We manage MUSEU-HUB, delivering digital transformation services to cultural institutions. A core component of MUSEU-HUB is its role as a trusted aggregator for museums and museum collections within the Europeana Initiative and the Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage, of which we are a partner.

As a Europeana trusted aggregator, we support GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) in making their digital cultural heritage collections visible, accessible, and reusable at a European level. Through this work, we help museums and cultural organisations publish their collections on platforms such as Europeana, ensuring that local heritage can be discovered, reused, and understood globally. 

Recently, we have helped KROVETS,  toa ggregate more than 3,800 records , on Europeana, offering unprecedented access to Ukrainian material culture and traditional artistic expression.Thanks to MCA support, the records were enriched with multilingual vocabularies, reaching very good results in terms of metadata and resource quality.

→ Explore the collection on Europeana: https://metis-publish-portal.eanadev.org/en/search?query=edm_datasetName%3A1413_%2A 

Folk Painting “Near the Well” by Shutenko V. – Online Museum of the traditional art of Ukraine – KROVETS, Ukraine – CC BY-NC-ND.

Traditional Art as the Foundation of All Art

According to KROVETS, traditional art collections are not simply remnants of the past. They are a vital part of the world’s cultural heritage and a key to understanding humanity’s creative origins. These works represent what the institution calls the “primary scream of a newborn sense of beauty”—the earliest human impulse to express what feels harmonious, meaningful, and visually right.

Long before formal education or artistic theory existed, communities were already creating. Patterns, colors, symbols, and forms emerged naturally and were refined over generations. In this sense, traditional art is not a lesser form of fine art; it is its origin. As KROVETS aptly states, all fine arts are traditional arts that completed a university degree.

Revealing the Ukrainian Sense of Beauty

KROVETS is proud to present what it defines as the Ukrainian sense of beauty. Through its collections, the institution uncovers the unspoken visual rules that shaped what local communities found attractive, appropriate, and meaningful—and how these shared aesthetics came to define a national artistic language.

For Ukrainians, traditional art serves essential cultural functions. It helps people:

• Understand who they are, providing artistic evidence of identity and belonging
• Recognize what is “ours”, created and preserved by generations of Ukrainians
• See the world through a Ukrainian lens, learning to read and write in a distinct visual language

Believe in themselves and their country, described as beautiful, strong, and “unrestrainedly and eternally createful”

 

Folk Painting “Near the Well” by Shutenko V. – Online Museum of the traditional art of Ukraine – KROVETS, Ukraine – CC BY-NC-ND.

 

From Local Traditions to Shared European Heritage

By aggregating KROVETS’ collections, MUSEU contributes to transforming local Ukrainian traditions into a shared European cultural resource. These objects, rooted in everyday life, rituals, and craftsmanship, now exist within a broader digital ecosystem, where they can be studied, admired, and reinterpreted by audiences far beyond their place of origin.

This collaboration demonstrates how digital aggregation can safeguard cultural identity while opening it to dialogue, understanding, and continuity. Ukrainian traditional art, preserved by KROVETS and shared through MUSEU, remains not only a record of the past but a living foundation for creativity today.

Photo “Teacher’s family” by unknown – Online Museum of the traditional art of Ukraine – KROVETS, Ukraine – CC BY-NC-ND.