Wax figures of celebrities to go into storage
Wax Museum in Kyiv forced to close
The capital of Ukraine no longer has its unique Wax Museum. In early February it was forced out of its building on 11 Pushkinska Street, and the wax figures of politicians and celebrities were placed in storage.
“Since 2001 we have been requesting the Kyiv authorities to give us a 250- square-meter space for our museum. But all our requests fell on deaf ears. We also appealed to government officials, including the president of Ukraine, but this didn’t work either. It turns out that no one needs us. Instead, over 200 casinos and 400 stores have opened in downtown Kyiv in the last seven years,” said Oleksii Sazhyn, the director of the museum.
According to Sazhyn, the museum was renting the building on Pushkinska Street from a private owner. After his plans changed and he decided to terminate the lease, all 65 wax figures ended up in a storage room, where they are quickly gathering dust, and the museum’s employees found themselves on an open-ended leave.
The Kyiv Wax Museum is a private collection owned by the Sazhyns, father and son. In 1997 they launched the collection, which later grew into a museum, and it took three years to present the public with a show of 12 figures in January 2000. This became the foundation of the museum and since then the number of figures has increased considerably.
“The uniqueness of the collection is that it is the only one of its kind in Ukraine and second, no similar museum in Eastern Europe puts on an exhibit over 40 wax figures at a time. Our collection has a total of 65 figures, including well-known Ukrainian and foreign politicians and celebrities, historical figures (Princess Olha, Prince Yaroslav the Wise, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and Hetman Ivan Mazepa). The museum recently expanded its collection with figures of favorite movie characters: Ostap Bender (Sergei Yursky), Mikhail Panikovsky (Zinovii Gerdt), Svirid Golokhvastov (Oleg Borisov), and Pronia Prokopovna (Margarita Krinitsyna),” Sazhyn explained.
The work on each figure begins with the creation of an exact plaster or modeling clay copy of the figure’s prototype. These are later used to mold the visible parts of the figure, whereas the parts hidden underneath clothing are made out of modern-day composites. The lifelike effect is achieved with the help of artificial eyes made at the Institute of Eye Microsurgery. The color and size of the eyes must correspond exactly to the original. At the next stage each individual hair is glued into the wax to create the hairstyle. The work is finished by costume designers, who create the clothing. All the figures correspond to the personalities in terms of height and body measurements.
Since its opening over four million people, including many visitors from abroad, have visited the museum. The museum’s employees even conducted a survey, asking Kyivites and the guests of the city about other wax figures that they would be interested in seeing. The ones in greatest demand were the Klitschko brothers, Dmytro Gordon, the chief editor of the newspaper Bulvar, Prince Sviatoslav, Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, Stepan Bandera, General Ivan Cherniakhivsky, and others.
Sazhyn does not know when the museum will manage to find a new building for its exhibit. He has asked Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to help find a new location for his and his father’s brainchild.
