Khanenko Museum
Ukraine's main collection of European, Asian and ancient art, in the Khanenkos' 1880s mansion.
The museum occupies the mansion on Tereshchenkivska Street that Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko built in the 1880s and filled with the art they bought across Europe and Asia. Varvara Khanenko left the house and its contents to the city, and the collection opened as a public museum in 1919. Rooms such as the Delft dining room and the gilded Golden Salon survive as period interiors, so that the building is shown as a nineteenth-century collector's house as well as a gallery.
The holdings are the most important collection of Western European, Byzantine, Islamic, Chinese, Japanese and ancient art in Ukraine, including early Christian encaustic icons from Sinai and Italian, Flemish and Spanish painting. Since the full-scale invasion these works have been secured and are not on display, and the museum instead runs contemporary exhibitions, discussions, concerts and family programmes, and has lent parts of the collection to exhibitions abroad while conditions in Kyiv remain unsafe.
Highlights
- Period interiors of the Khanenko mansion, including the Golden Salon
- Collection of European, Byzantine, Islamic and East Asian art
- Early Christian encaustic icons from the Sinai monastery
- Wartime programme of temporary exhibitions and public talks
