Lecture by Tetiana Pylypchuk "How Does a Museum Shape the Image of a City?"

What is a contemporary museum? What is its role in researching local history and shaping urban identity?

How does it engage with communities, preserve memory, and help make sense of the experiences we are gaining today? And how should we address topics that have long remained marginalized?

Find out on July 24 at 18:00 at a lecture by Tetiana Pylypchuk, Director of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, as part of the local identity program.

We talk a lot about the importance of remembering our past—and memory is about love and work. Memory resides where there are people willing to work for its sake. The work of museum professionals extends far beyond heritage preservation, the complexity of which in times of war can hardly be overstated. At the same time, the museum serves as a space for community engagement, discussion, reclaiming forgotten names and stories, and discussing complex pasts and presents.

For many years, the Kharkiv Literary Museum has been working with the city’s literary memory, preserving one of the largest comprehensive writer archives of the 1920s—the archive of Ivan Dniprovskyi, which was saved despite all dangers by his wife, Mariia Pylinska. A significant part of the museum's work is dedicated to bringing the Executed Renaissance back into public discourse—a topic that until recently remained outside broad public attention.

The lecture will focus on how museums work with heritage, including contested heritage, how they find ways to address traumatic pages of history, and how they help communities rethink their own past and identity.

Tetiana Pylypchuk is the Director of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, a researcher of 1920s–1930s Ukrainian literature, a board member of ICOM Ukraine, a consultant for the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center (USA), and a laureate of the Vasyl Stus Prize (2024).

Recent initiatives led by Tetiana include the organization of the dialogue platform "City on(the)line," participation in the development of the educational program "Heritage: Space for Action," as well as directing the Kharkiv "Slovo" Art Residency and projects such as "In the Name of the City," "Skovorodance," "The Fifth Kharkiv," and others.

Free admission upon registration

2nd floor, Lecture Hall.

The lecture program on local identity is part of the capacity-building and networking program for local cultural actors "Heritage: Space for Work". This program is supported by the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden.