The team of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, with the support of the Rafael Lemkin Society, has begun creating an electronic catalog of the museum’s stock collection. Most of the museum’s exhibits were destroyed as a result of the Russian invasion, and the surviving artifacts were illegally exported by the occupiers.
The effort to document the lost collection aims not only to preserve valuable monuments of Ukrainian culture and art in digital form but also to contribute to the investigation of Russian crimes against Ukraine’s cultural heritage. Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore has become a stark example of Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage and manipulation of historical narratives. Russian bombings and subsequent fires ravaged the museum’s buildings and destroyed unique exhibits. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda falsely claimed that the museum’s collection was lost, while in reality, the surviving artifacts were transported to occupied Donetsk. The exact number of lost exhibits remains unknown. Among the stolen artworks are paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky (At the Shores of the Caucasus) and Arkhip Kuindzhi (Red Sunset (sketch) and Autumn in Crimea).
The electronic catalog will systematically document the objects that were stored and studied at the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore. It will include data on artistic, ethnographic, archaeological, documentary, and other collections, making this information accessible to a broad audience. The catalog will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, art historians, and researchers, while also providing critical evidence for investigations into crimes against cultural heritage. Furthermore, it will help protect the surviving part of the collection from further displacement or destruction.
Symbolically, on February 6, 2025, the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore will celebrate its 105th anniversary. As of early 2022, the museum’s collection comprised approximately 60,000 items, including significant art, archaeological, and ethnographic pieces that reflected the culture and history of the Donetsk region. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine devastated these achievements. Today, the museum operates in exile, working to digitally reconstruct its valuable collection.
The electronic catalog is being developed in collaboration with the Rafael Lemkin Society, HeMo: Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Laboratory, the Museum of Contemporary Art NGO, and the Artory technical team. The project is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.