The violence of war and all its horror has a clarifying effect on what really matters in every aspect of life.. In the immediate aftermath of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, those involved in the horrific events found language reduced to its most important function: letting loved ones know they're alive, writes The Guardian in an article on why culture is so important to human beings in times of war..

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Employees of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv demanded to make sure that cultural heritage sites are preserved in order to tell their stories for the next generation. Their job has been reduced to the most basic: guarding facilities in an attempt to save them from destruction..

The researchers lived in the museum for a month, quickly dismantling the expositions of Greek amphorae and Scythian gold and sending them to a safe place.. Later, after the Russians withdrew from the nearby cities of Bucha and Irpin, Alexander Lukyanov, mentioned in the article, and his team visited these once cozy suburbs of Kyiv, which became places of unspeakable horror - to collect artifacts. From abandoned Russian rations to the remains of weapons, these objects bear raw, bloodied witnesses to the violence that took place there..

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Historical Parallels of Hardship for a Wartime Museum.

Museums in the UK haven't faced equivalent threats since World War II, says article author Charlotte Higgins, head of The Guardian's Cultural Studies section..

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(Bernard's) Shaw's statement about the function of museums is almost naive in its simplicity, but still touches the heart. (As you know, the world-famous Irish playwright spent whole days in the library of the British Museum, where he discussed the problems of Shakespeare's work, shared his views on religion and other ideological issues - ed..

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What to make public? In what form? These are questions that increasingly demand different answers in the UK, just as they suddenly demanded a different answer in Kyiv during the war.. Amid the vastly diverse landscape of museums in Britain, there is a growing realization that museums can no longer offer a single, sublime, ostensibly neutral view.. Also, given that there is no such thing as a “neutral” curatorial position, there is a growing awareness that museums need to be more honest with their own intellectual processes and more generous in sharing their power to accumulate and preserve cultural property..

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Confusion of turning points of history through people's stories.

The author draws parallels between the challenges for culture in Ukraine with the theme of the London Imperial War Museum exhibition (Imperial War Museum). The exhibition titled Troubles (problems) is dedicated to the turmoil that gripped Northern Ireland in a conflict that lasted almost 30 years. A fragile ceasefire was signed in 1998, but many aspects of the conflict remain unresolved to this day and raise serious doubts on the part of survivors of the conflict and those involved in it..

This exhibition invites visitors to gain a deeper understanding of the Troubles due to the different perspectives of people affected by the conflict.. The exhibition acts, first of all, as an organizer of the voices of ordinary people, allowing them to be reproduced through sound recordings in polyphonic contradiction..

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It takes courage to run a museum today.

In an era when identity politics, although not as violent as in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, has taken over all parts of society, it is not easy to enter such a controversial sphere.. It takes courage to run a public museum or gallery today.. They are increasingly becoming institutions where they argue about memory and history, sometimes even angrily.. For former imperial states such as Britain, restitution (the renewal of violated property rights) is a topic that is unlikely to disappear any time soon..

Museums and debates about identity and culture without violence.

This makes museums less comfortable places than they were in the days when you could more or less rely on them to be the ultimate resting place for a few Neolithic tools and medieval coins, and no one openly doubted the presence of, say, African artefacts.. that were gathering dust in the corner. But that makes them more vital because society needs places where debates about history, identity and culture can be held without violence..

We need museums. Imagine the void left in, say, Kherson, a city whose museums were looted and devastated, where shop windows were left empty, from which the collective memory was plundered.. In the UK, we are not facing such extreme and sudden attacks, but losses of a different, more fluid, gradual nature.. It was all too clear in the Arts Foundation's conversations with museum leaders that there is no shortage of desire to serve communities in more creative ways, but there is a huge lack of resources..

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Note that earlier Ukrainian journalists talked with the director of the robbed museum in Kherson. How did it happen.

Silent death.

The real crisis in museums is being left unattended, Ms. Higgins believes, apparently regretting the insufficient focus of the state on supporting institutions that can carry over the centuries the most iconic elements of the culture and traditions of this or that country, this or that era.

" Diane Leese, recently stepped down as CEO of IWM, said she fears UK museums will sink into a situation similar to that of the early 1990s, when many of them were depressing places, outdated, unable to adapt their displays or the way they worked.. It's a slower death than a robbery or a bombing. But it's still death."

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