Professional holiday The International Museum Day (May 18) and the 75th anniversary of its founding (June 1929) the Volyn Museum of Local Lore celebrated by displaying its collections at two anniversary exhibitions. "OLD AND NEW COLLECTIONS" This is the name of one of them. The funds of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore number 125 thousand museum items of the main fund. They include natural history and archaeological collections, items of household and decorative metalwork, including those made of precious metals, handwritten books, old printed books, unique documents on paper and parchment; collections of numismatics and phaleristics, philately and philocarty, porcelain and ceramics, works of icon painting, sculpture, painting, graphics, etc. A separate storage group is the fund of Lesya Ukrainka and the Kosach family. For guests, the best is always offered. Therefore, the exhibition, for which 800 items were selected, introduces in general terms the rich heritage that the museum possesses from the beginning of its founding to the present day. The very first exhibits of the Volyn Museum, created in June 1929, were archaeological collections from the excavations of Jan Fitzke, Zygmunt Leski, and other archaeologists; a herbarium of plants collected in Volyn by the famous flora researcher Stefan Macko in the 1910s-30s (numbers more than a thousand sheets). Documents and photographic materials introduce the history of the creation and development of the museum. The study of museum collections made it possible to create, especially in the last 10-15 years, not only popularization but also deeply scientific exhibitions, to publish catalogs, collection reviews, scientific studies devoted to individual museum items or collections. Only an insignificant part (due to the lack of exhibition space) of the presented posters of museum exhibitions allows us to draw a positive conclusion about this area of the museum's activity. Among the new collections presented for the first time are archaeological finds from Olbia and Chersonesus: necklaces, fibulae, bracelets, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines; bukrania and axes are among the rare ones. The Horodyshche silver treasure (torcs, bracelets, necklaces) is also on display. The monetary system of Independent Ukraine (far from complete!) is represented by issues of jubilee and commemorative coins. The museum possesses a complete philatelic collection of independent Ukraine from the first to the latest issues; the most representative specimens are exhibited. The philatelic exposition is supplemented by issues of diaspora stamps on Ukrainian themes from past years, long before our independence. Recent years have enriched the museum with new acquisitions to the fund of Lesya Ukrainka and the Kosach family: these are original lifetime photographs of Olha Petrivna Kosach-Drahomanova (Olena Pchilka), Lesya Ukrainka's mother, and materials from the archive of the writer Yurii Kosach, transferred to the Literary-Memorial Museum of Lesya Ukrainka in Kolodiazhne by Martian Kots from the USA. And only on the days of major anniversaries can one see at museum exhibitions Lesya Ukrainka's handwritten notebook, in which she recorded folk songs from Volyn and her native Kolodiazhne. The exhibition is adorned by women's portraits on postcards of the early 20th century, looking at which one wants to recall a line of poetry by Oleksandr Oles of the same period: "Ah, madam, how much sun there is in you!" And on postcards of 1925-27: silent film actresses: Halyna Lysenko, Nata Vachnadze, Yuliia Solntseva, Vira Kholodna. As well as postcards, watercolors by the well-known Lutsk photo correspondent of the second half of the 20th century, L. Neimark, are exhibited for the first time. The second exhibition entitled "Gifts for the Museum A Sign of Trust" thematically continues the previous one: visitors are offered collections from the museum's funds (or fragments of collections), personal and memorial complexes of donated archives, creative funds, personal belongings. We consider a sign of trust in the museum the transfer for permanent storage of materials of the graphic artist, active participant in the liberation struggles Nil Khasevych (SBU, 1992); personal belongings, vestments, church utensils that belonged to Metropolitan Polikarp (Sikorsky), whose church service is connected with Lutsk (St. Simon's parish, Paris). For many years, Vladyka Polikarp's personal belongings were kept in the basement of the church in which he served in emigration. In 1997, thanks to the patronage of the Metropolitan of the UAOC in the Western European Eparchy (Neu-Ulm, Germany) Anatolii Dublianskyi, the Volyn Museum of Local Lore was honored to preserve the memorial fund of the vladyka, who in the Soviet Union was a "non grata" person. Many years of correspondence between the director of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore Anatolii Syliuk and Anatolii Dublianskyi, a former employee of the museum in Lutsk, prompted the latter to transfer to the museum a significant part of his own archive and library. A. Dublianskyi's memoirs about his life and work in Lutsk, including in the museum from the late 1930s until his emigration in 1944, are also extremely valuable. It is precisely thanks to him that the museum now possesses, albeit incomplete, a collection of painting, graphics, and documents that once belonged to the Radziwill princes, the owners of the Olyka Castle. The gifts of the Metropolitan of Lutsk and Volyn of the UOC Nyfont are generous: more than two dozen old printed books, among which is a work by Ioanykii Galiatovskyi; a collection of decorative Easter eggs made of wax, decorated with beads and miniature icons; commemorative souvenirs from the holy places of Palestine, where the vladyka traveled repeatedly. The Volyn Museum of Local Lore also does not neglect the Archbishop of Rivne and Ostroh of the UOC Bartholomew. His gifts: books, icons, souvenirs and, most interestingly, two crowns made (woven) of straw adorn the exhibition exposition. Recently, the museum's funds were enriched with memorial items of the Metropolitan of Lutsk and Volyn of the UOC-KP Yakiv, who recently completed his earthly service. His vestments, panagias, church and state awards, documents, photos, and his own icon were transferred to the museum by the chancellery of the Volyn Eparchy of the UOC-KP; they are exhibited for the first time. During the time that has passed since the celebration of the 65th anniversary, the museum's art collection has been replenished with new paintings through gifts: from the artist from Khvorostiv in the Liuboml district Valentyna Mykhalska, from the family of the now-deceased former head of the museum's art department Mykola Chereniuk, from the artist from Kyiv Valerii Franchuk. Particularly generous was the gift of the head of the design department of the Volyn Technical University Orest Khmelovskyi: he transferred an artistic legacy of 51 works of painting. Gifts from the family of the last hetman of Ukraine Pavlo Skoropadskyi (among them a now rare collection of postcards "Ukrainian Art" of more than 200 items) and Halyna Melnyk-Kaluzhynska (England, London), who was the fiancee of the hetman's son Danylo (his premature and tragic death became an obstacle to their marriage), are also dictated by trust in the museum (that it will preserve, augment, and bring into scientific circulation). Everything that was dear to her in life, memorable, that she carefully preserved for decades, she transferred to the museum for storage as her successor. The exhibition displays more than 400 museum items, most of them for the first time.