"Tradition and the Present" is theme of Radoslav Zuk's exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York (02/22/04)

"Tradition and the Present" is theme of Radoslav Zuk's exhibition at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York

NEW YORK - The exhibition, "Radoslav Zuk: Tradition and the Present - Ukrainian Churches in North America and Museum Projects in Ukraine," opened at the Ukrainian Institute of America on February 6, where it will be on view through February 26.

As part of the exhibition opening, Radoslav Zuk, a professor of architecture at McGill University in Montreal, delivered a lecture titled "Cultural Content and Context in Architecture," in which he examined key developments in the Ukrainian church architectural tradition within the general context of cultural transformations in the prevailing historical styles in European architecture, e.g., Byzantine, Renaissance and Baroque. In his presentation, Prof. Zuk maintained that throughout those changes, there are certain cultural characteristics which make Ukrainian architecture unique and distinctive across time. Referring to his design projects, Prof. Zuk analyzed these unique "Ukrainian" elements as the interpretative key to his own work. (See below).

The current exhibition features nine Ukrainian churches which were designed by Prof. Zuk in association with, or as a consultant to, a number of architectural firms in Canada and the United States. It consists of black-and-white photographs, drawings of plans and sections, and descriptions of the churches, and also includes drawings, model photographs and descriptions of his two projects for the expansion of the National Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kyiv.

Prof. Zuk gained international recognition for his design, among other projects, of the Ukrainian churches in North America. Most of these buildings have been recognized in the international architectural press, including Architectural Review, Domus, Parametro, Progressive Architecture, and exhibited in America and Europe. A new church designed by Prof. Zuk, is nearing completion in Lviv.

The current traveling exhibition was first shown in 1996 at the prestigious Architekturgalerie in Munich, Germany, where prior exhibitions featured the work of such notable architects as Norman Foster and Daniel Libeskind, among others. In conjunction with this exhibition, an exhibition catalogue was published, in German and English, as part of the gallery's monograph series.

Since then the exhibition was shown at universities of Delft in the Netherlands, and Sheffield, Leicester, and Cambridge in Great Britain, and most recently, newly updated, at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation in Toronto.

An earlier version of the exhibition, of the churches only, was shown in Ukraine first at the National Museum in Lviv, and then, under the auspices of the Union of Architects of Ukraine, in major cities of the country. After being featured at the National Museum of Ukrainian Art in Kyiv in 1992, the exhibition traveled to Vienna and Graz in Austria, Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey, and Florence in Italy.

* * *

Radoslav Zuk is a professor of architecture at McGill University, where he recently received the Faculty of Engineering Ida and Samuel Fromson Award for Outstanding Teaching. He is an honorary professor of the Kyiv Technical University of Building and Architecture and a professor of the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.

Prof. Zuk is a recipient of a Ukrainian Canadian Congress Centennial Medal and a co-recipient of a Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Governor General's Medal for Architecture, the highest architectural honor in Canada.

The Ukrainian Institute of America (UIA) is located at 2 E. 79th St. For more information on the exhibition access the UIA website: www.ukrainianinstitute.org. Gallery hours: Tuesday-Sunday, noon-6 p.m. For additional information call (212) 288-8660.

| Home Page |