UHEC facilities are open to the public by appointment only. We are continuing to present an extensive schedule of online programming as well as small-scale, socially distanced in-person events. Read more...

Exhibits

Now on view:

Visible Music: The Art of Yukhym Mykhailiv

On view November 17, 2019 through May 1, 2020.

Due to the coronavirus-related facility closure earlier this year, this exhibition is currently still on view and can be visited by appointment only. 

We are currently reevaluating our exhibition schedule and will remain in contact with our patrons through this website, social media, and email.

Yukhym Mykhailiv (1885-1935) was one of the most original, idiosyncratic, and undeservedly obscure Ukrainian artists of the early 20th century. His desire to convey the world of ideas, feelings, and sounds in visual form led to images that seem familiar, but are also unreal or puzzling. His Symbolist landscapes, musically swirling stars and waterfalls, incandescent flowers in moonbeams, and delicate still-lives were completely out of step with the work of his contemporaries. His nonconformity ultimately led to his arrest, exile, and untimely death in the Russian Arctic.

Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of his widow Hanna Mykhailiva and his daughter and son-in-law Tetiana and George Chaplenko, more than 80 of his drawings, watercolors, oils, and pastels safely made the perilous voyage through wartime Europe and across the ocean to the United States, where they remained in the family of the artist. He remained little-known in pre-Independence Ukraine, but has since been the subject of a 1997 international conference and a 224-page monograph and catalogue raisonné published in 2003.

Visible Music: The Art of Yukhym Mykhailiv is the first significant exhibition of this artist’s works in over 30 years, and is drawn from the 72 pieces acquired by the UHEC in 2008 as a bequest from George Chaplenko. Many of the works have not been displayed in public since 1962, and some have never been exhibited.

The exhibition opens with a reception and gallery talk on Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 1:00 pm at the UHEC Library Gallery located at 135 Davidson Avenue, Somerset, NJ 08873.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9AM-12PM and 1PM-4pm, as well as the first Saturday of every month from noon to 4:00 pm. Groups welcome by appointment only. Call 732-356-0132 or email info@ukrhec.org for additional information.

 

While the Center's new museum building is under construction, we are presenting exhibits in the Library Gallery.

This gallery occupies the location formerly used by the UOC of USA bookstore, and has been completely refurbished for use as a gallery, including the installation of museum-grade UV absorbing film on the windows to protect the displayed artifacts from sunlight damage.

View map and get directions.

View UHEC's online exhibits

 
"Earth" by Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak (1992, mixed media)

Guest exhibition "Holodomor: A Remembrance"

This virtual exhibition assembled under the auspices of numerous Ukrainian American community, cultural, and arts organizations features the works of Ukrainian-American artist Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak.

 
 
"Zemlia" by Bohdan Pevnyi (detail)

Holodomor Art at the UHEC

The UHEC Patriarch Mstyslav Museum has in its permanent collection a number of artworks commemorating the genocidal artificial famine of 1932-33 known as the Holodomor. These works range from the small and subtle to the graphic and monumental, and are by artists both well-known and not so well-known.

 
 

Ukraine 1933: A Cookbook

A sampling of a series of 80 linocuts by Ukrainian artist Mykola Bondarenko (b. 1949) depicting the unbelievable “menu” that survivors of the Holodomor subsisted on.

 
 

The story behind "The Carol of the Bells"

How did a Ukrainian winter song arranged for chorus by Mykola Leontovych end up as the perennial American Christmas favorite "The Carol of the Bells"? The story involves an unlikely musical ensemble called the "Ukrainian National Chorus". Here we tell the story of the Chorus through archival materials from the collection of Fr. Mykola Kostets'kyi, who was a member of the Chorus in the 1920s.

 
 

Two post-war immigrant experiences

All of the post-World War II refugees who fled Ukraine in the mid 1940s ahead of the advancing Red Army had their tales of hardship and triumph. In this exhibit, we tell the stories of two similar, but at the same time very different refugee experiences.