Latest news with #museumworkers
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Inside the ghost museums of Ukraine: exhibits replaced by fragments of war and occupation
The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country. When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage. Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door – but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare early 18th-century volume of the gospels – one of only three of its type – that museum workers had spirited away and hidden. The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point re-glazing the windows while the city is hit night after night by missiles. The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from German invaders during the second world war when the museum and its collection were almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding. At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half of its 40,000 pre-invasion number. But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city's shattered historical buildings. They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms ('loft style', she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests. 'We are trying preserve memories, to fix them,' she says. 'To show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it – and how it looks now.' On display are paintings by local artists, and photography by soldiers stationed nearby, part of a nascent collection of audio, video and images from the military that the museum is amassing. One room holds a display devoted to significant local individuals. One is the murdered children's writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who buried his diary of life under occupation beneath a cherry tree in his village before being arrested and shot dead. Another is 'a firefighter who was also delivering aid around the city, who died as a result of a cluster bomb'. Ivanova says: 'He was my neighbour and I knew him all his life; I saw him born and I saw him die.' She is also building a 'museum of occupation': collecting objects left by the invaders. 'So there is proof of their presence here – and proof of the crimes they committed.' Some of this new collection is on display. There is part of a cluster munition rocket; the uniforms and helmets of Russians, as well as those from their proxy state, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic; Russian ration packs and cigarettes – 'brands I haven't seen since I smoked them 30 years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union', says Ivanova. Antique-looking crutches and superannuated tourniquets attest to the out-of-date supplies of some of the invading army. There are aid packs branded as donated by the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod; school textbooks for primary-age children showing Russia as the motherland and Moscow as 'the capital of our country'; and fragments of a stone-carved memorial erected to mark the grave of a Russian colonel 'that shows', says Ivanova, 'that they thought they were going to stay for ever'. Propaganda news sheets are on display, as is a photograph of a visit by a prominent Russian propagandist surrounded by local collaborators. 'One is in Russia, one is being searched for by police here, and the two women are in prison,' says Ivanova. There is evidence of some bleak humour: a homemade Russian medal crudely carved from a piece of wood and awarded 'for all this shit'. The Izium museum is not the only such institution to be in a vulnerable position. Farther south, in the Donetsk region, lies the great monastery complex of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, rising dramatically up from the cliffs above the Siverskyi Donets River. The site, which has medieval origins, is shared between monks and nuns of the Ukrainian Orthodox church and has a museum run by the Ukrainian state. (The church, which has historic ties to Moscow, declared its formal separation from the Russian Orthodox church in 2022, though many observers consider the separation incomplete or ambiguous.) Displaced people are living in buildings that form part of the estate, some of whom have been here since 2014, when the conflict first broke out in the region. Yaroslava Diedova, the museum's deputy director, lost her boss to the Russian invaders. The director and her family were killed when their car was hit by a missile as they tried to evacuate. Four monks were also killed when a missile smashed into one of the monastery's accommodation blocks in March 2022, and three construction workers died in a later attack, says the monastery's Fr Trofim. The town of Sviatohirsk, across the river from the monastery, was occupied by the Russians in June 2022 and the bridge linking them was blown up; when Diedova came back to work after it was recaptured by Ukraine that September, it was an 11km walk to work via another bridge, until they organised a boat and finally a new bridge was built. On a hill next to the monastery's great rock stands a 22-metre high concrete sculpture of Artyom – the nickname of the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev. The colossal statue became a Ukrainian reconnaissance and gun position, and the area around it is heavily mined. The sculpture, scarred by shrapnel, is exempted from Ukraine's decommunisation laws – which would otherwise demand its removal – because of its status as a significant artwork by the early 20th-century Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze. These days, part of the job of the museum, says Diedova, is to host creative workshops for refugee children living at the monastery, as well as guided tours for soldiers, 'because it's important to show them what they are actually fighting for. Those who come from the region have generally visited as children, but now there are soldiers from all across Ukraine here.' Sometimes the soldiers pause to pray in the churches, 'then they come here to the museum and drink tea and talk; there is a chance for a sort of psychological unloading', says the new director, Ihor Saletskiy. 