Implementation of the Main Museums' Functions and Art Projects of the Occupation Authorities in Ukraine from 1941 to 1943

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to research the implementation processes of the main museums' functions by visual arts museums' staff with the participation of the occupation authorities in Ukraine during the World War Two, to research the Ukrainian art museum workers' activities guided by the occupation authorities from a scientific point of view, or, seen as the implementation of the occupation art projects. The methodology of research lies in the application of a historical method that allows studying the origin and the development of the historical processes and events in their chronological order with the goal of a modern analysis of the way the museum workers fulfilled their job duties during the war. Empirical and theoretical methods are also used. Such methodological approach allows analysing the ways of tasks fulfilment aimed at the implementation of the main functions of the museums of Ukraine in times of its occupation during the World War Two. The scientific novelty stays in a new art studies-related scientific view of the fulfilment of the job tasks by the Ukrainian museum workers, military and intelligence men, from one part, and the art experts of the German occupiers' specially trained units that implemented German art, social and cultural projects in the Ukrainian museums from 1941 to 1943. Conclusions. Sociocultural planning of the Ukrainian museums staff's work under the guidance of the German occupation authorities during the World War Two did not include the approaches aimed at the implementation of museums' main functions in peacetime. It is worth saying that, due to full-scale hostilities on Ukraine's territory, its museum workers focused their attention on the implementation of the function of the artworks exhibition. While the acquisition function in the field of museum collections gathering was implemented thought the export of the stolen visual art objects from Ukraine to Germany with the goal of gathering art collections by the occupiers.