Not even the biggest museums can put all of their collections on display at once. The UHEC's currently very limited gallery space makes this challenge even more extreme. The situation is even worse for archives, which can easily have millions of individual documents in their repository.

In "Stories from Storage", we show how individual museum items or archival documents held by the UHEC can illuminate the history, culture, art, and religious beliefs of Ukrainians in Ukraine and the diaspora. New content is being added on a continuing basis, so please check back.

The Story of a Receipt: Why Context Matters in Archives

Archives depend critically on context. A seemingly insignificant or meaningless piece of paper can take on huge significance if we understand the circumstances and factors that led to its creation, and this Stories from Storage episode is about a great example of that.

Posted 2024-03-29

"Costumed White Russians from the Ukraine": American press coverage of a 1933 Ukrainian protest

Learn how coverage of a Ukrainian protest march in New York City in 1933 in the American press was impaired by an incomprehension of Ukraine's history and geopolitical situation.

Posted 2024-03-29

Victor Cymbal's "The Year 1933"

The image on display during our current exhibition "Depicting Genocide: 20th Century Responses to the Holodomor" is actually not the original item, for reasons that will be pretty obvious when you watch the video.

Posted 2023-11-25

A Ukrainian choir sings in Spanish

The story of the Ukrainian National Chorus and its role in introducing "Shchedryk" (or the "Carol of the Bells") is gradually becoming more widely known. But other parts of their repertoire remain obscure, such as their Spanish-language recordings.

Posted 2022-12-05

A Ukrainian American musician on the USS Arizona

In one of our past exhibitions, we displayed two clippings from the Newsday newspaper on Long Island, New York published February 22, 1942. They show photographs of the empty casket funeral for Harry Chernuha, who died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In this Stories from Storage, we explore how much more we can potentially learn about this young man. The answers were more interesting than we expected.

Posted 2022-05-30

Theater amid the ruins of war

We have seen amazing stories from Ukraine about people creating art and putting on theater productions in the midst of war, suffering, and displacement. Three quarters of a century ago, Ukrainians were doing exactly the same thing.

Posted 2022-05-19

Architectural destruction past and present

We have witnessed tremendous destruction as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is nothing new, of course. And we don’t need war to have architectural destruction. This photograph shows the demolition of the bell tower of Kyiv's St. Nicholas Cathedral in 1934, a site that has surprising connections to Ukrainian history in the early 20th century.

Posted 2022-05-17

Early 20th century Ukraine in postage stamps

The postage stamps of the 1917-1921 period in Ukraine reflect the nation's revolutionary origin and struggle for survival.

Posted 2022-04-03

The Carol of the Bells: How a Ukrainian carol became American

This "Stories from Storage" is a slightly shortened presentation of a talk by Tina Peresunko that she gave in our online programming series in 2021 while she was still in the United States as a Fulbright scholar. She returned to Kyiv in January 2022, and as of March 1 is hunkered down in her hometown of Kyiv as the Russian Army continues its assault.

Posted 2022-03-01

Kherson and Oleshky - Kedrowsky and Mykhailv

As we write this post, the Ukrainian army is battling against seemingly overwhelming odds to defend several key cities from the invading Russian Army. One of these is the strategically critical city of Kherson at the mouth of the Dnipro River. This city and the surrounding area is closely connected to two significant collections in our archives and museum holdings.

Posted 2022-02-26

Photograph of Ukrainian Americans in 1925

This fascinating photograph captures a significant part of what the UHEC is about: it tells the stories of Ukrainian immigration to the United States, the lives of those immigrants here, the Ukrainian American communities and organizations (both religious and secular) that they formed, and their interactions with the wider American society.

Posted 2022-01-31

Oleksii Balabas in Prague

Learn how a Ukrainian refugee family in Prague took advantage of opportunities to further their education, as told through coursework registers and other documents.

Posted 2022-01-24

Oleksii Balabas in America

After living in Prague as a refugee, Oleksii Balabas and his family endured a second war and were displaced yet again. Oleksii finally resettled in the United States, where life was not easy, as can be seen in this heartbreaking letter.

Posted 2022-01-24

Antimensia from the 17th to the 19th centuries

Antimensia are liturgical textiles that not only have religious importance and artistic interest, but also can be read as historical documents.

Posted 2021-11-15

Petro Kapschutschenko's studies for the Vasyl' Lypkivs'kyi monument

Around 1980, an effort began to erect a monument to Metropolitan Vasyl' Lypkivs'kyi, the spiritual leader of the 1921 Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian sculptor Petro Kapschutschenko was chosen to design the monument. In the course of his work, he created numerous small terra cotta studies that document his artistic choices and thought process.

Posted 2021-10-25

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