Shevchenko, Liudmyla

Shevchenko, Liudmyla [Шевченко, Людмила; Ševčenko, Ljudmyla], b 9 November 1895 in Kyrylivka (now Shevchenkove), Zvenyhorodka county, Kyiv gubernia, d 22 October 1969 in Kyiv. Ethnographer and folklorist; daughter of Taras Shevchenko’s nephew, Prokop. After graduating from the Kyiv Archeological Institute (1923) she worked at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and then in various Kyiv museums (1934–47). As department head at the Kyiv Museum of Ukrainian Art she helped in its evacuation in 1941. From 1947 she worked at the Institute of Fine Arts, Folklore, and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. She published over 20 articles in ethnography and folklore, including recollections of Volodymyr Hnatiuk (1927), the autobiography of the kobzar P. Kulyk (1929), and works on the folk customs and rites associated with the beginning of a building (1926), the family and social status of women in Ukraine, T. Shevchenko’s homeland, and the art of Ukrainian highlanders.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]