|
Ivan Honchar Museum was founded in September 1993. Its aims are to help revive national culture, promote ethnic consciousness,
and preserve and develop the best traditions of Ukrainian folk art. The Museum is founded on the collection of Ivan Makarovych Honchar (January
27, 1911 – June 18, 1993), who was a prominent statesman, scholar and artist. In the 1960s his collection
served as an alternative to the then official ideology and helped spark a renewed interest in national culture.
Presently Ivan Honchar Museum is developing along lines envisioned by its
founder. It is a varied complex consisting of: a museum of exhibitions and displays, research center, laboratory for national song, art school for
children, and specialized publishing house.
The Honchar Museum today is more than just an exhibition of art objects and Ukrainian cultural artefacts.Developing
along lines envisioned by its founder, it is a varied complex consisting of: a museum of exhibitions and displays, research center, laboratory for
national song, art school for children, and specialized publishing house.
According to the Decree of the President of Ukraine (December 1999) it is developing into the Ukrainian Centre of Folk Culture
- a research centre that organizes ethnographic expeditions, conferences, seminars and lectures, traveling exhibitions. Culture Studies and Art
Clubs, working under the auspices of the museum, disseminate and popularize knowledge of Ukrainian art and ethnography in Ukraine and
abroad. The museum seeks cooperation with other museums of Ukraine and of the world in order to integrate Ukrainian traditional culture into the
world cultural processes.
The Ukrainian Centre of Folk Culture “Ivan Honchar Museum”
aims at combining purely museum work with revitalizing cultural and art traditions of the Ukrainian people.
The museum is planning to set up a children's folk art school, restoration shops, art studios, a folk art lab with the purpose of maintaining
and developing the best Ukrainian folk and fine art traditions.
Ivan Honchar's life and work can be called a veritable cultural feat. What he has managed to do is comparable to an
achievement of a big cultural institution. It is time we realized that a gifted person, armed with knowledge and inspired
by love for his native land, can work miracles.
All the visitors to the museum are invariably filled with gratitude to Ivan Honchar and his successors for saving these
exciting treasures of Ukrainian art and culture. Numbers of visitors are constantly growing and it has become evident that the museum is
in urgent need of more spacious premises, which would allow showing the versatility and richness of Ukrainian art and culture to the Ukrainians
and to the world.
|
