It is thanks to the EuroMaidan Revolution that Ukrainian art lovers again have a chance to see masterpieces from a Kyiv art collection that had been lost in the corridors of Kyiv governmental buildings for years. The change of authorities has helped the Kyiv History Museum to regain its paintings and finally exhibit them, beginning on April 12.
However, the location of 13 pictures remains unknown. Larysa Bulavina, the director of the museum, says that the Presidential Administration “borrowed” 14 paintings in 2011 and was not willing to return them until 2014. “We were fighting for three years to regain our paintings yet there was nothing we could do,” she says. “EuroMaidan helped us to take back our treasures so that everyone can enjoy the art now.”
Yet the museum cannot get back 13 paintings that were delivered to the Kyiv City Administration building in 2006. In 2008, during the examination of the state of the paintings, the museum workers discovered the paintings went missing.
Both the Prosecutor General’s Office and the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) failed to track them down.
Lyudmyla Moroz, a deputy director of the museum, says that the former Ukrainian officials preferred pastoral and landscape painting the most. “Kyiv landscape paintings by such famous artists as Serhiy Shyshko, Mykola Hlushchenko and Vasyl Chehodar were extremely popular among former Ukrainian authorities. Former officials were interested in brands,” she says.
Antique dealer Fedir Zernetsky estimates the total cost of the lost works of art to be several million dollars. He believes the price of the lost paintings will only grow despite the world’s financial crisis.
To prevent thefts in the future, the Kyiv’s History museum asked Culture Minister Yevhen Nishchuk to prohibit the practice of “borrowing” the pieces of art from museums to decorate official buildings.
During the protests in Kyiv on the night of Feb. 19 to 20 when Berkut riot police broke into the Ukrainsky Dim (Ukrainian House) exhibition center, the Kyiv History Museum lost 60 showpieces, which were stored there. The museum’s deputy director Moroz says they “could have lost more but Berkut and titushkas (government-hired thugs who worked with Ukraine’s ousted authorities during the protests) were not aware that each of those paintings might cost thousands of dollars.”
Kyiv History Museum
7 Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Street.; telephone: 278 1240.; open daily from 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Hr 30.
April 12 – June 30
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
