Treasures in white tones

The organizers decided to call the display “White Album. Treasures from the Museum Collection. Chapter 1.” It might as well be called the creative culmination of a decade’s work of the first private museum for contemporary art. Originally it was a small collection; its owner, a prominent businessman and philanthropist Serhii Tsiupko, started gathering it 20 years ago. The bulk of the original collection was the non-figurative art by contemporary Ukrainian artists. Since then, the scope, both in time and geography, has expanded, and the collection has developed to represent the breadth of Ukrainian art of the second half of the 20th century – which, unfortunately, is almost absent in national museums. Now the museum has three exhibition spaces for permanent and temporary displays and is the only one in the country to demonstrate many works of different artistic schools and trends from all the regions of Ukraine – from the 1930s to the present day.

The collection comprises more than five thousand paintings, drawings, sculptures, and decorative art (by over 700 authors).

“White Album” is composed of three chapters. Each chapter features a range of well-known, iconic artists of different generations and different styles. The first chapter is opened by the works of 88 artists, including such famous ones as Ivan Aivazovsky, Adalbert Erdeli, Joseph Bokshai, Mykhailo Derehus, Fedir Manailo, Tetiana Yablonska, Volodymyr Zauze, Olena Kulchytska, Leopold Levytsky.

A spiritual decoration of the Museum of Modern Art’s treasury is a collection of icons in the style of Volyn, Galician, Transcarpathian, Chernihiv, and other schools, which reflect the stylistic features and identity of Ukrainian artists (this will be the first time ever for this collection to be on display).