Exhibition opens at Ukraine’ s State Museum of Books and Printing

The exposition features rare books and manuscripts submitted to the museum “recently.” In other words, during the uncertain times that could have become the last for this unique collection, after complete government sustenance, is now left, figuratively speaking, on bread and water like most Ukrainian museums.

Yet the museum has succeeded in proving to the municipal authorities and charitable foundations that the 53,000 items making up the stock, including illuminated manuscripts dating from Kyiv Rus’ and incunabula, among them priceless works printed by Ivan Fedorov and Yelysei Pletenetsky. It is a collection worthy of respect and support. It appears that even during our times that are frequently accused of venality toward things generally held sacred, there are people who present print relics to those who can preserve them better. In particular, the Lviv Psaltery of the seventeenth century, Gospels printed in 1690 by the Uspensky Brotherhood (with fifty-five engravings, including works by outstanding masters such as Illia and Nikodym Zubrytsky as well as Yevstakhy Zavadovsky) have been donated to the Fund to Promote the Arts, which in turn transferred the rarities to the museum. The exhibition also features interesting contributions from private collections, from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (a facsimile of Hryhory Hrabianka’s chronicle, works by Meletiy Smotrytsky, and Pylyp Orlyk’s diaries, three series in forty volumes (facsimile reproduction of the old texts, Ukrainian and English translations) along with books bought at second- hand bookstores (a rare collection of verse by Oleksandr Oles from 1909). Ihor Balan, Chairman of the Board of the Lavra Print Shop Foundation keeps the museum collection replenished and feels sure that archaeographic quest is a very promising business today. For example, not long ago the Foundation located and could afford to purchase a truly priceless book, The Teacher’s Gospels, which experts believe to have been made by the first printer of the Eastern Slavs, Ivan Fedorov.