Emily Janas

LIS 806_01
Collections Management: Cataloging Art Objects
Current Event Assignment

Exhibition at National Art Museum of the Ukraine illustrates heroes, saints, martyrs, and heroic deeds
01/02/2015

In the beginning of 2013, The National Art Museum of Ukraine began to sort out its
storage facility in the hopes to refresh its display collections. A typical mission for a museum, but
an unexpected revolution in February of 2014 made the museum rethink its objective. Instead of
simply updating and restoring the current collections, the institution felt it was important to
remind Ukraine of its common history. The idea soon came to German museology expert, Dr.
Michael Fehr, to help NAMU create an exhibit depicting various heroes of Ukraine. The idea
was to include artifacts that illustrate heroes of all political ideals, special interest groups and
cultural movements. Luckily, the museums extensively descriptive inventory made the project
extremely easy for Dr. Fehr and the National Art Museum of Ukraine curatorial staff.
Inclusivity was a central idea to this new collection, with a goal to generate discussions
between people with opposite ideas on which individuals were considered heroic in Ukraines
history. Included in the collection are artifacts which represent cultural icons such as Ukrainian
poet, Taras Shevchenko, controversial Ukrainian nationalist and political activist, Stepan
Bandera, and certain ruthless leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. The collection
comprises of 180 works, all entirely from the museums own holdings. Interestingly, the museum
had the opportunity to select such works out of approximately 650 paintings and sculptures, all
of which were filed with a heroic or martyr subject heading.
The fact that the National Art Museum of Ukraine was able to create such a noteworthy
exhibit so quickly proves the importance of thorough descriptive cataloging. Roughly 650

paintings and sculptures were related to the term heroic out of hundreds more of other artifacts
in the museum holdings. It would be difficult to imagine the exhausting process of doing a
physical inventory for such a large institution without proper descriptive cataloging. After the
Ukrainian revolution of February 2014, Dr. Michael Fehr and NAMU would still have the
aspiration to unite Ukraine symbolically through the creation of such an exhibit, but without the
comprehensive inventory, the collection would result in one of two ways. Either the collection
would exhibit quickly afterward with high interest in the display, yet include appropriate, but
lackluster, artifacts. Or, the exhibit would include an interesting and thought-provoking variety of
pieces, but go on display long after the fire of the recent revolution has extinguished.
In the former situation, the NAMU staff would be able to put together a quick display of
items that are cataloged under heroic or martyr, yet would miss out on probably hundreds of
items from which to choose. What makes this current exhibit so fascinating is the amount of
options in pieces. As previously mentioned, out of 650 superb pieces, the staff selected only 180
of the best, most stimulating ones. This adds significantly to the exhibits power in uniting
Ukrainian societies. In the latter scenario, without such exhaustive descriptive cataloging, the
exhibit would end up as it is today, yet it would most likely take another year to find and select
the most inspiring pieces. In the wake of such significant events as a presidential overthrow and
constitutional restoration, the National Art Museum of Ukraine was fortunate to have such a
large and comprehensively cataloged inventory of remarkable paintings and sculptures of heroes
and martyrs from the past 400 years.
http://artdaily.com/news/75448/Exhibition-at-National-Art-Museum-of-the-Ukraine-illustrates-heroes-saints--martyrs--and-heroic-deeds#.VNeOs_nF9Dw