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Temporary version of the website.
Main website is under construction.

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National Art Museum of Ukraine

About the Museum

National Art Museum of Ukraine – is the most representative collection of Ukrainian art in the world. The museum collection includes more than 40 thousand exhibits, including masterpieces of Ukrainian iconography, painting, sculpture, graphics, and media from the XII century to the present day.

The museum was founded by the efforts of Ukrainian intellectuals and industrialists-patrons in the late XIX century as the first public museum in Kyiv. On September 21, 1897, the foundation stone was laid while the treasury allocated first 50 thousand rubles.

The museum building was designed by architect Petro Boitsov in the neoclassical style. The famous Kyiv architect Vladyslav Horodetskyi finalized the project and supervised the work. The sculptural decoration of the facade was made by the workshop of Elio Sala.

The first exhibition on the occasion of the XI All-Russian Archaeological Congress opened in the unfinished premises of the Kyiv City Museum of Antiquities and Arts on 5 (17) August 1899. The official opening and consecration of the institution, which was named the Kyiv Art, Industrial and Scientific Museum, took place on December 30, 1904.

Over its 120-year history, the museum has changed its name 12 times. The change of the museum’s name reflects the complex processes of the country’s life and certain stages of the formation of the national museum business. In particular, the names can be used to trace how the profile of the collection changed and how certain parts of the original collection left to become the basis for the birth of other museums in Kyiv and Ukraine.

The latest name of the institution, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, appeared in 1994, at the time of Ukraine’s independence, which confirmed the museum’s highest status as a leading collection of national art.

Exhibitions

New season of museum lectures “Ukrainian Art: Figures Against the Background of Epochs”

New season of museum lectures “Ukrainian Art: Figures Against the Background of Epochs”

As part of a new lecture series titled “Ukrainian Art: Figures Against the Background of Epochs,” museum scholars will focus on those prominent figures who shaped the development of Ukrainian art. The 15 lectures will cover the period from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century, and will focus on different art centers and the contribution of different communities to the rich artistic palette of Ukraine.

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Charity exhibition The Collectyv

Charity exhibition The Collectyv

On Saturday, March 2, we invite you to the National Art Museum of Ukraine for the opening of The Collectyv exhibition of contemporary art. This is an independent group of artists that joins the program “Community” of the Ridni Foundation aimed at supporting orphans and children affected by Russian aggression.

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“In the Eye of the Storm. Modernism in Ukraine” (Austria)

“In the Eye of the Storm. Modernism in Ukraine” (Austria)

On February 23, the Belvedere Museum will open an exhibition presenting the rich palette of Ukrainian modernism. Vienna is the fourth European location for this exhibition. This time, however, the exhibition also includes works of Art Nouveau, the period when the search for a national style in art began. Therefore, European viewers will be able to see works by Vsevolod Maksymovych, Vasyl and Fedir Krychevskyi, Oleksandr Murashko, Heorhii Narbut, Mykhailo Zhuk, Abram Manevych, Olena Kulchytska, and others.

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“Self-Determination: A Global Perspective” (Ireland)

“Self-Determination: A Global Perspective” (Ireland)

This exhibition explores some of the common cultural strategies that emerged across many of the new nation-states including Finland (1917), Estonia (1918), Poland (1918), Ukraine (1917), Turkey (1923), and Egypt (1922), against the backdrop of the international movement towards self-determination. How did diverse countries understand the formation of the new state? How did their artists and poets imagine it? How was this situated within an international context? And how do contemporary artists today reckon with the legacies of this period?

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News and events

Lecture “Taras Shevchenko: Romantic and Thinker”

Lecture “Taras Shevchenko: Romantic and Thinker”

We are starting the spring season of the museum lecture series! The meetings will focus on those artists who have shaped the development of Ukrainian culture in different historical periods. So, it is no coincidence that we will start with Taras Shevchenko, especially in March, when we celebrate the 210th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

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Presentation of new acquisitions. Margit, Yolanta and other Lviv women

Presentation of new acquisitions. Margit, Yolanta and other Lviv women

We invite you to a three-day program on February 1, 2 and 3, during which the famous artist, researcher and curator Andrii Boiarov will present the work of Lviv modernists. This is an unprecedented event, because the museum collection was replenished in the midst of a full-scale war with works from a period that is practically not represented in our collection. The two presented works – Margit Selska and Lyuna-Amalia Drexler are the starting point of the conversation about the phenomenon of women artists of the “artes” association and their work in the circle of Lviv modernism.

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Online quest “Ukrainian art: in search of itself”

Online quest “Ukrainian art: in search of itself”

The theme of the quest resonates with the theme of last year’s museum lecture – “Ukrainian art: in search of oneself”. This time we will also focus on various aspects that emphasize the peculiarity and originality of Ukrainian art. So the questions may contain both new and familiar information.

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Lecture “Mykhailo Zhuk: From Art Nouveau to Art Deco”

Lecture “Mykhailo Zhuk: From Art Nouveau to Art Deco”

At Olena Kashuba-Volvach’s lecture “Mykhailo Zhuk: From Modernism to Art Deco” you will learn how the artist’s work reflects the diversity of trends in Ukrainian modernism. We will also talk about the role Mykhailo Zhuk played in the creation of the national art school and how his art, having received the impulses of the Krakow Secession, found its own voice.

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Lecture “Modernism in Ukraine: Terminology, Movements, Masters”

Lecture “Modernism in Ukraine: Terminology, Movements, Masters”

What trends and movements of modernism developed in Ukraine in the first half of the twentieth century? How did it break with the traditions of realism and other previous trends? What is the relationship between the concepts of “modern” and “modernism”, “modernism” and “avant-garde”? How did art become an arena of struggle for color, space, and form? Find out about this and more at Olena Kashuba-Volvach’s lecture Modernism in Ukraine: Terminology, Movements, Masters.

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Unfinished stories: new works from the collection. Lviv art provocateurs

Unfinished stories: new works from the collection. Lviv art provocateurs

The exhibition will feature etchings by Ihor Podolchak “Catalog of Architectural Details No. 6” 1990 (a gift from Konstiantyn Akinsha), “Exorcism” from 1992, and a collage from the 1980s by Mykola Kumanovs’kyi (the latter was donated to the museum by Leonid Koms’kyi). In addition, the exhibition will be complemented by other graphic works by Podolchak, which were previously donated to the museum’s collection by the author himself, and video art related to the history of our museum.

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Lecture “Faces of our past: Ukrainian portraiture of the 16th – 18th centuries”

Lecture “Faces of our past: Ukrainian portraiture of the 16th – 18th centuries”

The Ukrainian portrait of the Baroque period allows us to see the panorama of the era, because its heroes were magnates, Kozak officers, shliakhta (gentry), and clergy. Many portraits of that time have been preserved in museum collections, and even several family galleries or parts of them have survived-the princes Vyshnevetsky, the Kozak families Halahan, Darahan, and Razumovs’kyi -but in general, galleries in Ukraine were massively destroyed.

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For more information

Keep a look out for various events happening at NAMU: traditional museum lectures, workshops, and interactive classes for children and teenagers, meetings, discussions, round table discussions, and many other things. Follow the announcements in «News and Events» rubric and choose what interests you the most. Additional information can be found on our social network pages: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.