Bohdan Khmelnytsky Museum Picks Bits and Pieces

On November 30, the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Museum in Chyhyryn received ten etchings by prominent Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Danchenko. The pictures (five portraits of Ukrainian hetmans and five seventeenth century battle scenes) were purchased by the Twenty-First Century Ukraine Intellectual Cooperation Fund and its director Bohdan Hubsky presented the etchings to the National Historical and Cultural Reserve.

Reserve Director Vasyl Poltavets noted that, despite the state’s tender care, the museum’s collection founded in 1994, commemorating the hetman’s 400th anniversary, is seldom replenished with original items and still leaves much to be desired. Indeed, only separate elements of the exposition — a seventeenth century portrait of Bohdan Khmelnytsky by an anonymous artist, 26 portraits of Ukrainian hetmans by Danylo Narbut kept in an unusual dramatized Oriental style, cannonballs dating from the times of Ukrainian-Turkish conflicts, along with Cossack smoking pipes, tobacco pouches, shaving kits, and cold steel. Reserve personnel and archaeologists digging in the vicinity of Chyhyryn are doing their best to add to the museum stock (as with seventeenth century women’s garments, kitchenware, and household appliances dating from the Hetmanate). Even the custom house at Boryspil Airport contributed 186 items. Museum workers say they are happy to receive every such donation.

Regrettably, it is not that easy to return to Ukraine original articles once in Khmelnytsky’s possession, says Mr. Hubsky. At present, they have his hat, but his gold pectoral cross was taken away from the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery of the Caves in the 1920s-1930s under the pretext of collecting funds for the starving. The hetman’s mace is at the Warsaw Museum of the Polish Host. And his banner, the most important attribute of office, is at the Military Museum of Stockholm. It can be seen only on the personal permission of the Swedish queen.