The funds of the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore have been replenished with 2,000 items
The funds of the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore have been replenished with more than 2,000 items this year. This was reported to a BELTA correspondent by the chief curator of the cultural institution, Olga Davidovskaya.
"The absolute majority of the new items is a collection of Vitebsk artist Ales Memus. He transferred 1,898 items to the institution. The main part of them are accidental archaeological finds made by the collector on the banks of the Daugava River in Vitebsk and Polotsk. These include sinkers, fishing hooks, hunting arrowheads, bracelet fragments, smoking pipes, items of Christian worship, ceramic dishes, locks and keys - about 1.3 thousand items in total. In addition, the collection includes over 300 coins, cutlery from the late 19th - early 20th centuries, as well as jewelry and personal belongings of Ales Memus's wife, artist Irina Moguchaya. It is interesting that the artist's collection contained fragments of paint tubes found by him on Kalinin Street, where the Vitebsk Art School was once located," said Olga Davidovskaya, adding that museum staff have already begun processing and describing the new museum items. In the near future, they will be introduced into scientific circulation and may be used in the creation of museum exhibitions.
Olga Davidovskaya emphasized that the transfer of such a large and diverse collection of items to the museum's fund free of charge is a great rarity. "There have been isolated cases in the museum's history. The last one was in 1993, when the widow of collector Ivan Galkevich transferred his private collection of 7,000 items to the museum," said the curator.
As of today, the main fund of the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore numbers about 204 thousand items. Among them are unique ones: a birch bark letter from the late 13th - early 14th century (the only fully preserved monument of writing of this period in Belarus), a silver knight's belt from the 17th century, Masonic signs, numismatic items, a collection of cameo stones (one of the largest in Belarus), as well as a collection of paintings by Y. Pen, which consists of 180 works.
Alena Tikhonova