'Compared to some of the museums in the Donetsk region, who can transport their collection anywhere, we are a little different. Our main objects are the caves, the churches – not movable things. That's why we're staying here, and working with the monastery,' he says. Back in Izium, despite the general air of ruin, the fountains are working in the park and school leavers, dressed in their prom outfits, are posing for photographs against the backdrop of their once-handsome school, now a battered shell. 'We are living as we lived before: the only difference is that we have to run for the basement at night,' says Ivanova. Compared with the hunger, terror and isolation of life under occupation, she says, it is nothing. 'There is always the possibility that the Russians will come again,' she says. 'If they do, this time it will be like Bakhmut: they will erase it.' The work of the museum is, she says, 'to save the city in some way – if necessary, in people's memories'.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Inside the ghost museums of Ukraine: exhibits replaced by fragments of war and occupation
The museum of local history in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium has, like the community around it, endured much since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country. When Izium was bitterly fought over in early 2022 at the start of the Russian assault, the 19th-century building suffered two direct hits from missiles that blew out the roof and led to flood damage. Under occupation from March to September 2022, a Russian guard was posted on the door – but invaders never transported its collection any deeper behind Russian lines, or found the rare early 18th-century volume of the gospels – one of only three of its type – that museum workers had spirited away and hidden. The museum is now back in Ukrainian hands but remains in a fragile, vulnerable state, uncomfortably close to the frontline and the threat of reoccupation. The roof is repaired, says the director, Halyna Ivanova, but there is no point re-glazing the windows while the city is hit night after night by missiles. The bulk of the collection has now been safely evacuated and its precious volume of the gospels, which was also concealed from German invaders during the second world war when the museum and its collection were almost completely destroyed, is being conserved after its time in hiding. At the moment, the institution is a kind of ghost museum. Its collection is absent; its doors are closed to the public because of the danger of attacks; and its community, whose collective memory it holds, has shrunk to half of its 40,000 pre-invasion number. But there is still much work to do, says Ivanova. The museum staff now run walking tours of the city's shattered historical buildings. They host temporary exhibitions inside damaged rooms ('loft style', she jokes, of the rough walls and improvised feel), even if its visitors are now confined to local military personnel and invited guests. 'We are trying preserve memories, to fix them,' she says. 'To show people how the city was before the war, what has happened to it – and how it looks now.' On display are paintings by local artists, and photography by soldiers stationed nearby, part of a nascent collection of audio, video and images from the military that the museum is amassing. One room holds a display devoted to significant local individuals. One is the murdered children's writer Volodymyr Vakulenko, who buried his diary of life under occupation beneath a cherry tree in his village before being arrested and shot dead. Another is 'a firefighter who was also delivering aid around the city, who died as a result of a cluster bomb'. Ivanova says: 'He was my neighbour and I knew him all his life; I saw him born and I saw him die.' She is also building a 'museum of occupation': collecting objects left by the invaders. 'So there is proof of their presence here – and proof of the crimes they committed.' Some of this new collection is on display. There is part of a cluster munition rocket; the uniforms and helmets of Russians, as well as those from their proxy state, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic; Russian ration packs and cigarettes – 'brands I haven't seen since I smoked them 30 years ago before the fall of the Soviet Union', says Ivanova. Antique-looking crutches and superannuated tourniquets attest to the out-of-date supplies of some of the invading army. There are aid packs branded as donated by the Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod; school textbooks for primary-age children showing Russia as the motherland and Moscow as 'the capital of our country'; and fragments of a stone-carved memorial erected to mark the grave of a Russian colonel 'that shows', says Ivanova, 'that they thought they were going to stay for ever'. Propaganda news sheets are on display, as is a photograph of a visit by a prominent Russian propagandist surrounded by local collaborators. 