Vovkiv. The Museum-Estate of Mykola and Kornylo Ustyianovych — a Historical and Cultural Landmark of the Lviv Region

The list of Ukraine's museums includes not only large exhibition centres and galleries with masterpieces of world importance, but also small memorial house-estates, no less interesting and appealing to seekers of something new and little known. What makes rural museums special is the wish to preserve history, cultural heritage and information about a locality's distinguished natives. Museum collections in small settlements can be considered folk collections: they are created by the whole community and survive on their own.

 

Vovkiv, Lviv region. The Ustyianovych Art and Memorial Museum-Estate

The village of Vovkiv lies 20 kilometres from Lviv. In the centre of the village stands a monument of wooden architecture, the Church of the Presentation of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple, dating from 1702. Beside the church is the priests' residence, in which church ministers lived with their families for many years. Beneath the windows of this single-storey cottage with a wooden veranda, autumn flowers ripen. Since 1991 the former presbytery has housed the Ustyianovych Art and Memorial Museum — dedicated to Mykola Ustyianovych, priest, poet and writer, and to his son, Kornylo Ustyianovych, artist, writer and public figure.

 

Vovkiv. The former presbytery. The Ustyianovych Museum-Estate

In the large courtyard — big enough to play football — you can see the outbuildings of a Galician homestead: a barn, a granary and a well.

 

The barn in the courtyard of the Ustyianovych Museum 

Vovkiv. The granary and the well on the grounds of the Ustyianovych Museum

In the little garden the fallen leaves turn golden, and the apple trees treat you to ripe fruit. You taste a fragrant apple and admire the views that open up before your eyes. This beauty and quiet gave inspiration and creative energy to Kornylo Ustyianovych, whose sculpted image we see beside an ancient larch. The master holds a brush and canvas and gazes into the world around him.

 

Vovkiv. The monument to K. M. Ustyianovych

Interested visitors to the estate step into the native home of Kornylo Mykolaiovych, where they are greeted by the keeper of the museum's collections, Mrs Oksana. The display consists of three parts, three stories, which we learn about during the tour.

 

The first hall is devoted to the estate's former master, Mykola Ustyianovych. The future deputy to the Galician provincial diet and Romantic writer was born in Mykolaiv in the Lviv region and was drawn to learning from childhood. Having finished his studies at the Lviv Theological Academy, Ustyianovych came to Vovkiv and received this very cottage to live in with his family. But the Vovkiv parish priest did not concern himself only with the spiritual care of the villagers. Mykola Leontiiovych is the author of many poems and stories, was a champion of a literary language based on the vernacular, and stood for the cultural unity of the Ukrainian lands. Mrs Oksana strikes up the folk-famous song "Verkhovyno, svitku ty nash" and reminds us that its author is Mykola Ustyianovych. The display features portraits of the founders of the "Ruthenian Triad", of which Ustyianovych was a companion.

 

M. L. Ustyianovych

The second hall keeps alive the memory of the Ustyianovyches' elder son, Kornylo, born in Vovkiv in 1839. The young man was educated at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and created iconostases, murals and holy images for churches in Galicia. The portraits, narrative paintings, landscapes and illustrations of this Ukrainian painter are kept at the Lviv Academy of Arts. In the Vovkiv museum you can see some copies of Kornylo Mykolaiovych's works. The talented son of a talented writer also proved himself in literature, expressing patriotic views in poetry and prose.

 

K. M. Ustyianovych

K. M. Ustyianovych. Self-portrait

K. M. Ustyianovych. "Moses"

K. M. Ustyianovych. "Shevchenko in Exile"

K. M. Ustyianovych. "A Boyko Couple"

K. M. Ustyianovych. Sketches

The display in the third hall introduces the Czech ethnographer František Řehoř, a researcher of Ukrainian folk life and folklore in Galicia, who lived in Vovkiv and Stryi in 1877-1890.

 

František Řehoř

The museum has gathered a large collection of embroidered towels, household implements and wooden furniture. A parlour has been recreated with a stove and other elements of a Galician dwelling.

 

The display of the Ustyianovych Museum-Estate

The former barn hosts plein-air sessions, anniversary evenings, conferences, master classes and other creative events. The granary does not stand empty either, serving as an additional space for storing antiquities, clothing, and musical and household implements that the villagers donated to this centre of culture. From the Vovkiv well, the deepest in the village, it is worth tasting and taking with you some life-giving water for the road ahead.

 

Vovkiv. The Ustyianovych Memorial Museum-Estate

Great thanks to the initiators and founders of the museum, to its former director Natalia Smoliana, and to the guides Mrs Oksana and Mrs Uliana for their hospitality, for preserving the collections, and for the beauty!

Museum address: village of Vovkiv, Lviv district, Lviv region.