A digital collection of Southern Ukraine’s industrial heritage is being created in Mykolaiv, aimed at preserving and opening access to historical artifacts from the region’s industrial past through a modern online platform.
The initiative was announced by the Mykolaiv Development Agency.
According to the project team, museum artifacts connected to the region’s industrial history will be digitized and combined into an open multimedia database. The core of the collection will include materials from the Mykolaiv Regional Art Museum, the Mykolaiv Regional Museum of Local History, and the Museum of Shipbuilding and Fleet.
The online archive will feature a wide range of items, including production albums, early photographs, postcards, tools, memorial objects, graphic works, paintings depicting industrial life, and rare printed publications documenting key historical events in the region — from shipyards to the nuclear power industry.
Project manager Yevhen Homoniuk said Mykolaiv region has long served as the industrial center of southern Ukraine, but its history is often hidden behind physical labor and machinery.
“Behind heavy human labor, metal and machines lies a deep and unique aesthetic,” he said. “Bringing together the collections of leading regional institutions into a single thematic archive is a way to show that Ukrainian heritage is diverse, resilient, and ready to be shared with the world through modern digital tools.”
He added that the project is designed to remove barriers between closed museum storage spaces and the public, allowing global access to the region’s industrial identity.
The digitized materials will be made available on a bilingual Ukrainian-English platform titled Digital Heritage of Mykolaiv, offering 24/7 open access for researchers, educators, and the general public.
The broader project, Industrial Heritage of Mykolaiv Region, is implemented by the MY ART platform in cooperation with regional museums and the Mykolaiv Development Agency. It is part of the MUSEUM FUTURES program, supported by RIBBON International and Mystetskyi Arsenal in partnership with the NGO “Art Arsenal Community.”
