Museum of Ukrainian Gramophone Records

Museum of Ukrainian Gramophone Records is a contemporary private institution in the Pechersky district of Kyiv, on the Singing Field. The museum collects, restores, and presents to visitors a collection of vinyl records and gramophone equipment — sound witnesses of the Ukrainian music industry's development from the early 20th century through the late Soviet period. The holdings include recordings of national operas and choral ensembles, instrumental groups, popular performers, as well as rare records of the Ukrainian diaspora on US and Canadian labels of the 1950s-1980s. The exposition holds vintage gramophones, phonographs, the first electric turntables, and sound-pickup equipment from the 1930s-1970s. The museum hosts thematic listening sessions, lectures on sound-recording history, and musicological meetings, and restores fragile shellac records in its own laboratory. Particular attention is paid to archival holdings preserved in single copies worldwide, and to dialogue with descendants of émigré families who preserved family phonothèques.