'One is in Russia, one is being searched for by police here, and the two women are in prison,' says Ivanova. There is evidence of some bleak humour: a homemade Russian medal crudely carved from a piece of wood and awarded 'for all this shit'. The Izium museum is not the only such institution to be in a vulnerable position. Farther south, in the Donetsk region, lies the great monastery complex of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, rising dramatically up from the cliffs above the Siverskyi Donets River. The site, which has medieval origins, is shared between monks and nuns of the Ukrainian Orthodox church and has a museum run by the Ukrainian state. (The church, which has historic ties to Moscow, declared its formal separation from the Russian Orthodox church in 2022, though many observers consider the separation incomplete or ambiguous.) Displaced people are living in buildings that form part of the estate, some of whom have been here since 2014, when the conflict first broke out in the region. Yaroslava Diedova, the museum's deputy director, lost her boss to the Russian invaders. The director and her family were killed when their car was hit by a missile as they tried to evacuate. Four monks were also killed when a missile smashed into one of the monastery's accommodation blocks in March 2022, and three construction workers died in a later attack, says the monastery's Fr Trofim. The town of Sviatohirsk, across the river from the monastery, was occupied by the Russians in June 2022 and the bridge linking them was blown up; when Diedova came back to work after it was recaptured by Ukraine that September, it was an 11km walk to work via another bridge, until they organised a boat and finally a new bridge was built. On a hill next to the monastery's great rock stands a 22-metre high concrete sculpture of Artyom – the nickname of the Bolshevik revolutionary Fyodor Sergeyev. The colossal statue became a Ukrainian reconnaissance and gun position, and the area around it is heavily mined. The sculpture, scarred by shrapnel, is exempted from Ukraine's decommunisation laws – which would otherwise demand its removal – because of its status as a significant artwork by the early 20th-century Ukrainian sculptor Ivan Kavaleridze. These days, part of the job of the museum, says Diedova, is to host creative workshops for refugee children living at the monastery, as well as guided tours for soldiers, 'because it's important to show them what they are actually fighting for. Those who come from the region have generally visited as children, but now there are soldiers from all across Ukraine here.' Sometimes the soldiers pause to pray in the churches, 'then they come here to the museum and drink tea and talk; there is a chance for a sort of psychological unloading', says the new director, Ihor Saletskiy. 'Compared to some of the museums in the Donetsk region, who can transport their collection anywhere, we are a little different. Our main objects are the caves, the churches – not movable things. That's why we're staying here, and working with the monastery,' he says. Back in Izium, despite the general air of ruin, the fountains are working in the park and school leavers, dressed in their prom outfits, are posing for photographs against the backdrop of their once-handsome school, now a battered shell. 'We are living as we lived before: the only difference is that we have to run for the basement at night,' says Ivanova. Compared with the hunger, terror and isolation of life under occupation, she says, it is nothing. 'There is always the possibility that the Russians will come again,' she says. 'If they do, this time it will be like Bakhmut: they will erase it.' The work of the museum is, she says, 'to save the city in some way – if necessary, in people's memories'.
Daily Mail
23-06-2025
- Daily Mail
Fury in Italy as tourist tears a hole in 18th century painting while posing for a selfie at Florence's Uffizi Gallery
A careless tourist sparked fury in Italy after he damaged a priceless 18th century painting while trying to take a selfie. The unnamed culprit had been enjoying a visit to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence when his day out took a turn for the worse. The man decided to try and capture a picture of himself mimicking the pose of Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, in a portrait by Anton Domenico Gabbiani. But, the visitor's bright idea soon became an embarrassing blunder when he lost his balance. The man stumbled backward, falling against the portrait and leaving a hole at the level of the prince's right boot. Museum staff were quick to identify the man and reported him to the police for causing the damage. The painting was removed for repair, with experts concluding that the damage was relatively minor. The incident occurred on Saturday in the ground-floor rooms hosting the Florence and Europe: Arts of the 18th Century at the Uffizi exhibition, the first under the gallery's new director, Simone Verde. A trade union representing museum workers said the tourist had tripped on a low platform intended to keep visitors at an appropriate distance from the paintings. The unnamed culprit had been visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, at the weekend when his day out took a turn for the worse. The man decided to try and capture a picture of himself mimicking the pose of Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, in an 18th-century portrait by Anton Domenico Gabbiani But, the visitor's bright idea soon became an embarrassing blunder when he lost his balance while trying to strike the same pose as de' Medici It had previously raised concerns to the museum authorities after another visitor had tripped but without causing any damage. 