PASSIONS SURROUNDING THE ROYAL GATES
Since restoration work started at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv, many have taken an interest in what was originally left of this cultural and architectural site. Where are the fragments? In what condition? What will happen to them? Archangel Michael’s statue returned from Lviv last winter gave answers to only some of these questions. Meanwhile the destiny of the artifacts once constituting the original cathedral becomes more and more muddled.
For about a year the capital’s museum experts and art critics have been considering the possibility of transferring the original royal gates from the museum stock of the Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves to St. Michael’s Cathedral of the Golden Domes as a routine museum to museum transfer. To install the gates in the cathedral, a copy must be made and it has to be executed with substantial modifications, because in the original 1811 design the doors do not close tightly; in addition, the medallions portraying the evangelists, etc., are missing. Making this copy and restoration work on the gates costs UAH 568,000 plus the cost of the new gates themselves, a hefty sum, indeed. This must have made experts at the general contractor, Ukrrestavratsiya, come up with a different idea: restoration of the gates and their installment where they historically belong. The legitimacy of this approach toward a work of art, which no restoration will save from slow destruction if installed in a functioning cathedral, is apparently disregarded. As is the fact that, given such approach, the new components will have to be attached to the original gates, something not practiced anywhere in the world when handling museum items.
Apart from financial problems, other arguments are used. Mykhailo DEHTIARIOV, an art critic, believes the royal gates must be returned to St. Michael’s Cathedral, because there are enough relics at the Lavra and to spare. The monastery will not suffer without the gates, but the rebuilt cathedral needs them badly.
The fact remains that the Lavra’s stock-acquisition committee handed the royal gates over to the Old Kyiv Historical-Architectural Preserve and St. Michael’s Monastery’s Museum is administratively part of the preserve. When executing the transfer, the committee made a reservation to the effect that it would be strongly against the gates being used in a functioning church.
The Day asked Larysa KOVALIOVA, chief curator of the Kyiv Pechersk Preserve, for comment.
L. K.: We would be resolutely against transferring the gates [to St. Michael’s Cathedral], if we were not certain that they will be preserved. We handed the exhibit to a different museum where our colleagues operate under the same regulations and use the same procedures as we do.
Another thing is that a presidential decree bestowed the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra with national preserve status, meaning that our collection is from now on indivisible. In the case of the royal gates we made an exception, for the sole reason that St. Michael’s Cathedral is a shrine restored. We will further conduct a very strict policy and make no such exceptions. The stock of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra will remain intact.
I think that such issues should be decided not by a museum stock-acquisition committee, not even by cultural departments of city district administrations. We need a national program and a special committee at the level of the Ministry of Culture to deal with the redistribution and return of items to those city museums where they originally belonged. There are items at the National Art Museum of Ukraine which are actually Kyiv Pechersk Lavra property. If the state really wants a purposeful policy of returning valuables to their original owners we should expect the return of a part of our collection. Such a program could be carried out only after cataloguing all the museum items, the way it was done in Europe. In Ukraine such taking inventory and categorization are far too slow. * * *
Obviously, the royal gates for St. Michael’s Cathedral are not the only problem. What does it take for every museum item to occupy its proper place? How can all such items be made accessible to the general public without risking vandalism or theft? The Day interviewed Tamara KHOMENKO, manager of the Museum of the History of Kyiv and chairperson of the Council of Museum Managers.
T. K.: Kyiv must develop a uniform concept of its museum network. We ought to finally realize that building something new is impossible without memory and past experience. Of course, we must increase the number of museums, just as the scope of the city is growing. Yet not a single museum can be started from scratch. It starts with a certain collection. Why make anything new if we have old unique museums that can be restored and made accessible? So let us first set the city museum stocks right and open them for the public, as is done all over Europe.
If we set about reviving a memorial site like St. Michael’s Cathedral, it surely must have an exposition portraying its history. But how can well call it a museum and even less so transfer there a unique museum item? Such items must be stored at museums that have been functioning not for a couple of years but for decades. I believe that museums could lend such items to such expositions or standing exhibits, whatever they are called, provided they monitor their condition and can immediately withdraw them if anything goes wrong.
And we should be even more serious about attempts to place an operational monastery and museum under the same roof. Their coexistence may well prove very difficult. I think that St. Michael’s Cathedral should teach us all a lesson.
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Yes, we still have much to learn. Suffice it to recall how much was spent on the project of a museum at the basement of the Church of the Mother of God of Pyrohoshcha, resulting in no museum but a lot of water. We can talk all we want about augmenting Kyiv’s cultural heritage, but this will remain empty words if we fail to preserve the cultural wealth we have inherited. The way we treat it will show just how cultured we really are.
