Khanenko, Bohdan

Khanenko, Bohdan [Ханенко, Богдан; Xanenko], b 23 January 1848 on the Khanenko family estate in Chernihiv region, d 8 June 1917 in Kyiv. Collector of Ukrainian antiques and art, archeologist, and arts patron, honorary member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. A great-grandson of Mykola Khanenko and son of Ivan Khanenko, he was president of the All-Russian Union of Industrialists and a permanent member of the State Council. Most of his archeological and art collection was donated to the Museum of Arts in Kyiv, which later formed the foundation of the VUAN Museum of Art (later the Kyiv Museum of Western and Eastern Art, renamed in the 1990s to Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts). Khanenko financed his own archeological digs, mostly in the Kyiv region, and with the assistance of his wife, Varvara (née Tereshchenko), published a six-volume catalogue of the discovered treasures titled Drevnosti Pridneprov’ia Chernogo moria i poberezhiia (Antiquities of the Dnipro River Region and the Coast of the Black Sea, 1899–1907). He headed the Society of Antiquities and Art and was a member of the Archeological Commission, the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler, and other scientific societies.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]