Presenting The Ukrainian Museum: a cultural experience (03/27/05)

PREVIEW: THE NEW UKRAINIAN MUSEUM IN NEW YORK CITY

Presenting The Ukrainian Museum: a cultural experience

NEW YORK - The Ukrainian Museum has been a part of New York City's cultural scene from 1976, when it officially opened its doors to the public. An institution of Ukrainian culture and history, the museum's mission from the onset has been the preservation of the cultural heritage of Ukrainian immigrants who settled in the United States and Canada since the turn of the 20th century.

The museum was founded by the Ukrainian National Women's League of America Inc. (UNWLA), the largest Ukrainian women's organization in the United States. Part of the agenda of this organization was directed toward the preservation of the Ukrainian folk culture. Participating in the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933, the UNWLA mounted a folk art exhibition comprised of folk costumes, kylyms, embroidered and woven textiles, ceramics, decorative wood objects, as well as pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs). A large portion of this collection was purchased and imported directly from the Ukrainian Folk Art Cooperative in Lviv, expressly for the purpose of this exhibition.

The collection remained in the care of the UNWLA following the fair and in the ensuing years some objects were sold, others added through donations and purchases. The collection was exhibited to American and Ukrainian audiences, prompting the idea of establishing a permanent, professionally run museum - an idea, that with time, gained momentum.

The purpose of this proposed institution was clear: to preserve the artifacts and treasures that identify the Ukrainian cultural heritage, and by the same token keep alive the customs and traditions brought from the homeland by the immigrants. In the 1960s and 1970s the UNWLA mobilized its recourses and began to market the idea of a museum to the Ukrainian community nationwide. Through hard work, generosity, persistence, strength of their convictions and the support of the Ukrainian community, the goal was achieved.

The Ukrainian Museum, bilingual (English and Ukrainian) in all phases of its operations, officially began its work in the fall of 1976 on two top floors of a renovated brownstone in Manhattan. A year later the museum was granted the status of an independent cultural institution with its own charter by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York. The governing body of the museum, the board of trustees is made up of 25 members elected from the community and the ranks of the UNWLA.

The folk art collection, the museum's seed collection, was the source of the inaugural exhibition "Ukrainian Folk Art," when the institution opened. The exhibit, which was developed as a traveling show and subsequently visited numerous prestigious venues, embodied a broad representation of the folk arts from various regions of Ukraine, dating from the late 19th century to the 1930s. The objects representing many expressions of folk art, show a high degree of artistic development, and emphasize the creative ingenuity and uniqueness found in the Ukrainian folk culture.

In a short time after its founding, The Ukrainian Museum began to diversify from its initial main focus on folk art. The photograph/documentary collection was started in 1980, prompted by the museum's desire to preserve the social and cultural history of the Ukrainian immigrants in the United States. Vintage photographs, films, documents, private correspondence of notable individuals, playbills and posters are part of this collection. The popular exhibition "To Preserve a Heritage: The Story of the Ukrainian Immigration in the United States" (1984) used the archival collection as its major source of materials and information. In addition to being shown at various venues in the U.S., the exhibit traveled to Ukraine under the auspices of the United States Information Service and was displayed in many museums and cultural institutions in the country.

Numismatics are also a part of the archival collection. The oldest coin held by the museum is a silver hryvnia, dating back to the princely era of the 9th to 15th centuries in Ukrainian history. The largest grouping of paper money is from the years of Ukraine's independence of 1918-1921. The museum has been expanding its holdings of examples of present currency of Ukraine since its independence in 1991. The collection also includes stamps dating from 1918 to the present day, representing modern history of Ukrainians, both in their homeland and in various situations in the diaspora.

