Resilience and rebirth on display at the Ukrainian Museum

Daniel Leonard: In the heart of Manhattan’s East Village is a neighborhood known as Little Ukraine, home to many Ukrainian-Americans. And, in the middle of Little Ukraine, on East 6th Street between 2nd and 3rd Ave, is the Ukrainian Museum. It’s much bigger on the inside than it looks from the sidewalk, and it has a history going back almost 100 years.

Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: In 1933, at the Chicago World’s Fair, the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America organized a pavilion of Ukrainian folk art. That was the year when there was Joseph Stalin’s man-made famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor. And so this was a very timely project to raise awareness about Ukraine and what was going on.

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Daniel Leonard: That art collection was preserved, and in 1976 it was converted into a permanent museum, which moved to its current location in 2005.

Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: Right now we are looking at our largest exhibition in the museum. The title is Nature in Art. Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe. It’s extremely fertile. So, the population — the ancient, especially the ancient civilizations — were overwhelmingly an agrarian society. And so the springtime, and the images that the spring has, and nature has, has extreme significance for them.

Daniel Leonard: One folk art representing springtime and rebirth is the pysanka. It’s tempting to call it the Ukrainian Easter egg, but pysanky actually predate the arrival of Christianity in Ukraine. Another common symbol of nature is the tree of life.

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Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: Here is a rendition of this tree of life. This is a symbol of the continuation of life and the regeneration of life. There’s usually a trunk in the middle of some kind — although there are variations. There are usually offshoots — sometimes just two, but sometimes there are several. And oftentimes it’s flanked on either side by a bird, by birds, two birds, or, on the bottom, by two stags. By two deer.

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Daniel Leonard: Be it folk art or fine art, this symbol was everywhere.

Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: There’s this tree of life. So you have that trunk with the offshoots. In the plate, this is the tree of life herself. She’s the trunk with the two flowers. This is a tree of life here. Again, there’s a tree of life there. These here… this is actually a tree of life. I just noticed that. I always notice something different.

Daniel Leonard: Besides renewal and rebirth, a lot of Ukrainian art also represents resilience in the face of hardship.

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Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: So this is a piece by Mikhail Turovsky. He was born into a Jewish family in Ukraine. And during World War II, they fled the Nazis. And then after the war came back.

Daniel Leonard: Turovsky joined a group of Ukrainian artists who became increasingly outspoken and experimental with their art — like with this abstract painting of sunflowers. This led to an artistic clampdown by Soviet leadership.

Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: This was dangerous because it made too many people think about their freedoms that were being infringed upon in the Soviet Union. So he — so that’s when he emigrated. That’s when he emigrated to the United States.

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Daniel Leonard: Many residents of the East Village are also Ukrainian immigrants or their descendants. And the Ukrainian Museum is just one staple of Ukrainian culture in the neighborhood. Kalyma also points to St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Ukrainian school, and a variety of other Ukrainian youth organizations. She says these are critical to preserving Ukrainian culture.

Kalyma Cholhan Boychuk: Because of our history of being dominated by other neighboring countries that want to suppress the culture, you feel obligated, the parents feel obligated to teach their kids… You know, in order to preserve it, so that it doesn’t get lost.

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