LUTSK — An event of national importance took place in Ukraine toward the end of last year, when the Miracle-Working Icon of the Mother of God of Kholm was displayed at the Museum of Icons in Lutsk after ten years of restoration. Although the icon is over a thousand years old, and it is widely known and appreciated, Den was Ukraine’s only newspaper to conduct in-depth reports about it. It is one of the so-called apostolic icons that have survived the ravages of time, and one of the most revered Eastern Orthodox icons. This icon was restored by Anatolii Kvasiuk, a craftsman from Lutsk whom Den/The Day named Man of the Year 2009. There were ten nominees: politicians, Heroes of Ukraine, and a famous athlete. But the restorer from Lutsk who received the title because he had accomplished something few other could have done, he gave Ukraine back one of its relic. In Volyn, however, this event of national importance passed practically unnoticed and only his colleagues congratulated him. Not a word in the local media. This is too bad, because the demonstration of local corporate spirit and support for a fellow countryman, could serve as a good example of unity and solidarity to be emulated on a national level. During the ceremonious presentation of the icon, the restorer received two church decorations (from different patriarchates), citations from regional functionaries, and a wristwatch from the chairman of the regional council. There was no government award though, despite the fact that people with less talent and fewer merits have received heaps of them. However, the problem is not that the government failed to acknowledge a separate creative personality. The problem is that artistic restoration and museum management are way down the official agenda.
THE MOTHER OF GOD AND LESIA UKRAINKA
Saint Barbara is painted on a scratched, faded canvas, with paint peeling off here and there. She looks at you with eyes radiating divine grace. It is one of 24 images displayed at the Lutsk Museum of Icons and described as “rescued miracles.” A scholarly expedition brought them towards the end of last year from the Myltsi Monastery, hidden in the thick of the forest in the north of Volyn. Museum experts say these unique, priceless paintings were heaped together in a utility room, waiting to be burned because they were Uniate. It was no use trying to convince the monastery’s hierarchy that the Pochaiv Lavra Monastery, one of the main Orthodox relics, was also Uniate 150 years ago. The Myltsi icons date back to the 18th century. Some portray the Apostles in large format, possibly once part of an iconostasis.
Today these irreplaceable works of art are leaned up against the wall under the stairs at the museum. This is Ukraine’s only museum of the original school of Volyn icon painting. Yet it can only put some 150 icons on display at a time, while the museum stock numbers exceeding fifteen hundred. Anatolii Kvasiuk says this museum is an iceberg in the ocean of spiritual treasures. The museum simply does not have enough room for restoring the St. Barbara icon, so it will most likely be sent to Kyiv.
There is yet another singular work of art at the Myltsi Monastery. This is Volyn’s only fresco with an image of the Mother of God (and one of the few worldwide). It was entitled The Mother of God of Myltsi. Experts believe it dates back to the early 16th century. It is in a rather good condition and it was accidentally discovered in a niche in the altar of the monastery’s temple. Several decades ago the monastery served as a [Soviet] elders’ home and the church as a public dining hall. While refurbishing the premises, the construction workers were knocking off the old plaster and suddenly one of the walls tottered. They thought it concealed a treasure. Instead, they found a bricked-up niche with a medieval image of the Virgin Mary. I happened to be at the monastery when the fresco was unearthed. I was allowed to see it. It happened so many years ago, yet I still vividly remember my first impression: an image that shone with divine glory.
Anatolii Kvasiuk was fortunate enough to restore the fresco. Today it is off limits for outsiders, not just because it is part of the altar. Other frescoes were destroyed, with only their photographs left. He also restored the Miracle-Working Icon of the Mother of God of Buchyn (it had been stolen from a temple in the north of Volyn). It is also one of major Orthodox relics. He painted a copy of Volyn’s greatest relic, the Icon of the Mother of God of Volyn. This icon was brought to the National Art Museum from the Church of St. Mary the Protectress in Lutsk (built in the 13th-15th centuries). Currently it is at the head of the exposition. Even experts, seeing his copy on display at the Museum of Volyn Icons, sometimes believed that they were dealing with the original. In fact, he has handled all the icons and other religious objects stored at the museum. He did restoration work for the Lesia Ukrainka-House Museum in Kolodiazhne: 60 personal belongings, including an ivory knife encrusted with mother-of-pearl and corals; a needle case made of cypress planks and lined with velvet (in it he found needles once used by Lesia Ukrainka); pieces of furniture; a desk lamp; a silver lotus-shaped pen the poet bought in Egypt and with which she presumably wrote many poems (he made a copy of the pen – it was next to impossible to tell the difference between it and the original). Kvasiuk spent nine months doing restoration work at the Lesia Ukrainka House Museum, living in a rented flat in Kolodiazhne while his family stayed in Lutsk.
They said that restoring the icon of the Mother of God of Kholm had become his greatest endeavor. He toiled for ten years, without going on vacation or allowing himself to stop and rest on weekends, never reading newspapers or watching the television, just listening to the radio. Nor could he make a quick buck on the side (restoring icons in Poland would have earned a craftsman of his caliber as much as he would have made in Ukraine over several years). In order to complete the job he was forced to invent new tools! The icon was so ravaged by time and man, it would take him ten hours to clear a spot the size of one penny. His colleagues say he would have been paid a million dollars for this kind of work in the West, and this would be a modest price. In Ukraine he was paid 2,500 hryvnias because that was far as the budget unit in question could go. No government awards or the title “Merited Artist/Worker of Art of Ukraine.”
