Lviv Museum Of Glass: Dreams and Reality

A museum of glass is being opened in Lviv, in spite of all. It will be the first specialized institution of this kind not only in Ukraine but in the former Soviet states as well. It will also be one of the world's few international-level museums of glass.

Lviv artists have no doubt the museum will be opened. Primarily to persuade the authorities that the future museum will rest on a truly powerful foundation, the Lviv Academy of Art, Lviv National Museum, Lviv Palace of Arts, and Vertep Company have conducted an action called The Lviv Museum of Glass at the Palace of Arts.

The idea of such a museum has been born and nursed by Lviv residents for as long as a decade, since the moment when Lviv initiated a triennial International Symposium for Blown Glass. The point is that, under well-established tradition, each artist who takes part in these symposiums should leave one of his works as a gift to the city. Thus a large collection of glass has been amassed and is now stored in the Lviv National Museum. In fact these are 250 works by 150 artists from 26 countries. The collection, made, incidentally, by such world-famous artists as Erwin Aish, Andriy Bokotiy, Vitaly Ginzburg, Jan Zoryczak, Matthew Durand, and many others, is valued at about $600,000.

Thus creating a specialized museum becomes ever more necessary. The more so if we take into account that so much glass is being stored in the depositories of Lviv's other museums. As Vasyl Otkovych, curator of the Lviv National Museum, said during the Lviv Museum of Glass function that his institution as well as the Museum of Ethnography and Handicrafts and the History Museum are ready to pool their collections of glass and hand them over to the newly-created specialized center.

And in addition, there is some interesting window glass in the archeology museum of the Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences, which has also joined the Lviv Museum of Glass action, offering its exhibits for an exhibition, The Archeology of Glass in Western Ukraine, planned as part of the action. As I was told by the exhibition organizer, professor at the Lviv Academy of Arts, Sviatoslav Martyniuk, there is something to show and be proud of in the historical aspect. For glass was always in the backyard of researchers and museum galleries. As long ago as in the 1950s and sixties, Lviv State University Professor Mykhailo Smishko dug at a settlement in the village of Komarov, Chernivtsy oblast, where he found what is now the only trove of Roman glass on the territory of Western Ukraine. Studying Zvenyhorod mentioned by the chronicles in Lviv region, Doctor of History Ihor Sveshnikov found a twelfth-century collection of glass, now the richest in Eastern Europe. In 1994-1995, guided by the cadaster date of 1851, Mr. Martyniuk himself and his students dug up the center of the Korostiv glassworks, founded by Princess Isabelle Liubomyrska, which used to manufacture European-level cut and engraved glass. Also on the list of enthusiasts, who contributed fragments of their excavation finds to the exhibition, is indefatigable archeologist, collector, and talented restorer of antique glass Petro Lypynsky as well as historians and archeologists Mykhailo Fylypchuk and Sviatoslav Tersky. In other words, the exhibition gives an idea of glass ranging from the third and fourth centuries AD up to the nineteenth century.

But this was not the only component of the Lviv Museum of Glass action. Among others is an exhibition of individual works from previous symposia, a personal exhibition of glass-blower Oles Zvir, the newly- opened informational virtual server for the Lviv Museum of Glass action, and soirees with artists Ilona Audere from Latvia and the Ukrainian Andriy Bokotiy from Lviv. Unfortunately, interesting US artist Mark Extrand fell ill and ended up in a Lviv hospital instead of holding his personal soiree. Another mishap: Sergei Travnikov from Russia accidentally dropped a work of his own at the opening ceremony, breaking a glass exhibit stand. Otherwise, everything went as planned.

The only question still hanging in the air is when we can expect a genuine Museum of Glass to be opened in Lviv.