Sumy Art Museum

Sumy Art Museum (Сумський художній музей ім. Н. Онацького; Sumskyi khudozhnii muzei im. N. Onatskoho). A museum established in 1920 in Sumy as the Sumy Art and History Museum on the basis of nationalized private art collections. The first director was Nykanor Onatsky. In 1939 the museum was divided into two independent institutions the Sumy Art Museum and the Sumy Regional Studies Museum. The Sumy Art Museum was moved to a new building in 1978. It contains over 11,000 objects, divided among its departments of Ukrainian art, Russian prerevolutionary art, Western European art, and Soviet art, and, in the former Church of the Resurrection, decorative and applied art. Its collection contains works by painters such as Volodymyr Borovykovsky, Ivan Aivazovsky, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Sokolov, Dmytro Bezperchy, Mykola Pymonenko, Petro Levchenko, Serhii Vasylkivsky, N. Onatsky, Serhii Svitoslavsky, Ilia Repin, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, Mykola Samokysh, Fedir Krychevsky, Ivan Trush, Karpo Trokhymenko, Oleksii Shovkunenko, Oleksander Bohomazov, Pavel Volokidin, Mykola Burachek, Ihor Hrabar, Hryhorii Svitlytsky, Tetiana Yablonska, Petro Sulymenko, Heorhii Melikhov, Matvei Manizer, and Mykola Hlushchenko. The collection of decorative and applied art includes sets of Mezhyhiria porcelain and wares from Andrii Myklashevsky's factory in Volokytyna. A branch of the museum is located in Lebedyn. The Ivan Kavaleridze Sculpture Gallery was established as a department of the museum and now works as a permanent exhibit. Albums of works in the museum were published in Kyiv in 1981 and 1988.

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