New Ukrainian Museum opens in New York

By Aussiegirl

A New Ukrainian Museum has opened in New York with a retrospective of the works of Ukrainian born Alexander Archipenko. If you live in New York, or plan to visit, you might want to add this to your itinerary. (Although the NYT got the pronounciation wrong, I do believe, it's Ar-KI-penko - but let's not quibble.)

Visit the Ukrainian Museum Website for lots of other exhibits and information on Ukrainian art, history, and culture.

Here's an excerpt from the NYT:

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Art Review | Alexander Archipenko: New Museum Opens on a Foundation of Modernism

With a powerful inaugural show in its new building, a rare retrospective of the Ukrainian-born Modernist sculptor Alexander Archipenko, the Ukrainian Museum has taken a giant step from its modest beginnings in an East Village brownstone in 1976.

The handsome four-story building (one below ground) of glass and brick remains in the neighborhood where the city's Ukrainian community - the largest outside Ukraine - flourishes. But now it has assumed the role of a larger institution with expanded multifaceted programming, according to its board president, Olha Hnateyko. It's a far cry from the cramped quarters where the museum mounted shows of Ukrainian cultural achievements and displayed collections of costumes, needlework, textiles and pysanky, the decorated Easter eggs for which Ukraine is famous.

Designed by a New York architect, George Y. Sawicki, and built with money raised from Ukrainians in New York and around the country, the $9 million building has an imposing two-story glass-fronted entrance lobby and two levels of exhibition space - 24,000 square feet - with floors of maple and white stone.

It is a fitting setting for this impressive Archipenko (pronounced ARK-i-pen-ko) exhibition, organized by Jaroslaw Leshko, a professor emeritus of art at Smith College, and splendidly installed by the Morris Sato Studio in New York. It presents some 65 sculptures and sculpto-paintings, an invention of the artist. Most of the works are from the collection of his widow, Frances Archipenko Gray, and the Archipenko Foundation, with other loans from museums and private collectors.

Here are a few images of Archipenko works: