Last November Viktor Yushchenko signed the Edict “On the Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Taras Shevchenko National Museum.” The document says in view of the Museum’s tangible contribution in the preservation, study, and popularization of the poet’s creative heritage, a series of events and festivities, as well as repair and renovation works will be carried out at the museum and its branches. In addition, research will be conducted and a commemorative coin will be put into circulation and a postage stamp be issued. Under the edict, the museum’s building together with its wing on Shevchenko Boulevard will be made state property.”
The Taras Shevchenko National Museum is one of the few fortunate cases when the directives issued by the political leadership are, in fact, carried out. Most museum staff members are satisfied with what has been done to mark the 60th anniversary, especially how the land issue was resolved.
The Shevchenko National Museum marked its 60th anniversary on April 24. It stores over 85,000 original items, including 32,000 from the main stock, that illustrate the bard’s life and work. In conjunction with the jubilee an exposition of his personal effects opened in the two wings of the museum.
One part displays Shevchenko’s painting and engraving implements, utensils, his military shirt, a medallion with a lock of his hair, etc. In the second wing are his landscapes, which he created during his travels as a member of archaeological commissions and trips across Ukraine, and 20th- and 21st-century canvases that portray places associated with Shevchenko (the area where he was born, Kaniv, Sedniv, Kachaniv, etc.).
One thing is more amazing than another: the clock that stopped at his studio in St. Petersburg on The Day Shevchenko died, an almost new palette, a stool, or the way Shevchenko’s friends jealously preserved his things after his death.
“My Dear True Cossack Vasyl Vasyliovych, God willing, our beloved Cossack Mother Ukraine will build, with time, a national museum. Meanwhile, I ask you to transfer to this museum all of Taras Shevchenko’s things, which I have kept after his death as keepsakes and which I have now placed in your care: his etchings, toolbox for etching, box of paints, paintbrushes, horn palette knife, two steel knives, easel, maulstick, inkstand, pens, pencils, the first death mask made by Baron Peter Klod, and the cut-glass ornamented flask from which Shevchenko drank that ‘damn good’ horilka [vodka]. This will be done to immortalize Taras’s memory,” wrote Shevchenko’s friend Hryhorii Chestakhivsky in a letter to Vasyl Tarnovsky. In fact, all of these items are on display at the museum.
Says the Museum’s chief curator Yulia Sherenko: “Taras Shevchenko died in his studio in St. Petersburg. His relatives agreed to sell his belongings. To this end Shevchenko’s friends organized three closed auctions. Only his painting implements and paintings were not for sale. Ukrainians who lived in St. Petersburg and rallied round the journal Osnova decided to keep these things to preserve them. They treasured all of Shevchenko’s belongings. Some took his spoons, while others took his bed linen.
“All of his possessions were priced at 150 silver rubles and 15 kopecks. The most valuable item was his gold pocket watch, which we don’t have, and an oak-rimmed clock from his studio. These things changed hands as gifts and eventually found their way to a few individuals. Shevchenko’s friend Hryhorii Chestakhivsky collected numerous items that belonged to the poet. In 1888 he handed them over to Vasyl Tarnovsky, one of most reputed collectors of the 19th century, who amassed a Shevchenko memorabilia collection of more than 700 items.”
Museum workers say that the items on display were stored at the Chernihiv History Museum until 1926. After the Taras Shevchenko Institute was set up in Kyiv, his belongings, works of art, manuscripts, etc. started being transferred to the capital. Sixty years ago all these things were put together at the former palace of Mykola Tereshchenko. Built in the mid-19th century, it is an ideal museum building with its unique architecture and all the required conditions: here the necessary temperature and humidity are maintained throughout the year without much intervention. The unique paper manuscripts are stored in special conditions. The paintbrushes and other creative implements are stored in specially designed birch cabinets.
Interestingly, 100 — 150 years ago prosperous and learned Ukrainian industrialists built their homes in such a way that they could serve as museums for their posterity for more than a century. Mykola Tereshchenko, one of Ukraine’s most widely known businessmen and philanthropists, would be happy to learn that his Renaissance mansion on the corner of Shevchenko Blvd. and Tereshchinkivska St. now houses the Shevchenko Museum. The museum staff considers as true relics the autographed manuscripts of the poem “Should we not then cease, my friend,” an excerpt from “Tsars,” lifetime editions of Kobzar (1840, 1860), ‘Haidamaky,’ and ‘Tryzna.’
