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The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 5 (191), 1406—1414

UDK 069.51:39](477.83/.86)”1920/1930″

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

  • Received: 10.09.2026
  • Accepted: 25.09.2026
  • Published: ??.??.2026

ETHNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS AND ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN LOCAL UKRAINIAN MUSEUMS IN GALICIA IN THE 1920—1930s AND THE MUSEUM OF THE SHEVCHENKO SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY

KUSHNIR Vitalii

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8809-0108
  • Candidate of Historical Science,
  • Senior Research Fellow,
  • Museum of Ethnography and Art Crafts
  • of the Institute of Ethnology
  • of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine,
  • 15, Svobody ave., 79000, Lviv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e-mail: vitaliy_val@ukr.net

Abstract. In the period between the two World wars, a notable phenomenon in the cultural and social life of the Ukrainian community of Galicia was the Ukrainian local history societies and museums that they founded in small towns of the region. An important direction of their collecting, educational and popularization work was traditional folk culture. Some local museums also conducted ethnographic and folklore research.

It has been demonstrated that, along with archaeology, ethnography has become a notable component of cooperation between the Cultural and Historical Museum of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and local Ukrainian museums. Work in this field of museum activity has also repeatedly become a subject of discussion at congresses of Ukrainian museum workers in Galicia, contributing to the coordination of activities and consolidation of Ukrainian museum work in Western Ukrainian territories.

The aim of the work is to determine the main characteristics of the work of local Ukrainian museums in the field of ethnography, as well as to highlight their interaction in this area with the Museum of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

 The methodological basis of the work is formed by a set of principles and methods of museology and historical research, in particular, the principle of historicism, the comparative method, the method of typology. A critical analysis of the sources used is also a component of the methodological framework of the paper.

The chronological framework of the paper covers the period of the 1920s—1930s, when a network of Ukrainian local museums was formed and developed in the territory of Galicia.

Keywords: Cultural and Historical Museum of the Shev­chenko Scientific Society, ethnography, ethnographic collections, local museums, museum congresses.

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