“We don’t have any provinciality complexes!”

The Oleksii Shovkunenko Kherson Regional Art Museum has received near a thousand works over the last two years, yet 70 percent of exhibition halls are closed down because of their condition.

The sign on the Kherson Art Museum reads: “The architectural and urban monument. The building of the former Kherson Municipal Council in 1905-06. Protected by the State.” This building has been a kind of trademark of the city for over a century. It’s difficult to imagine the regional center without the chimes on the museum tower playing the tune “Oh, Dnipro, Dnipro” every hour. It seems that one should be happy that the museum is situated in such a unique place. However, things are not as easy as they may seem. For more information on this topic please read The Day’s discussion with the director of the museum, Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine, member of the National Ukrainian Union of Artists Alina DOTSENKO.

How would you continue the following phrase: “A museum is…”?

“One might call a museum a collection of ideas, a door to the past and a window to the future, an invitation to reflection… However, personally I prefer calling the museum a cathedral and us, those who work in it, its keepers, since we care about our collections as if they were our children. We don’t have any random people working here, they simply don’t stay long. A cathedral is a place where only disinterested people with clean hands can work and maintain our great national heritage.”

Cathedrals fall into ruin with time… The Kherson Art Museum is located in an ancient building, is it an advantage or not?

“When our museum opened 33 years ago, the Municipal Council gave us premises that had to be repaired and we put some money and effort into this. We hoped we would repair and improve the building with time, since working in such an ‘emergency condition’ can be deadly for a museum. Our young museum became very popular among tou­rists because of its abundant collection. We used to have up to 20 excursions a day, so the floors couldn’t endure a load and started cracking. When two groups of children or adults gathered in one of the second floor halls, the floors started wobbling. When I became the director in 1986 I tackled this problem at once. With the help of a sponsor from a shipbuilding factory we changed the rotten wooden floors to the ferroconcrete ones and managed to preserve the facade. However, our joy didn’t last long, se­rious problems arose, as everything started breaking. The building was shaking because of a busy road nearby, the foundation was sinking and the building was waterlogged from the yard… The collection was growing quickly... A part of it dates back to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, another part was given by the collectors, artists and their heirs, the leading museums of the former USSR, ministries of culture and unions of artists of the USSR and Ukraine. We received mo­ney from the budget and created research groups, we found and bought interesting works. In a short period of time the collection of 3,000 grew up to 8,000, including domestic and foreign paintings, drawings, sculptures and works of arts and crafts, starting with specimens of Russian iconography of the 17th century and finishing with works of modern Kherson painters.

“How did we maintain that trea­su­re? We only changed the floors and never managed to repair the halls. Fifteen years later 70 percent of the exhibition halls closed down! A passersby might think when seeing our museum: ‘What a beauty!’ In reality we have only the front and the roof repaired and the reparation of the halls was postponed by the former regional authorities.

“Some time ago the Regional Labor Union Council occupied our yard and the hangars that made up a complex with the museum without any permission. Three years ago we started legal proceedings and won in the Zaporizhia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine, but the Kherson Economic Court supported our competitors. We could have repaired those hangars and placed additional collections or an additional exhibit complex there. By the way, the Regional Labor Union Council doesn’t use this territory and hangars and rents them. In our yard we have the private cars of people living in the center of Kherson...”

Don’t you have the feeling of being perceived as a provincial museum?

“Formerly, when we bought inte­resting works from serious private collectors and brought them to Kherson, the workers of the Kyiv and Moscow museums nearly fainted because pro­vincial Kherson got such masterpieces. We still have exhibits in our collections that excite metropolitan museums. When we give out our albums and catalogs at the exhibit openings or jubilees they get a lot of attention. I can tell you from my own experience that the presentations of our museum always attract a great interest. The special attitude to our museum is revealed when our colleagues lend us their most valuable exhibits, which they don’t entrust to other museums.

“We also often organize exchange exhibits. For example, the Sevastopol Museum likes The Phaeton by Korovin from our collection a lot. Many museums are interested in our collection of works by Oleksii Shovkunenko, which is considered to be the most complete in Ukraine. Some time ago the artist’s wife gave it to us as he was born in Kherson.

“A couple of years ago the National Ukrainian Art Museum held an exhibition called ‘Impressionism and Ukraine’ and we provided the works by Tit Dvornikov, Kiriak Kostandi and Petro Nilus. We also exhibited the works by the People’s Artist of Ukraine Heorhii Melikhov, from our collection. We sent works by Felix Kider to the Odessa N. Rerikh House-Museum. So, we don’t have any provinciality complexes.”

Kherson remembers the great concerts held in the Art Museum...

“We always welcomed talented people until our parade concert hall, with its great acoustics, was ruined. The premises of the Kherson Philharmonic Society had been burned down long ago, so that hall meant a lot for the city. Three years ago they started restoring the concert hall, but they stopped because of the economic crisis. There are just a few things to be repaired but we don’t get any money.”

Probably, the commercial exhibit of pygmean monkeys, held on the se­cond floor of the museum, proves that your life is far from being good?

“Yes, it was one of our attempts to earn some money. We cleaned the half-restored parade hall from construction debris and rented it. It’s dangerous to hold an exhibit there but for monkeys it was OK. However, it isn’t money that can change something dramatically. Museums can’t exist without the go­vernment’s support. Just the private oligarchs’ collections.

“We don’t have any money to complete our collection. It’s very sad since the time goes by and there are gaps in the history of our national fine arts. Why do the libraries always have new arrivals? Because they have the money for this. But we don’t. We haven’t bought new works for ages. However, three years ago we had a sponsor who helped us, who transferred 25,000 hryv­nias and paid the taxes, so we could buy the portrait of Shov­ku­nenko’s first wife.”

Which works are you especially proud of?

“I can’t enumerate all of them. I’ll name some of the authors: Polienov, Aivazovski, Pymonenko, Savrasov, Yablonska, Korovin and others… How can I ignore 11 unique works by the ta­lented Russian artist Mikhail Shybanov, painted in 1783-86 for the iconostasis of Kherson St. Catherine Cathedral? Only the Tretyakov Gallery has a bigger collection of works by this author.”

Do museums accept gifts?

“Of course, they do! We were given nearly a thousand works over the last two years. The collector Mykhailo Yemelyanov presented a large collection of bookplates (627) and Felix Kider’s widow gave about 300 of his drawings and paintings. The Kherson painter Yehor Tolkunov gave nearly 40 of his works, the watercolorist Heorhii Petrov gave 12 works and the widow of the artist Kostiantyn Moskovchenko gave five of her husband’s works to the museum. The museum also received works by the Henichesk artist Mykola Pysanko.”

There are very few exhibition halls at the museum yet the collection is very large. How do you deal with this difficult situation?

“Every year our workers prepare up to 30 exhibits. Time is tight but we want the citizens and the visitors of Kherson to see our treasure. That is why we always prepare exhibits for various holidays and jubilees. We recently presented to art buffs the creations of the sculptor Ivan Mudrak; the retrospective exhibit for Oleksii Shovkunenko’s 125th anniversary was a great success... The exhibition of the Kherson avant-garde art drew a wide response. For the Whitsun we prepared an exhibit from the collection of our icons of 17th-19th centuries and the church needlework.

“In general the exhibits organization requires a lot of physical and moral strength. We don’t have any elevators so we have to carry everything by our marble stairs. We hang the works, build an exhibit, and create annotations and catalogs. It’s a great job.”