'Visitors are looking at the paintings, not at the ground. Those platforms are unsuitable and too dark,' said Silvia Barlacchi, a staff representative. Verde said: 'The problem of visitors coming to museums to make memes or take selfies for social media is rampant: we will set very precise limits, preventing behaviour that is not compatible with the sense of our institutions and respect for cultural heritage. The tourist, who was immediately identified, will be prosecuted.' The incident isn't the only embarrassing accident to be caused by visitors behaving irresponsibly in Italian museums recently. Earlier this month, a tourist was caught on CCTV sitting on a crystal-studded 'Van Gogh' chair exhibit in an Italian art gallery - before it buckled under him. The chair, which is named after the famous Dutch painter, is housed in the Maffei Palace, Verona, and is covered with hundreds of Swarovski crystals. It was designed by Italian artist Nicola Bolla and is described by local media as being 'extremely fragile and delicate'. The incident occurred on Saturday in the ground-floor rooms hosting the Florence and Europe: Arts of the 18th Century at the Uffizi exhibition, the first under the gallery's new director, Simone Verde. Pictured: People waiting at the courtyard to visit Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy However, it appears that while admiring the art, a tourist spotted their opportunity for a photo with no security around - without regard for the chair's condition. In the shocking footage, a man and woman can be seen posing with the eye-catching chair in the otherwise empty room. As the man takes the woman's photo, she leans in front of the the chair in order to create the illusion in the photograph that she is sitting on it. But the man took this one step further and can be seen hovering above the exhibit, before placing himself down on it. The chair immediately bends back into the wall and is left in a crooked state as the pair scurry out of the room. In the aftermath of the incident, the museum's social media accounts released a statement describing the 'nightmare' situation. They said: 'Every museum's nightmare has become reality, even in Palazzo Maffei. 'Waiting for the surveillance officers to come out, some visitors took an "in effect" photo. 'The result? An irresponsible gesture caused serious damage to Nicola Bolla's "Van Gogh" chair, a very delicate work, covered entirely with hundreds of Swarovski crystals.' It was designed by Italian artist Nicola Bolla and is described by local media as being 'extremely fragile and delicate'. Pictured: The crystal-studded art is is left in a crooked state as the pair scurry out of the room The museum was in crisis for days as it was unsure whether they could repair it, given the severity of the damage. But thanks to 'restorers who did a fantastic job' and Italian law enforcement who assisted in their efforts, the museum has said 'the piece is shining once again'. They added: 'We are sharing this episode not only for the sake of reporting, but to start a real campaign to raise awareness about the value of art and the respect it deserves. 'A heartfelt thank you goes to the police, our security department and the restaurateurs, whose valuable work allowed the recovery of the work. 'And a special thank you to all of you who walk through the museum halls every day with care, attention and wonder. 'Because art is not just for seeing. It is to be loved. It is to be protected.' This incident is just one in a long line of tourists behaving badly while visiting the historic and beautiful destinations of Italy. Whether it's defacing and desecrating ancient relics, or causing a public nuisance, many have even faced fines for their antics and have faced the wrath of the Italian authorities.
Telegraph
13-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Museums put trigger warning on manual about trigger warnings
A group of museums have put a trigger warning on a new training manual about trigger warnings. The 'trigger toolkit' provides advice on how to prevent heritage sector workers becoming traumatised in training sessions. The manual suggests issuing content warnings to alert staff to any upsetting material, ranging from 'Islamphobia' to 'transphobia' and 'colonialism'. But the document has itself been given a trigger warning, cautioning readers about its own 'potentially triggering content'. The guidance was shared by Museum Development North, a heritage sector organisation that works in partnership with Arts Council England. The manual was produced to help staff in the heritage sector handle material relating to British history, and periods in which 'intolerant, discriminatory, and offensive attitudes and behaviours were significantly more prevalent than they are today '. The guidance warns that museum workers will inevitably have to discuss 'material which represents a break with the diverse social and cultural landscape of the present day '. It states that this may be emotionally triggering, and some workers may not be able to 'comfortably engage with the material at hand'. The manual urges museum bosses to clearly signpost any material that could be emotionally disturbing, and provides a list of topics that could be upsetting. These topics include 'classism', 'politics', 'policing', 'transmisogyny', and 'genomics' – the study of an organism's genetic structure. The guidance also advises museum workers to flag triggering content in all emails, discussions, presentations, and training materials. It adds that staff can recognise if material is triggering by the reaction to it, including people 'crying'. If a training session has been particularly triggering, psychological aftercare should be provided to any upset participants. The guidance states: 'Preventing triggers from happening is the most effective and inclusive way of demonstrating an active commitment to your training participants' mental health and psychological wellbeing.' Trigger warnings have become widespread across British universities and the publishing industry. In 2024, The Telegraph revealed that new editions of the James Bond novels and Agatha Christie mysteries had been given printed trigger warnings alerting readers to potentially outdated and racist attitudes in the books. Passages of these books were also rewritten ahead of release to remove words that could be deemed offensive. The Telegraph has previously revealed that Works by Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, EM Forster and PG Wodehouse have been given trigger warnings, cautioning readers about their more antiquated contents. In higher education, students have been alerted to the potentially upsetting nature of literary works from Beowulf to the novels of Thomas Hardy.
