Fifteen years ago the Lenin Museum was converted into Ukraine House, and the monument to the leader of the proletariat was turned into a clock. Yet public opinion changes much more slowly, and for a long time people would append the phrase “the former Lenin Museum” to the new name of the building. Today it is a thriving center of business and cultural cooperation. Artists and art aficionados associate it with Art Kyiv and the Grand Salon of Sculpture, the high-profile art events that are held here twice a year.
“It gives me great pleasure to say that in the past three or four years Ukraine House has become a genuine brand name. No longer do you have to add the secret password, Lenin Museum,” said Natalia Zabolotna, the director of Ukraine House. “This became possible thanks to the high-profile events and forums that we have been holding here for the past three years. Statistics say it all. About 70,000 people visited the Grand Salon of Sculpture in March of this year.”
Besides major cultural events, Ukraine House is the venue for many national and international business events. It recently hosted the mini-Davos economic forum attended by the presidents of five countries: Azerbaijan, Moldova, Poland, Estonia, and Georgia.
It is the only multifunctional center which, because of its architectural design and structure, can simultaneously accommodate several types of events. But the most important thing is that Ukraine House now corresponds to its name.
The Ukrainian spirit means Ukrainian people, faces, images, nature, and space. This is the world that our newspaper brings to Ukraine House every September to Ukraine House in the form of its traditional annual photography shows. The Day is very much involved in shaping the Ukrainian spirit in what was once a totally non-Ukrainian building. This was the gist of editor Larysa Ivshyna’s speech during the celebrations of Ukraine House’s 15th anniversary. It is no accident that for the last decade The Day has been using this building as a background for photographic studies.
“ The Day’s photography show is one of the events that have always brought Ukrainian things to Ukraine House,” Zabolotna said. “These are always very interesting events. Sometimes they are kindhearted, sometimes ironic, but they always describe Ukrainian spaces. We would like to continue seeing this photo exhibit at Ukraine House.”
Zabolotna recalled that two years ago President Yushchenko issued an order to instill the Ukrainian spirit in this former Soviet ideological edifice.
“We were very bewildered,” the director confessed, “and invited bids for expanding Ukraine House and changing its interior and facade. There were many proposals from architects and artists, but none of them suited Ukraine House because it is a monolithic and self- sufficient structure. Then we realized that the Ukrainian spirit is the Ukrainian people. And people gravitate to interesting places.”
Svitlana Ivanenkova, the first director of Ukraine House after 1991, believes that the center has not changed in terms of quality, but gradual improvements are taking place. “The number of exhibits and other projects are on the rise and becoming increasingly stronger and high-profile. I don’t think it is worthwhile changing the style of the building, and our state is not rich enough to build something new. It is very expensive to put up a building like Ukraine House. These kinds of institutions should be refurbished and have a new spirit instilled in them. I am glad that the Kyivan Cave Monastery has found premises for its gallery. Or take Kyiv’s numerous little theaters: no matter difficult it was, they have stood the test of time and are drawing audiences today.”
Leonid Kravchuk recalls how the Lenin Museum was opened in 1982 with great pomp. But the museum collection was poor and had very few items. Its actual role was that of a sociopolitical center. After Ukraine’s independence, the building was saved from commercialization and turned into Ukraine House, a thriving center of cultural and business cooperation.
After 1991 similar institutions began to emerge all over Ukraine as well as abroad, thanks to the efforts of the Ukrainian diaspora. One of the most famous ones is the Ukrainian Museum located in New York City’s Manhattan district, next to Central Park. “In my opinion, Ukraine House is tremendously important because everything that is taking place here is on the fault line of several eras, where stereotypes are being shattered, political systems are changing, and attempts are being made to rewrite history and look differently at cultural heritage,” said Anatolii Kinakh with the bombast that is typical of politicians. “This building looks modern today. It was not neglected in the stormy period of capital accumulation. It has preserved its state significance, while in our country there are frequent cases of the opposite happening.”
