«Silhouettes of Victory» – a project that can no longer be repeated…

Abstract

The article is devoted to commemorative practices based on contemporary museum exhibitions dedicated to the events of the Second World War. It describes the presentation of wartime post-memory through museum instruments, as well as the modern interpretation of these events. The scientific and educational-exhibition project of the Loyev Museum of the Battle of the Dnieper, «Silhouettes of Victory», is based on a research initiative aimed at collecting and recording data obtained during anthropological (ethnographic) expeditions to the Loyev district, carried out by museum staff K.V. Semashko and G.A. Sivokhin between 2012 and 2019, as well as on the results of archival and search research conducted by the staff of the Museum of the Battle of the Dnieper. The informants of the project were real eyewitnesses and participants of the Second World War events in the Loyev district – witnesses and direct participants of those tragic events, who survived the war, most often in childhood and/or adolescence. The data obtained through research and search work were interpreted and presented in the museum exhibition with the use of modern multimedia technologies and, above all, through artistic interpretation and the presentation of collected scholarly materials by means of an art-vision approach to constructing the museum display.