Curating the war: exhibiting objects left by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

This article was first published by The Guardian.

National Museum of History of Ukraine swaps ancient history displays for depictions of horrors of war through artefacts retrieved from formerly occupied areas.

On 24 February 2022, the day Russia mounted its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Oleksandr Lukianov went to work – but it was anything but a normal day at the office.

He and a small group of colleagues at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv, where he is senior researcher, hurriedly started to dismantle the exhibits, sending some objects to safer locations in the west of the country, and storing others in the basement. The group of curators ended up living in the building for two months.

At one point he looked out of the museum’s huge windows, which overlook the Dnipro valley from on high, to see bursts of light in the sky: a Russian helicopter being hit. As the days wore on, “I could hear the shots and bangs coming from Irpin and Bucha,” he said, referring to the nearby towns that Russian forces occupied in the early weeks of the invasion.

@UK_ICOM