«Digital marine collection of the museum»: a printed catalog was presented in Mykolaiv

In Mykolaiv, a printed catalog of digitized maritime works from the evacuated collection of the Ochakiv Museum of Painting, the Mykolaiv Art Museum, and the Museum of Shipbuilding and Fleet was presented.

The presentation of the catalog took place on Friday, October 20, at the Mykolaiv Regional Art Museum named after Vereshchahin, writes «NikVesti».

The Mykolaiv Development Agency implements the project together with the museums. The initiators say that it is an important thing that discovers and popularizes the names of marine artists for Ukraine and the world.

Evgenii Homoniuk, the project manager of the Development Agency, says that at the beginning it was planned to digitize only 400 works, but during the work it was possible to digitize 22 more works. All of them date back to the XIX-XX centuries.

The basis of the album are works from the Ochakiv Museum of Marine Painting, the collection of which was rescued from the city in September 2022 from the shelling of the Russian occupiers.

— We created a printed catalog, which included half of this number of works. About 75% of the works are works from the Ochakiv museum. Separately, we have a project website. It, like the catalog, is bilingual. Separately, we have created 3D models, animated characters of paintings. As a result of the implementation of the project, a digital collection of marine studies was created with free access to it in a 24/7 format, which allows to introduce works into scientific circulation, improves the source base of scientific research and ensures unlimited reproduction of these copies, — says Yevhen Homonyuk.

Before preparing for the project, the organizers identified three main reasons and goals for themselves. Firstly, the need for digitization is due to the desire to glorify the cultural heritage of Mykolaiv.

— You can promote the city and the region not only through gastronomic tours and architecture. Cities can be popularized through works of art. Everyone knows about the Louvre, the Mona Lisa in Paris. We would like a certain association with Mykolaiv. So that our city is known not only by the news tape with broken roads, the situation of the criminal sphere and corruption is different. And we want to show the side of creativity, because there are a lot of historical and cultural artifacts in Mykolaiv, — says Yevhen Homonyuk.

The initiators decided on the choice of marinistics, connecting with Mykolaiv's tourist brand «City on the waves».

— Maritime science about the sea. And Mykolaiv is a «City on the wave», that is, it is our Mykolaiv, southern identity. Before the war, we had 10 sailing regattas a year. We are a city of wide water, we interact with it from an early age. And they want to take away our sea from us: occupied Crimea, Mariupol, Kinburn, our coasts of Ochakiv and Kobleve are mined. We wanted to return our Ukrainian sea through cultural heritage, — the Development Agency added.

The war caused the closure and inaccessibility of most exhibits of prominent authors in museums. Director of the Vereshchahin Museum Serhii Rosliakov says: the digital collection is a legacy that will remain for humanity forever.

— For any museum, both paper and digital cataloging is the main task. Because, as the history of most wars has shown, when museums suffer, the presence of evidence that this or that work of art belongs to a certain museum, you need to keep certain facts, have a certificate. Digital media appeared relatively recently. It is new, mobile. This is scientific circulation. Sometimes a person does not have the opportunity to go to the museum he needs, but he can find information on the Internet, — said Serhii Rosliakov.

The organizers also produced and presented AR-postcards, which bring to life in augmented reality the characters from the paintings of the three museums in 3D.

The project «Digital Collection of the Museum: Marine Studies» was made possible with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. According to Yevhen Homoniuk, they received a grant of up to one million hryvnias from the foundation for implementation.

Currently, the circulation of the printed collection is 250 copies. The initiators of the project will send a part to the libraries and museums of Ukraine. A certain number of copies will be distributed to museums and institutions in Mykolaiv.