The Khanenko Museum is an art museum located in Kyiv, in Ukraine, which holds the biggest and most valuable collections of European, Asian and Ancient art in the country. The museum was established in 1919 according to the will of art collector Bohdan Khanenko (1917) and the deed of gift to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences signed by his wife Varvara in 1918. The art collection of Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko, distinguished Ukrainian collectors and philanthropists of the late 19th and early 20th century, is the core of the museum's holdings. The museum comprises two late 19th-century buildings of great historical and artistic value located on Tereshchenkivska Street. The Khanenkos' mansion houses the permanent exhibition of European fine and decorative arts from the 14th through the 18th century. A group of unique early Byzantine "Sinai" icons created in the 6th and the 7th century has been on display in a separate room of the building since 2004. On the first floor of the mansion is the permanent exhibition of Ancient art. The other museum building located nearby was the property of the Sakhnovskys, the Khanenkos' close relatives, until 1919. Since 2006, it has housed the permanent exhibition of Asian art. The four rooms are dedicated to the art of Buddhism and Islam as well as that of China and Japan. The Khanenko Museum's collection includes original artworks by outstanding European masters, such as Pieter Paul Rubens, Gentile Bellini, Juan de Zurbarán, Jacques-Louis David, François Boucher. The museum holds highly valuable collections of European sculpture and decorative art, beautiful and rare pieces of Iranian, Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese fine and decorative art, as well as small but worthwhile collections of Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian art. In total, the Khanenko Museum's holdings comprise more than 25,000 items. Almost 1,000 selected artworks are displayed permanently.
History Source:
Early history, 1874–1919 The Khanenko Museum traces its history to the 1870s, when Bogdan Khanenko (1849–1917) met and, later on, married Varvara Tereshchenko (1852–1922). Bohdan Khanenko came from an aristocratic Ukrainian family of the Khanenkos. He was born in Lotoki village in Chernihiv region into the family of a nobleman Ivan Khanenko. Upon completing his education in Moscow, Bohdan went on to work in Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. When in Saint Petersburg, he developed an interest in the art of Old Masters. During the late 1880s, the Khanenkos settled in Kyiv. Bohdan got engaged in the city's cultural and social life as well as the Tereshchenko brothers' business activities. Khanenko successfully led the project of establishing the first public museum in Kyiv (consecrated in 1904). Bohdan donated a large part of his collection to the new institution, including invaluable archaeological artefacts. Varvara Khanenko (née Tereshchenko) was the eldest daughter of the prominent Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Nykola Tereshchenko. From her father's family she inherited a passion for charity and arts. Varvara Khanenko was fond of old Italian painting, maiolica, ancient Ukrainian icon, and folk art. In the late 19th and first decades of the 20th centuries, she was among the Ukrainian cultural figures who started a handicraft movement aimed at giving a new life to folk art traditions. The young couple dreamed about their private art collection. They travelled extensively throughout Europe, attended auctions, visited private collections, consulted with leading art historians. As a result of a 40-year research, the Khanenkos built an extremely valuable art collection. In the early 20th century, it was considered among the best private collections of arts and antiques in the contemporaneous Russian Empire. As art collectors, the Khanenkos were interested in European painting, sculpture and applied arts representing the heyday of national artistic schools; rare works of fine arts and traditional crafts from Western, Southern, and Eastern Asia; art of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; Ukrainian and Russian icon; Ukrainian folk art; European and Eastern weaponry; unique archaeological artefacts and complexes etc. In the 1900s, the Khanenkos donated several thousand items from their collection to the first public museum in Kyiv. Today these artworks are owned by five national museums in Kyiv. Several groups of items in the Khanenkos' collection were featured in catalogues published between 1899 and 1907, namely "B.I. and V.N. Khanenko. The collection of paintings of Italian, Spanish, Flemish and other schools", "Russian antiques. Crosses and icons", "Antiques of the Dnipro region", vol. 1-6. To open a museum of international art in Kyiv was the Khanenkos' life's ambition. This is evident from Bohdan Khanenko's will, signed in April, 1917, a month before his death. In December, 1918, Varvara Khanenko signed the Deed of Gift, by which she handed over the collection, house and library to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences free of cost. One of the gift's conditions was the indivisibility of the collection.
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