ICOM Talk: Documenting War

If your museum wants to tell a story about war, be it an ongoing armed conflict or the aftermath of past events, you have a choice to make. Are you going to ask the people what they experience, right in the middle of the terrible events that are horrifying the country and shock the world? Or do you wait for time to determine the official story of what happened? 

Olha Mukha is curator at The Territory of Terror Memorial Museum in Lviv, Ukraine; Sanda Koçevar is an historian and the curator in the Karlovac City Museum dealing with the local history up to the 1990s in Karlovac, Croatia. Both are experienced in managing the many difficult sides and angles when it comes to documenting war. From collecting human testimonies to dealing with different political stances in designing an exhibition.
They share their stories with you on Thursday 25 April 2024, 3.30 - 5 PM, during an ICOM Talk online. Central topics: tools for live documentation, using personal stories in exhibitions and museum work in the (aftermath) of war.

General Information

Date: Thursday 25 April 2025, 3.30 - 5 PM
Online Zoom meeting: meeting link
Joining this Talk is free, no need to sign up
Language: English

About our speakers

Sanda Koçevar

Sanda Kočevar is a historian, author and museum advisor of the Karlovac City Museums in Croatia with more than 25 years of practice. She has curated and been awarded nationally for numerous exhibitions dealing with local history of 19^th and early 20^th century in a broader context.
From 2007-2019 Sanda Kočevar was a professor at the Karlovac University of Applied Sciences, where she taught tourist evaluation of cultural heritage and introduced and conducted the innovative approach of service-learning through the EU projects. Since 2021, she has been appointed a member of the committee for tourism and tourist guides for NW Croatia. She is a member of the Croatian Museum Association and the Croatian National Committee for Historical Sciences.
She has been an advocate for the people with intellectual disabilities for 20 years; the author of the first publication with the international label “easy-to-read” in the Karlovac County. She has been volunteering in several NGOs and was proclaimed the volunteer of the year 2018.
Area of expertise: Photography, travelogues and diaries as historic sources, memory studies, cultural strategies and DEAI practices.

Olha Muhka

Olha Muhka is an author, philosopher, cultural analyst and manager, and an expert on international communications and human rights. She is a curator and Head of the Educational and International Department of the “Territory of Terror” Memorial Museum. She has curated numerous exhibits (Diaries of War; Angels – co-curator of Kitsch section; Lost Childhood, The Garden, Wounded Culture, REPLAI etc.), and consulted cultural institutions in rebranding and development strategies. She is head of Jury of ENCOUNTER (Ukrainian-Jewish Literature Award (2023), Expert of Creative Europe (2024).
Dr Mukha was the host and moderator of the English-language Dialogues on War; author and host of the Ukrainian-language podcast #gentleukrainization. Since 2023 she is Senior Strategist at IN2, specialising in crisis communications.
Olha Mukha has worked for the central office of PEN International in London as Congresses, Committees, and New Centres Manager (2018-2023), sharing her expertise in artistic, cultural, human rights, and academic fields in different range of projects in India, Philippines, Myanmar, Mexico, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Slovene, Poland. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
Olha Mukha was a professor at Lviv University and the National Pedagogical Drahomanov University in Kyiv, where she taught cultural management and marketing, legal aspects of the culture market, and philosophical disciplines for over 15 years. 
Area of expertise: Aesthetics perception and building participant journey, decolonisation and memory studies (incl. oral history and history of terror), Ukrainian culture and cultural analytics, Ukrainian literature and modern cultural processes, international communication and cultural politics (incl. access to cultural rights and freedom of expression).