Lviv. The Courtyard Museum. No Entry for Outsiders

Lviv counts more than 40 museums – state-run, private, open-air. The historic centre could itself be called one continuous museum with an unbroken stream of tourists and guests of Ukraine's cultural capital. Lviv folk are creative people with imagination, and in the very heart of this museum-city, in the courtyard of an ordinary residential house, they created their own unofficial museum, which won no small popularity in its few years of existence.

 

Lviv. The house-museum

This unconventional museum has no guides, and entry is free — though not exactly welcome. By now it is hard to establish who the initiators were, and the residents prefer not to recall the times when an ordinary little courtyard turned into a backstage gallery of Soviet-era artefacts. The tenants decorated the walls of the two-storey house with paintings, bas-reliefs, embossed metalwork — all those knick-knacks that had been cluttering their renovated flats.

 

The idea seemed interesting and was taken up by neighbours, workmates and relatives, who, after rummaging through drawers and pantries, replenished the unofficial exhibition with reproductions of paintings, household objects, furniture and other paraphernalia. Most of the home-made exposition consisted of portraits and busts of party bosses, which once studded every school and library. Naturally, tourists did not pass the distinctive museum by; the location appeared on map services, in publications and on YouTube. Visitors were drawn not only by the unusual collections but by the sheer extraordinariness of this depository of symbols of a bygone era.

 

Visitors packed into the courtyard, which could not please the residents of the now-famous house for long — and understandably, they did not always feel like acting as guides to their own project. People grew weary of the importunate guests, and decommunisation prompted them to part with some of the exhibits. By now the uncatalogued museum stock has shrunk considerably, and the remnants of the former luxury no longer reflect the past glory of this singular enterprise.

 

Those who get curious and try to peek into the courtyard may run into an inhospitable tone from the residents, quite unlike Lviv folk. But no offence should be taken: the tenants became hostages of their own original venture, and in anxious times one longs for peace and quiet.

 

On the other hand, if guests are unwanted and the residents no longer take pride in the museum, why not take down the remaining pictures and hang a lock on the entrance, or at least a notice? Visitors would understand: no one is expecting you here, the project is closed, keep walking. It is a pity that this marvellous Lviv invention has stalled and finished in a minor key.

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This story is also available in Ukrainian: Львів. Двір-музей. Стороннім вхід заборонено, проходьте повз!