NATION’S ELITE SHOULD BE APPRECIATED
Svitlana Strelnykova, director of the National Restoration Research Center of Ukraine, says what our restorers earn is peanuts compared to their European colleagues: “When I visited Paris and people learned about my post and profession, they started treating me with respect, saying you must be so rich, you must have several villas and so many people on payroll as house help. And so many creative opportunities! A restorer is regarded [there] as a very expensive, exclusive professional. There are three hundred restorers in Ukraine, which is very very few.”
In Lutsk, the icon of the Mother of God of Kholm was being rescued “as a national treasure.” No one even mentioned the restorer’s fee. Sponsors and philanthropists were sought out to finance restoration work, then the state took part in the project. Kvasiuk should perhaps console himself that “not everyone is fortunate enough to have held an apostolic icon, considering that there are few others like this one in the world,” as Strelnykova put it. She admits that it took her several years of knocking on bureaucratic office doors to obtain the title “Merited Worker of Culture” for one of her center’s experts. This title is very important for such individuals. However, after several Polish restorers carried out a commission (there were matching, if not superior, Ukrainian experts, but not enough production space), several of them were promptly conferred Ukrainian government awards. Strelnykova believes that “the nation’s elite should be appreciated.” Ukrainian restorers rescue precious cultural objects of past centuries, yet they don’t even receive the title “Merited Artist-Restorer.” All the people in the cultural sphere, including librarians and bureaucrats, are only eligible for the title “Worker of Culture.”
Anatolii Syliuk, curator of Volyn Local History Museum (the Museum of Volyn Icon is its administrative subdivision), says that museums are “conservative institutions that, on a par with the Church, are the pillars of culture and moral values in our fluctuating world.” The fact that the eparchies in Volyn hand over religious items that are either in a very bad conditions or no longer required to museums, is proof that the bishops and parish priests know that otherwise such items would perish. Here at the museum a new life will be breathed into them. The Museum of Volyn Icons has an excellent staff made up of skilled and religious intellectuals who know the true historical, cultural, and spiritual value of each of those items. Syliuk refers to Kvasiuk as a Divinely-inspired restorer, who knows how to go about restoring. The restorer’s code of ethics was worked out a very long time ago, he adds. If you feel you aren’t up to handling this or that thing, better put it aside, let it wait another twenty, maybe a hundred years until someone with enough experience and understanding appears to restore it: “There are many icons in our museum that are still waiting for their restorers, but there is the lack of experts and funds. You can assess the work of restorers — and museum staff, for that matter — in several respects. In the main spiritual respect, these people enjoy what they’re doing, which is a daily toil, and which is required [by society]. We are thanked by people learned in culture and history, as well as by believers. On the other hand, we’re in a difficult financial position. Unlike Russia, we don’t have a national journal specially devoted to the museum workers or a research center. We don’t have international grants like Russia or Poland, or government-run museum websites. Adding insult to injury, our Ministry of Culture and Tourism doesn’t have a museum department, so we’re being handled by its analysis and prognostication department...
Unbelievable but true: the museum workers of Ukraine have to operate in accordance with the 1984 regulations on the “state museums of the USSR.” In twenty years of Ukrainian independence this document hasn’t been translated into Ukrainian. Syliuk says, however, that there is a steady increase of museum visitors. Lutsk Local History Museum is really great, although located on the premises of a former Polish bank. Part of the heating system dates from the 1930s, so helping the relics survive the winter becomes increasingly hard for the personnel. There are excellent museum expositions in the regional centers of Volyn. Or take the art gallery at the Lutsk Castle, with canvases of world caliber — and peeling plaster, dropping on visitors’ heads! Or the Olyka Castle, once owned by the Radziwill dynasty and referred to as the Versailles of Volyn, and which has for decades accommodated the regional psychiatric hospital. Or Viacheslav Lypynsky’s estate in Zaturtsi (the man could well serve as an example to be emulated by generations of Ukrainian patriots).
Ukrainian society needs museum collections, but it seems that the Ukrainian state doesn’t. Anatolii Kvasiuk, after going on vacation (the ten years he’d spent working on the Miracle-Working Icon of the Mother of God of Kholm took its toll on his health), is getting ready to make a copy of this icon for the newly built Chapel of the Mother of God of Kholm in Lutsk. Like the original, the copy will use cypress planks miraculously found and donated by Volyn’s nonprofit cultural Society Kholmshchyna. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that The Day had named him the Man of the Year. After all, our men of arts are accustomed to something different: “An artist doesn’t need awards, he is awarded by Lady Fate,” to quote from Lina Kostenko.
Says Kvasiuk: “Restorers remain off-stage, as a rule. They are never mentioned during guided tours. However, without them thousands of unique works of art and antiques would have been destroyed by time or improper storage. Honestly I was shocked to hear that The Day’s experts named me the Man of the Year, but it was a pleasant shock. For me it is the highest degree of acknowledgement. I know Editor in Chief Larysa Ivshyna and ex-Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk personally. They visited our museum and the restoration workshop on more than one occasion, particularly when I was working on one of the oldest relics of Ukraine, the icon of the Mother of God of Kholm. I could see that they were aware of the miracle-working icon’s aura. I respect The Day’s experts for making their choice for reasons other than political ones. Who knows better than a restorer that politicians are ephemeral events?”
