The Ukrainian Culture Ministry hopes that the collection of Scythian gold will be returned from the Netherlands to Ukraine this September.
Its exhibition at the Allard Pierson Museum in the Netherlands ends on Aug. 31, said Svetlana Fomenko, Deputy Minister of Culture for European Integration.
“On Sept. 1, staff from the (Ukrainian) National Historical Museum will be in Amsterdam to dismantle, pack and return the exhibition to Ukraine,” she said.
The whole collection on display (2,111 items) will return to Ukraine, the deputy minister said.
There are 19 exhibits at the center of the collection: “the most valuable exhibits are the Scythian helmet and sword which are the nucleus of the exposition,” she said.
“We are planning to have the whole exhibition returned as early as September. If we fail to reach a principled agreement while our museum’s representatives are there, we are ready to decide the future of the exhibition through a court of arbitration,” said the deputy minister of culture.
If the collection is not returned to Ukraine, then starting from October “it will be considered to have been removed (from the country) illegally,” Fomenko said.
The Netherlands is neither handing the collection over to mainland Ukraine, nor to the Crimean museums, she said.
At the same time, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture has disagreed with the Dutch museum, which stated that the exhibits cannot be returned to Ukraine unless the issue is resolved by a court.
“We understand that this is because of the museum’s fear of facing legal action on the part of the Crimean museums and Russia,” the deputy minister said.
The exhibition entitled, “The Crimea: Gold and the Secrets of the Black Sea,” opened at the Allard Pierson Museum, an archeological museum at Amsterdam University, in early February. It included collections from five museums – one in Kyiv and four in Crimea. It displayed over 500 archeological finds, including artifacts of Scythian gold, a ceremonial helmet, precious stones, swords, armor, and home ware of the ancient Greeks and Scythians.
Since the Netherlands does not recognize Crimea’s reunification with Russia, which took place after the exhibition opened, the question now concerns who the collection should be returned to after the exhibition closes in August.