The fine arts collection comprises paintings, drawings, woodcuts, etchings and sculptures by Ukrainian artists who worked in Ukraine, Europe and the United States. Represented in the collection is master sculptor/innovator Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964); the world-renowned primitif artist Nikifor; artist, scholar and educator Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky (1873-1952), whose multi-faceted talents impacted greatly on Ukrainian cultural development in the first half of the 20th century; the well-known Ukrainian American woodcut artist Jacques Hnizdovsky (1915-1985); sculptor Mykhailo Chereshnovsky (1911-1994); and many other artists such as Mykola Butovych (1895-1961), Alexis Gritchenko (1883-1977), Borys Kriukov (1895-1967), Mychailo Moroz (1904-1992), Oleksa Novakivsky (1872-1935) and Ivan Trush (1869-1941).

The museum's exhibitions reflect its statement of purpose: to display objects of artistic or historic merit relating to Ukrainian life and culture. Two or three exhibitions are mounted each year from its collections or from loans, many of these becoming traveling exhibitions, designed to introduce the museum's work to distant communities, and since 1991 to Ukraine. With major exhibitions the museum publishes bilingual, illustrated, fully researched catalogues, which have become reference sources in many libraries here and abroad.

Each exhibition and its accompanying programs, which further interpret and explain the subject at hand, aims to present the Ukrainian experience, past and present. Through its exhibitions the museum has sought to bring to light the fact that the cultural legacy of the Ukrainian people has always been a significant factor in their turbulent journey through history and struggle for independence.

It is evident in exhibitions such as "The Lost Architecture of Kiev" (1982); "Treasures of Early Ukrainian Art: Religious Art of the 16th-18th Centuries" (1989); "Political Posters and Cartoons of Ukraine" (1992); "Ukraine - Images from 5000-4000 B.C.: Treasures of the Trypilian Culture" (1993); "Borshchiv: Its Fork Art, Customs and Traditions" (1994); "Jacques Hnizdovsky, 1915-1985: Retrospective Exhibition" (1995); "The Creative Legacy of Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky" (1999); "Three Generations of Cholodny Artists" (2001); "September 11, 2001, in the Ukrainian Press" (2002); and "Holodomor: The Great Man-Made Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933" (2003).

Nurtured in the homeland and preserved and perpetuated by Ukrainians who due to political or economic circumstances resettled in various parts of the world, the cultural legacy of the Ukrainian people remains a strong binding force. It is a source of pride in their history and in the accomplishments of their forefathers, and their contemporaries.

The educational program at The Ukrainian Museum features lectures, conferences, symposia and gallery talks. Ukrainian traditional folk craft courses and workshops (embroidery, gerdany - beaded necklaces, pysanky - Ukrainian Easter eggs, traditional holiday baking), which bring the opportunity for hands-on learning about Ukrainian folk culture are also part of the museum's agenda, and are popular with adults and children, especially school classes. All museum programs are designed to present to its constituency and the general public what is best in the cultural heritage of Ukrainian Americans.

Scholarship and education play an important role at The Ukrainian Museum. The outreach vehicle for both, are the museum's publications. These are exhibition catalogues that feature fully researched essays by scholars on the subject and provide in-depth information and analysis. The collections and the museum's extensive library have long served students and scholars as a valuable resource on Ukrainian history and culture.

For 28 years the museum has conducted its activities in a confined environment, yet dealing with space limitations, the institution has created and promoted a strong and interesting agenda. The museum has earned its well-deserved reputation as one of the smaller exciting and dynamic museums of New York City. It has a national membership and is supported by city, state and federal grantors in many of its endeavors.

Through the generous support of its members, friends and the Ukrainian community, the museum has relocated to its newly built, $9 million building on East Sixth Street. The inaugural exhibition, "Alexander Archipenko: Vision and Continuity," will open on April 3. In planning stages are two subsequent exhibitions in the inaugural program: a folk art exhibit, "The Sun, the Tree of Life and the Goddess," scheduled for late fall 2005 and an exhibition from the museum's photographic/archival collection about Ukrainian immigrants in the American cultural environment, which is scheduled for 2006.

The materials in this special section were prepared by Marta Baczynsky and Romana Labrosse.

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