Project by Alexey Lastovsky (ICOM Belarus, Polotsk State University),
together with the Belarusian Committee of the International Council of Museums “ІСОМ”.
The project began in 2020.
Scientific consultants: Tatyana Bembel, Yuri Abdurakhmanov.
Project Manifesto
The information unity of the world museum space is an important condition for the development of museum affairs in our time. The largest museums in the world are digitizing their collections and placing them on the World Wide Web for public use. This provides an excellent opportunity to create an accurate virtual guide to those museums in the world that preserve the artistic heritage of Belarus. This is the essence of the project “Art heritage associated with Belarus in the museums of the world”.
The project collects information about the presence of works by artists from Belarus in different countries – but this is not just a set of names and titles. This catalog will mark the presence of Belarus in the world artistic heritage and will help organize the paths of modern Belarusian cultural pilgrims and direct them to a museum where you can get acquainted with our heritage. read more
The Belarusian land has given a lot to world art – talented youth from our cities and towns persistently made their way to the best schools and conquered Paris. Many geniuses who became famous in other countries appeared at our crossroads of cultures. Chagall, Soutine, Zadkine, Ruszczyc… the list can be continued indefinitely.
An important task for modern Belarus is to create a full-fledged cultural canon that would reveal to us the full moon of the past, the diversity of cultures and the discord of Belarusian streets. For us, modern Belarusians, it is very important to understand what kind of people lived on this land, what they did and what they achieved.
Our project also lays the foundation for renewed well-being, we are trying to create a new encyclopedia that will be a living archive of Belarusian cultural creativity. Of course, state borders have shifted, identities have changed, and some people would like to stubbornly avoid unconditional categorization. Therefore, defining Belarusian artistic heritage is a big problem in itself.
We will have to rely on several simple principles:
1) By Belarusian artistic heritage we mean the work of artists who were born in Belarus or spent most of their lives here;
2) We can also rely on the principle of self-determination, if there is documentary evidence that the artist identified himself as Belarusian (or acknowledged that his homeland is Belarus), then such artists also fall within the scope of our interests.
Our task is not to impose “Belarusianity” on local Jews or Poles, we respect their identity. We think first of all about ourselves – our task is to create such an understanding of the Belarusian cultural space that would include the rich and ambiguous history of this region, with a variety of ethnic and religious groups.
Another important task of this project is to correct names in connection with the increased indifference to those cultures and countries that find it difficult to defend themselves. Our task is to find errors in determining the origin of artists who came from Belarus. It should not be written “Vitebsk, Russia” or “Smilovichi, Lithuania”, because this does not correspond to political geography. In the museum it can be written “Vitebsk, formerly the Russian Empire, now Belarus” or “Vitebsk, Belarus”. First of all, this is a question of respect for Belarus – and this is important for us, Belarusians.
With the official support of “ICOM Belarus” we will fight to correct such errors and hope for your help in finding them. hide part
Contact for communication on project issues – Alexey Lastovsky (lastowski18@gmail.com)