Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko

1849–1917 · 1852–1922

Art collectors and patrons

A collector couple who spent 40 years assembling one of the finest private art collections in the empire and left it to Kyiv. Their home at 15 Tereshchenkivska Street is now the Khanenko Museum.

Biography

Bohdan Khanenko (1849–1917) came from an old Cossack officer family, trained as a lawyer at Moscow University (1871) and served as a justice of the peace in St Petersburg and a judge in Warsaw. Varvara Khanenko (1852–1922), née Tereshchenko, was the eldest daughter of the sugar magnate and philanthropist Mykola Tereshchenko. A shared passion for art bound them from the start: they toured Europe, attended auctions and sought advice from leading connoisseurs.

The Khanenkos settled in Kyiv in the late 1880s. In 1888 Mykola Tereshchenko gave his daughter a newly built house at 15 Oleksiivska (now Tereshchenkivska) Street. Its rooms were styled after different eras — “Gothic” and “Renaissance” drawing rooms, a Rococo study, a Dutch dining room — with input from Wilhelm Kotarbinsky, Mikhail Vrubel and Adrian Prakhov. Bohdan chaired the board of the Tereshchenko Brothers’ sugar company and sat on the imperial State Council in 1906–1912.

Bohdan was the driving force behind Kyiv’s first public museum, the Museum of Art, Industry and Science (officially opened in 1904, now the National Art Museum of Ukraine). The couple gave it thousands of objects, including an archaeological collection of 3,145 items from digs Khanenko funded around Kyiv, and published their holdings in catalogues such as the six-volume Antiquities of the Dnieper Region (1899–1907).

Varvara became a leading figure in the revival of folk crafts: she founded a crafts school on the Olenivka estate, chaired the committee behind the 1906 South Russian handicrafts exhibition and co-founded the Kyiv Handicraft Society in 1907. She was also one of the first collectors of early icons.

In April 1917 Bohdan signed a will leaving the collection to Kyiv as a public museum. After his death Varvara kept it safe through war and revolution, brought back the items evacuated to Moscow and in December 1918 donated everything to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, on condition that the museum bear the couple’s names. The museum was founded in 1919, but the Soviet authorities later dropped the “bourgeois” donors’ names; the original name — the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum of Arts — was restored only in 1999.

Today the museum holds over 25,000 objects, from paintings by Rubens, Juan de Zurbarán, Gentile Bellini and Jacques-Louis David to rare 6th–7th-century Byzantine “Sinai” icons and art from China, Japan and Iran. The couple lie side by side in the cemetery of Vydubychi Monastery.

Life timeline

1849 Bohdan is born Born on the family estate of Lotaky, Chernihiv region.
1852 Varvara is born Mykola Tereshchenko’s eldest daughter is born in Hlukhiv.
1888 The house on Oleksiivska Mykola Tereshchenko gives his daughter the house that will become the museum.
1904 Kyiv’s first public museum The Kyiv Museum of Art, Industry and Science officially opens.
1917 The will In April Bohdan leaves the collection to Kyiv; he dies on 8 June.
1918 Gift to the Academy In December Varvara donates the collection to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.
1922 Varvara dies She is buried beside her husband at Vydubychi Monastery.
1999 Names restored The museum regains the Khanenkos’ names.

Key achievements

A world-class collection Rubens, Juan de Zurbarán, Bellini, Sinai icons, Asian art.
Kyiv’s first museum The idea and thousands of exhibits for the city’s first public museum.
Archaeology Excavations around Kyiv and the Antiquities of the Dnieper Region volumes.
Folk crafts Varvara championed folk artisans and founded a crafts school.

Kyiv in their life

15 Tereshchenkivska Street — the Khanenko house (1882–1888), a gift from Varvara’s father; now the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts. Since 1986 the museum has also occupied the neighbouring Sakhnovsky house (No. 17), home to its Asian art galleries since 2006. On the mosaics in the museum courtyard, see “Kyiv’s unusual courtyards”.
Kyiv Museum of Art, Industry and Science (now the National Art Museum of Ukraine) — founded on Bohdan Khanenko’s initiative, opened in 1904.
Vydubychi Monastery — where Bohdan (1917) and Varvara (1922) are buried.