“70: yesterday, today, tomorrow”

About event

The exhibition “70: yesterday, today, tomorrow” is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the National Museum of Decorative Arts as a separate institution. The jubilee exhibition will be interesting for the general public, because it is a mini-exhibition of the museum collection.

The exhibition presents about 100 monuments, each of which is symbolic of the museum collection and is associated with important events – expeditions to different regions of Ukraine, scientific research, restoration works, and implementation of creative projects.

The exposition is opened by real rarities of the museum, preserved by generations of museum workers, which were exhibited at the First South Russian Crafts Exhibition in 1906 and the Republican Exhibition of Folk Art in May 1954. These events are of particular importance in the biography of the museum, because they tell about the formation of the museum collection, starting from the day of the foundation of the first publicly accessible museum in Kyiv in 1899 (the City Museum of Antiquities and arts). After the Republican Exhibition of Folk Art was held in May 1954, a fateful decision was made to reorganize the exhibition into a branch of the State Museum of Ukrainian Art, and the exhibition, which included 2784 works, became the basis of the museum’s collection as a separate institution.

The vast majority of exhibits are works of outstanding Ukrainian artists of the XX-XI centuries. Among them are pearls of the museum collection from unique collections that have no analogues. These are the works of people’s artists of Ukraine Kateryna Bilokur, Maria Prymachenko; luminaries of Petrykiv painting Tetyana Pata, Nadia Bilokyn, Marfa Tymchenko, women from Petrykiv, Vera Klymenko-Zhukova and the Pavlenko sisters, who first started painting porcelain with Petrikov at the Kyiv Experimental Ceramics and Art Factory; works of Ukrainian avant-garde artists Hanna-Sobachko-Shostak, Evmen Pshechenko and Vasyl Dovgoshiya.

The exhibition also presents the works of art glass masters of the Kyiv and Lviv schools – Vitaly Ginzburga, Svitlana undefined Golembovska, Ivan Zarytskyi; of artistic textiles – Serhiy Nechiporenko, Nadia Babenko, Oleksiy Moroz and many other notable authors. An organic addition to the exposition are photos from the museum archive, which capture unique moments of museum life, its traditions, events and significant events. They tell about a whole galaxy of dedicated museum specialists who created the museum, researched and preserved the historical and cultural heritage of Ukraine, and popularized the museum collection. At the exhibition, you can also see the works of modern artists, because the museum does not stop replenishing the museum collection, working in the conditions of a full-scale war.