’s territory. The Arsenal’s collection considerably stacked up last fall. Valeria Virska, collector Ihor Dychenko’s widow, handed over his collection to the state – it is kept at MA now. This means hundreds of valuable artworks by, particularly, Kazimir Malevich, Mykhailo Boichuk, and Salvador Dali.

“We have no problem-solving deadlines now. But we go on supporting Mystetsky Arsenal. And, whatever happens to the [director’s vacancy] announcement, let us not stop the action, for the Arsenal needs to be expanded,” MA director general Natalia Zabolotna says. “Enough shame! We are supporting this institution, having a scanty team, meager salaries and funds. This year we won a 25-million-hryvnia state investment bidding. Even if we receive these 25 million annually, we will be building the Arsenal for 40 years. So let us insist on funding because culture is a subsidy-dependent but indispensable sphere. Let us always support the Arsenal.”

The Day will watch the way the DUS keeps its promises. Meanwhile, one can see 15th-18th-century archeological artifacts, avant-garde and prominent contemporary Ukrainian artists’ works at the “Arsenal SOS/Museum Collection” exhibit that will remain open until April 16.