Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema of Ukraine in Kyiv

The Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema of Ukraine was founded on January 31, 1923, as an in-house exhibition of the Berezil artistic association, then headed by the renowned Ukrainian theater director Les Kurbas. From the very beginning it was conceived as a national museum, so the museum commission set up to build its collection gathered theater-related items from all over Ukraine. The actor Vasyl Vasylko, who would later head the museum, personally contributed some 800 items to the archive, most of them photographs and negatives.

The museum's first exhibition was held on December 31, 1923, for a New Year's Eve gathering of Berezil members and their friends. The museum was formally established only after it was given space in the theater building then named after Lenin (the former Solovtsov Theater), and in 1925 its staff began giving the first guided tours.

In 1926 Berezil, as the country's leading theater, moved to Kharkiv, which was then the capital of Ukraine. As a result, the entire collection gathered over three years was handed over to the history and philology department of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, where it became the basis of the Ukrainian Theater Museum. The museum was headed by the noted theater scholar Petro Rulin, who began actively collecting new items.

The new museum's first exhibition opened to the public in November 1927.

During World War II the collection suffered heavy losses, and it took a long time to put it back in order and rebuild the unique library, which before the war had held about nine thousand volumes.

The museum received its present name in 1965 by a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. Its structure changed accordingly, with new departments of music, cinema and Ukrainian musical instruments. The museum also took over a number of memorial sites, such as the Mykola Lysenko House Museum, the Panas Saksahanskyi Apartment Museum and the Maria Zankovetska House Museum, and in 2009 the Apartment Museum of composer Viktor Kosenko became one of its branches.

The museum's main collection has grown to more than 226,000 unique items. Here you will find sculptures and paintings, old programs and playbills, letters and diaries of Ukrainian playwrights, film documents and sound recordings, folk instruments, music boxes and much more.

The museum will appeal to every lover of theater and film. Here you can trace the development of Ukrainian performing arts from the early 19th century (the oldest playbills on display date back to 1816) to the mid-20th century. And if you are simply interested in the history of Ukrainian art, it is well worth a visit too — not only for the wonderful theater and film exhibits but also for the Ukrainian musical instruments, of which there are a great many, not to mention a separate exhibition of music boxes.

Visit this museum and discover yet another little-known chapter of Ukrainian history!

Address: 9 Lavrska Street, Building 29 (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra), Kyiv.