The Friends Club of Mystetsky Arsenal met on December 14 to receive gratitude of the institution’s leadership for its contribution to the development of the museum complex. For the first time in Ukraine, the museum managed to create a project whose participants strongly support cultural and artistic initiatives, and there are more than 50 members of the club.
The Friends Club works along the lines of globally popular practice of art patronage tradition, which helps museums to interest and attract the widest possible range of sponsors.
The experience of Mystetsky Arsenal shows that this tradition has caught on well in the Ukrainian art space, too.
The first benefactors of the project were named at the charity party in honor of the friends that had been organized by Mystetsky Arsenal Charity Foundation, Mystetsky Arsenal itself, and company Babylon. The party itself was positioned by the organizers as a chance to thank all club members who were involved through their participation in the project in creating the nation’s largest museum and exhibition center and reviving the tradition of charitable work. This latter, incidentally, was very strong in Ukraine at one time, if we recall Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko’s contributions to education and museums, the Tereshchenko family art patronage tradition and many others.
The Day is an active member of the Friends Club of Mystetsky Arsenal, too, and the only member of it among Ukrainian media. One can even say that a kind of “exchange transaction” occurred, because the director of Mystetsky Arsenal Natalia Zabolotna is a member of The Day’s Club. Our club kerchief that The Day presented to Zabolotna at the charity party in gratitude for the work she does is also an artistic phenomenon, as the letters on it read POUSTOVIT & M.P. for Den-15.
“I never wore a Young Pioneer tie, but will gladly wear The Day’s kerchief every day,” Zabolotna responded to the gift.
This tradition of “friend exchange” can be continued easily, because to become a member of The Day’s Club, one has only to be the newspaper’s loyal reader, and The Day granted at the charity party to all members of the Friends Club subscription to Friday issue, while art appreciation is the sole condition of admittance to Mystetsky Arsenal’s Friends Club.
The director of Mystetsky Arsenal Charity Foundation Olha Vieru transferred to the museum The Honor Roll of Art Patrons for 2011 at the charity party. Thereafter, everyone can become a friend of the museum, the starting move being simply writing one’s name on the Mystetsky Arsenal’s Internet wall.
The cultural and artistic center actively encourages its counterparts, that is, other Ukrainian museums, to create their own Friends Clubs. The productive first year of the Friends Club of Mystetsky Arsenal has proved that this kind of art patronage is of interest for Ukrainians and has the potential for further advancement.
