Why a museum?
The Kharkiv Literary Museum was established in April 1988 on the initiative of Kharkiv writers.
Our mission:
To collect, preserve, research, and promote Ukrainian, particularly Slobozhanshchyna’s, literary heritage; to integrate books into the lives of Ukrainians for intellectual and creative development, cultural leisure, and understanding of the present through the past. To represent Ukraine to the world through Ukrainian books and literature.
What do we preserve?
Today, we preserve about 30,000 items related to Kharkiv and Ukrainian literature in general, as well as the broader cultural context of Slobozhanshchyna. Since our region's history includes unique periods of extraordinary artistic activity, our collections of 1920s literature—Red Renaissance—or the Ukrainian resistance movement of the 1960s–1980s hold national significance.
Why do we preserve this?
First, a museum collection is an effective remedy against national dementia and social amnesia. It serves as a cultural database—shared by every citizen—through which our "shared memory" is formed and our culture is "distributed." The LitMuseum collection is interesting and relevant, which we strive to prove daily in our interactions with visitors. If you read carefully, museum exhibits can "speak" on fascinating topics, engaging in contemporary discourse. For example, the idea of Ukraine’s European orientation was already considered by Ukrainian writers of the Russian Empire, then by Kharkiv writers of the USSR with their radical slogan "Away from Moscow," and later, after decades of oppression and repression, by contemporary Slobozhanshchyna artists—up to the moment Ukraine gained visa-free travel to the EU.
Second, communication—with books, about books, through books, and thanks to books—creates opportunities for dialogue and, we hope, mutual understanding and acceptance of others or, at the very least, a tolerant attitude toward different perspectives.
Third, literature offers a wide range of "intelligent" entertainment and intellectual pleasures for enjoyable leisure time.
Fourth, the reading practices we promote in the museum foster critical, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural thinking, creativity, communication skills, the production of new meanings, cultural literacy, and the ability to collaborate. All of this contributes to both individual development and the formation of civil society.
Fifth, we want not only to create but also to involve our visitors in cooperation and co-creation—developing participatory practices.
So, sixth, you can add your own reasons…
Our values
The Kharkiv LitMuseum operates on the principles of love for our country and its cultural and historical heritage, responsibility to the community, ensuring accessibility of the museum collection for all, supporting ideas of tolerance, mutual respect, and national dignity. We view culture as a factor of social security, a form of social communication, and a means of personal self-fulfillment that contributes to building a harmonious society.
The Kharkiv LitMuseum is a team of professionals and like-minded individuals for whom museum work and the study of art, particularly literature, are their true calling. We strive to create psychologically and materially comfortable conditions for the collective’s co-creation based on democracy and self-realization.
How do we see ourselves?
The Kharkiv LitMuseum is a socio-cultural space where like-minded individuals and opponents, students and teachers, readers and creators gather—for dialogue, leisure, learning, and co-creation, for seeking new ideas and solutions by engaging with the past. A space where new artistic works and new meanings are born for the future. A space built on the principles of participatory culture, where the LitMuseum serves as a moderator of cultural dialogue. A platform for implementing artistic projects in cooperation with various institutions and individual artists. A place where artistic artifacts—museum exhibits—are carefully preserved and thoroughly studied.
