Tsarist Russia joined Europe’s museum craze a little late, developing only a few large museums by the time of the Revolution. The USSR later enthusiastically developed museums as educational and propaganda tools. Today, the cities of Eurasia contain surprising numbers of these institutions, both private and publicly funded, and on nearly every subject imaginable. Many of these museums have survived wars, revolutions, and economic and political collapse, often by innovating ways of preserving, funding, and maintaining their collections. For anyone studying history, museum science, literature, art, or nearly any other subject, these places make for fascinating travel and study abroad destinations.
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 […]