Zhytomyr Regional Studies Museum

Zhytomyr Regional Studies Museum [Житомирський краєзнавчий музей; Zhytomyrskyi kraieznavchyi muzei]. A regional studies museum founded in Zhytomyr in 1900 by the Volhynia Research Society on the basis of an earlier museum created in 1865. Ecclesiastical and historical divisions with valuable artifacts, documents, and manuscripts were created there. In 1911 it was renamed the Central Volhynian Museum. Under interwar Soviet rule, as the Volhynian State Museum, it contained over 180,000 exhibit items and over 1,000 paintings (including those of the former museum [est 1893] of the Church Archeology Society of Volhynia Eparchy and others confiscated from local nobles), a botanical garden, an orangery, a laboratory, and a library with over 100,000 books (including the expropriated holdings of the Volhynia Theological Seminary Library). The museum was devastated during the Second World War and later rebuilt. It assumed its present name in 1950. Today the museum has over 160,000 exhibit items in its seven divisions (including natural sciences, history, ethnography, and art). Literary memorial museums dedicated to to Lesia Ukrainka (est 1963) in Novohrad-Volynskyi and Vladimir Korolenko (est 1973; see Korolenko museums) in Zhytomyr, the Korosten Regional Studies Museum, and three other small museums are its branches. Guidebooks to the museum were published in 1972 and 1975.

[This article was updated in 2020.]