23 On May 24, 2024, the Department of Architecture and Сonservation in partnership with the Lviv Historical Museum, the Department of History, Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage, the UNESCO Council on Monuments and Sites «Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region in Poland and Ukraine» and the Lviv Regional Organization of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments hold the International Scientific Conference «Monuments of Movable Artistic Heritage: Problems of Accounting, Protection and Restoration».
The relevance of the conference is determined by several factors. The looting of Ukrainian museums, which are temporarily occupied by the Russian aggressor, once again highlighted the need to protect movable artistic heritage. This problem has several aspects:
- proper accounting of the works of art (including entering data into the state register);
- full inventory (including descriptions and digital copies), special storage conditions;
- protective marking of the works of art (for their identification in case of theft and subsequent emergence)
- proper maintenance and preservation (threat of damage by pests), preventive conservation and restoration works, etc.
The loss of unique works of art has a long history, and today in Russian museums there are thousands of relics from the territory of Ukraine that were moved there illegally.
Of particular concern is the huge number of unaccounted works of sacred art concentrated in churches, as well as the illicit trafficking of cultural goods. This important part of the national cultural heritage is mostly not accounted for and not controlled by state authorities. At the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy did not have a database of all cultural heritage sites in the country. This has shown serious gaps in the work on the protection of cultural heritage, and raised questions about the revision of methods of documentation and preservation of information about monuments, especially movable cultural heritage.
The topic of the conference includes the following main directions:
- Monuments of movable artistic heritage in objects of sacred function;
- Accounting and inventory of works of art;
- Protecting works of art from theft and displacement;
- Protection of works of art from forgery;
- Synthesis of protective and restoration operations for art works of various types.
The venue of the scientific meeting is Lviv Historical Museum.