about the collection of the

Museum of the NaUOA History

The NaUOA History Museum is a separate structural division of the university. The formation of the museum exposition began in 1997. Today, the NaUOA museum complex includes six expository sections devoted to the history of Ostroh Academy and the buildings in which the university is currently located. In addition, the Museum has several collections placed in different thematic displays. The construction of the museum complex of the university was gradual. As the new exhibits appeared and the repair work in the oldest buildings of the university finished, the NaUOA Museum, besides having the exposition reproducing the main milestones in the history of Ostroh Academy, added: a display of the history of the modern Academy premises (was formed in 1999, in the oldest part of the buildings of the 18th century, the Capuchin Monastery); the monastic catacombs (were cleared in 1998-1999); the icon painting collection situated in the restored church (2005); an art gallery located in the former household cellars of the monastery (since 2009).

The Museum also preserves and exhibits several assemblages: an art collection formed out of the works of modern Ukrainian artists, an ethnographic display created as a result of the ethnographic practice of students majoring in Culturology, and a private collection of the famous Ukrainian literary critic and public figure, Mykola Zhulynskyi. The last contains rich ethnographic material and a valuable collection of rare Ukrainica. One of the most valuable clusters of the Museum is the collection of early printed and rare books.

This exhibition section is in the process of permanent acquisition. Ostroh Academy, at the very beginning of its revival, did not have a single such publication. Therefore, it is not surprising that the currently formed collection of early printed books is truly the university’s pride. With the support of the university administration, it was planned to create a collection of antique books as a separate section of the Museum rather than a library. The NaUOA Museum funds extend mainly thanks to the gifts from caring people. Thus, as a significant number of antique books were donated to the university by a collector from Lutsk, Ivan Petrovych Kardash, the collection was named after him. Among the grantors are the NaUOA honorary professors Mykola Zhulynskyi and Tadeusz Kshonstek, employees, lecturers and university alumni. In a short time, it was possible to collect more than 100 early printed books and a large number of rare books, multivolume and encyclopedic editions of the mid-19th – early 20th centuries.

The assemblage of antique and rare books consists of several thematic blocks reproducing the history of Ukrainian book printing. The Cyrillic prints of the largest Ukrainian publishing centres of the 17th and 18th centuries in Lviv, Kyiv and Pochaiv made the basis of the collection. The display also includes foreign editions, presented in a separate thematic section.