Petro Poroshenko was no less eloquent. “I recall the stormy times of 2004, when Ukraine House opened its doors to the huge numbers of people who had come to Kyiv to fight for democracy. That was when Ukraine House proved that it was Ukrainian.”
On the 15th anniversary of Ukraine House, its directors decided to present visitors with a remarkable gift — the largest collection of works by the artist Maria Pryimachenko in the world. Explaining that Oleh Pinchuk gave them the idea, Zabolotna said that it would be difficult to find a more Ukrainian artist. The exhibit features works from the private collections of some well-known individuals, including Vasyl Vovkun, Minister of Ukraine for Culture and Tourism, the sculptor Oleh Pinchuk; MP Bohdan Hubsky, and others.
These kinds of high-profile art events always raise the problem of curatorship, the correct placement of exhibit items. “The question of curatorship comes up whenever we carry out an art project. Some people praise us, others criticize us, but we keep on with our work,” Zabolotna said.
“We always resort to the following ploy to attract visitors: along with the works of contemporary artists we always display a collection of old art from private collections. When I contacted some well-known personalities three years ago, when we were preparing our first project, I encountered a variety of attitudes, but most people agreed to provide some art from their personal collections. We are proud that we can show people what they will never see in a museum. Kudos to those collectors who are willing to open their private collections to people who appreciate beauty!”
In the opinion of Oleksii Tytarenko, a well-known art historian and curator of the Da Vinci Gallery, art collecting is booming in Ukraine. “I will illustrate this in very easy-to-understand terms. Last Sunday at an Andriivsky Uzviz auction held by a leading antiquary, a work by Mykola Hlushchenko sold for nearly 300,000 dollars. In 1996, when I organized a solo show for this artist and acquired about 100 of his works from various private collections, they were worth between 800 and 2,000 dollars.
“Unfortunately, our classics are not in great demand on the global art market because they are considered too provincial. But in the case of the avant-garde and such artists as Malevich, Tatlin, etc., these works fetch exorbitant prices abroad. I think everything will change little by little. There have already been changes in Moscow. Some emigres from the Russian capital have opened the McDouglas Auction House in London, which specializes in Russian art. Ukrainian artists are also represented there, and their works have been selling pretty well in the past few decades,” Tytarenko said.
In addition to the exhibit of Maria Pryimachenko’s works, there is also a collection of paintings, graphics, sculptures, icons, hand-woven runners, and Japanese engravings from Ukraine House’s collection, which numbers over 70,000 items from the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection, which began to be formed in the Soviet era, received a powerful impetus after Ukraine became independent. This collection has just been opened to the general public.
Among the exhibited items are works by the painters Tetiana Yablonska, Mykhailo Derehus, and Yakiv Romos, the sculptors Oleksandr Sukholit, Mykola Telizhenko, and Roman Romanyshyn, the graphic artists Oleksandr Hubariev, Oleksandr Dubovyk, Petro Shporchuk, and many others. A special room is devoted to the unique exhibit of 19th-century Japanese woodblock engravings by artists of the Utagawa school.
While the attempt to transform the former Soviet space and fill it with Ukrainian spirit has been a resounding success, there is also a need to establish fundamentally new cultural centers, galleries, and museums.
“Young people are lining up in front of the absolutely unique Pinchuk Art Center from 9 in the morning. Kyiv has not seen such lineups for a long time. The Arsenal is also under construction,” Tytarenko says. “As an art historian, I must say that Ukraine House is not so pleasant in terms of energy: it is official, cold, and imperialistic-looking. But it is run by totally different people. The building is the scene of bustling activity — perhaps a bit too official but still on a very wide scale. And artists are gradually coming around to liking this place because there is life here. I have gotten used to it, too. I never visited the Lenin Museum, but I keep coming here because life is in full swing.”
Tytarenko said that it could have been the other way round. “The Lavra Gallery, which is supposedly a municipal gallery, lacks somebody like Natalia Zabolotna, so the Lavra people lease out the place and do something once or twice a year, just to be with it.”
