Ivan Makarovich Gonchar Biography
Ivan Makarovich Gonchar (1911 – 1993) was a renowned public figure, cultural activist, talented sculptor, painter, graphic artist, and self-taught ethnographer and collector of Ukrainian folk art and culture. Already as a youth in the flames of wartime vandalism, Ivan Gonchar promised himself that if he survived, he would devote the remainder of his life to the protection and popularization of the cultural heritage of his nation. After the WWII he began to collect cultural artifacts in the early fifties, and soon his house became a private “clandestine” museum. Not all his endeavors were appraised by the Soviet officials and he was accused of Ukrainian nationalism and all his attempts to organize a museum as a cultural and educational centre failed. For over three decades, from the end of the 1950s, under vicious conditions of harassment by the totalitarian regime, he proceeded with his titanic task. All his work was aimed, first of all, towards the complex research, reconstruction, and popularization of Ukrainian cultural traditions of the past. Only in 1991 after Ukraine proclaimed its independence his ideas began to be realized.
Gonchar museum history
The museum was founded on a private collection of Ivan Gonchar shortly after his death in 1993. In 1999 the activity of the museum was broadened and it was transformed into an important institution – a Ukrainian Centre of Folk Culture. In 2009 the institution was granted the title “national”. It’s mission is to be the foremost institution for exploration, preservation, interpreting and presenting traditional cultural values and cultural diversity of Ukrainian people. The Museum strives to strengthen the cultural roots of Ukrainian society, cultivate traditional cultural priorities, inspire artistic creativity, and provide continuing enrichment and succession of cultural heritage traditions. It promotes international understanding and global cooperation between peoples and nations, performs the greatest possible public service through exhibitions, research, cultural, artistic, training and education programs to local residents and communities, students, scholars, artists, tourists and to the broadest possible multicultural audience.
Gonchar museum not only a collection of exhibits
To-day the museum is located in a historic building – it was the office of the Governor in the Kiev Fortress in the 18th -19th cc. The whole collection can be divided in such main exhibitions: glass, metal work, musical instruments, wood items, Easter eggs, embroidered and woven towels, clothes, textile (2,500 items), ceramics, paintings (over 100), icons (over 500), leather, horn and straw items. The collection consists of over 15,000 items from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. Another part of the museum consists of Gonchar's private library with books containing material that had the possessor sent to prison during Soviet times. The Museum is a living institution, not only a collection of exhibits. There are folk art studios, shops, a theatre of folk songs and folklore, Ukrainian cuisine hands-on classes and other courses. Petro Gonchar the son of Ivan Gonchar is the director of the centre and successor of his father’s projects.
