Exhibition “Ukrainian Portraits of the XVII–XX Centuries” (1925) in the Development of National Museum Culture

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine an exhibition in the field of portraiture, which took place at the National Museum of Ukraine in 1925 and laid the foundations for exhibition traditions within the field of Ukrainian art history and museology. Research methodology. The methodological and methodological approaches used in the article are dictated by the need to establish a number of key aspects of the exhibition as a coherent, distinct project with its own theory and practice. They form an objective model of the exhibition concept as a scientific and cultural model, based on professional approaches that avoid irrelevant contingencies. Consequently, the article combines exploratory, descriptive, attributive and historical-comparative approaches, and ultimately employs qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. Scientific novelty. A practical study incorporating elements of conceptual theory has been conducted. The exhibition has been examined as a subject of analysis. Precise characteristics of a well-curated art exhibition, its objectives and possibilities, are provided. Emphasis is placed on the importance of secondary data. Conclusions. It is important to note that the study of a single exhibition opens up opportunities for researching the types and variants of exhibition displays and their classification. The development of the theory and practice of exhibition design in Ukraine began in the 1920s. It was during this period that exhibitions involved a multi-stage process of preparation, ranging from the formulation of a scholarly concept to its realisation in the exhibition space. From a research perspective, its catalogue represented the first professional classification in the genre of the national portrait and paved the way for subsequent publications on the subject. In creating the exhibition display, a combination of scientific approaches was employed, characterised by systematicity and based on topographical chronology.