History museums showcase the narrative of a society by curating artifacts, documents, and exhibits that reflect the culture, achievements, struggles, and evolution of a culture over time. These museums provide a tangible connection to the past, presenting historical events and figures in a contextualized and often interactive manner. History museums can often be nation-building exercises as well, created and staffed by the state or powerful donors to try to encourage a specific view of a culture and its history. Thus, many of these reviews try to not only inform the reader of what the museum can teach, but also take a critical eye to the rhetoric and potential biases these museums express.
The Ukrainian countryside rolled by outside the van window. Sunflower fields stretched as far as the eye could see, shot through with copses of trees and punctuated with corn and wheat fields. We were on an excursion several hours to the east of Kyiv, included in our Kyiv-based study program, to see three major Ukrainian […]