The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has recently adopted the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Maintenance of the Museums of Higher Education Institutions.”
The Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums initiated a legislative proposal. It is based on a draft of famous museum workers, including director of the State Polytechnic Museum at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute Natalia Pysarevska. Natalia Volodymyrivna told the correspondent of the newspaper “Kyiv Politechnic” about the work on support of the adoption of this Law and how its provisions will influence further work of the State Polytechnic Museum at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
- When I and my colleagues from other museums of higher education began to work on support of the adoption of this law, we outlined our main problems: uncertainty of the museums status at Ukrainian universities, insecurity of their employees’ rights, insecurity of the museum collections in such museums. Due to some contradictions in our legislation university museums were almost illegal. Those rectors, who cared for a museum as an essential part, left it in its structure, without having any legislative ground for this. Museums were called “centers”, laboratories - “sectors”, and their employees “laboratory assistants” or “technical staff”. And one more thing - tens of thousands of exhibits stored in such museums throughout Ukraine (only about 20 thousand exhibits in our museum!), did not have any official responsible person for their storage.
We defended the rights of university museums in the Ministry of Education and Science submitted it to the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. At the meeting of the Committee our amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Maintenance of the Museums of Higher Education Institutions.” were accepted and presentd to the Verkhovna Rada Meeting. After the first and then the second reading, the law was adopted. 326 deputies voted for this decision. Currently, the Law is being signed by the President, and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has been instructed to develop measures for its implementation within three months.