A varied circle of interests

With her famous last name, Olha Bohomolets could not help becoming a doctor. She is an excellent physician, and her achievements are known far beyond the borders of our country. Owning her own clinic turned her into a businesswoman. Besides raising four children, she sings and is involved in social activism and charitable works, and collects Ukrainian icons for the home.

How did you start collecting icons? Did you have any family icons at home?

“Our family had an ancient icon that had belonged to my great-great-grandmother. We also had a Bible and a crucifix, which everybody used to hide. I remember from my childhood that it lay very high up on a wardrobe covered by a serviette. My intentions to explore it came to an end on day, when someone put a stool in front of the wardrobe. I remember that Grandma and I used to make paper flowers for May Day demonstrations and paint Easter eggs, tracing with a brush the Ukrainian letters X and B (Khrystos voskres!/Christ has risen!). My questions about their meaning remained answered. But we used to paint beautiful eggs: that was a family tradition. No other country has ever experienced such a paradox. Where else could you unite things that cannot be joined? Paskas (Easter breads) were always baked, this was never a matter of discussion: everyone kept quiet. At the same time, I was a conscientious, honest, and active Pioneer, a member of the Komsomol, a participant of construction teams, and I took part in Zirnytsias (a game for Pioneers and members of the Komsomol in the USSR). These were all sincere and principled matters for me, and I have no regrets about my Komsomol past. I had no interest in icons, and I could not even imagine that one day they would become part of my life. I was baptized late, after graduating from the institute, although I baptized my son earlier, in western Ukraine, in the Greek Catholic Church.”

Was it your husband’s example that induced you to become a collector?

“No, at that time I didn’t have either a collection or a husband. Of course, my collector-husband has influenced this process. But the first icon came into my life independently; I was not ready for it at all. By the way, I describe this wonderful story, woven by ‘not accidental events’ in my book How the Collection was Created, which will be published before the exhibit is launched. In those days nobody cared about icons. The church considered them to be apocryphal and did not recognize them. The folk icon is very national; it expresses Ukrainians’ perceptions of Divine help, beauty, and good and evil in a brilliant and emotional way. There is a very interesting difference between the icons that are painted in different regions. And since I am a person used to systematizing and analyzing, I have taken a serious interest in icons for a long time.”

You and your husband have different collections. Does this mean different interests?

“My husband collects military items, items from military history. An exhibit of his collection was recently held in the Museum of Kyiv’s Cultural Heritage. His whole collection includes over 50,000 items. My collection only has 3,000 icons. We have a strict division: there is a ‘female half’ and a ‘male half.’”

A special house regime?

“Yes. I love and respect my husband. But I perceive the military items from his collection in an absolutely feminine way. Take this button, for example. It reminds me that some woman became a widow, a mother lost her son, and children lost their parents. Under my influence, my husband’s collection has been supplemented with rare military icons.”

You have four children: three daughters and a son. Which collection do they prefer?

“They all have their own interests. My son Andrii composes music and lives in his own male world. My elder daughter Katia is planning to continue the Bohomolets dynasty of doctors. Asia, my middle daughter, goes in for classical ballet. Two-year old Sonia has not announced her dreams yet. My husband and I always say that everything we are doing we do for our children, and we are collecting for them as well. But we think that other children and other families must have access to this information too. So we organize exhibits.”

You held a charity concert tour of prisons last summer. Why did you decide to do this and how effective are such tours, considering the prison conditions that leave much to be desired?

“I would not be so pessimistic. I made my first visit to detention facilities 10 years ago, to the same penitentiary where this charity tour started. There used to be 1,000 prisoners there. Today there are around 200. Dozens of prisoners are no longer confined to a single cell. Today there are far fewer in each cell. There is a possibility to study, work, and get an education, opportunities that hardly anyone had before. There are computer classes and many things the prisoners have never had outside when they were free. It is important for them to have a stimulus to live and move ahead. This tour encompassed many goals. One of them was to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. This disease is often spread by people newly released from prison. The history of my family is linked to tuberculosis. My grandfather, who later became the president of the Academy of Sciences, was born in Lukianivka Prison, where his mother, an activist in the South-Ruthenian Workers’ Union, was detained and being investigated. He caught tuberculosis there. Even though he became a well-known scholar and academician, and all the best consultants and money were involved in treating him, unfortunately this disease is what eventually killed him. I did not lecture about tuberculosis in the prisons. I simply talked about my life, that I was not always lucky and successful. I tried to instill belief in themselves, telling them that they can do whatever they want.”

Your profession is rational by its very nature. I would say a doctor cannot be a romantic. How do you manage to unite things that seemingly cannot be united?

“I think that every person is looking for himself/herself. I love my profession very much. I never imagined being anything else, and I knew since childhood that I would become a doctor. Now I love it when I succeed in helping someone. Twenty years ago I made a choice: either take bribes and remain in state service or go into private medicine. I understood that otherwise I would not be able to support my children. I broke all the conventions. Now I am happy that I have managed to build a unique clinic that is working successfully, that I have wonderful employees, and that all this was my own idea.”

You also produce charity concerts. Does anyone help you? Are there any benefactors eager to help organize concerts, exhibits, and other good events?

“My husband and I do everything on our own, and I am very grateful to him for this. We are also building a landscape-ethnographic preserve in the city of Radomyshl at the moment. It will house a permanent museum of Ukrainian folk icons. We want to restore the ancient cultural and spiritual traditions of our nation.”