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.

"Coloured eggs on the plain": Konstantyn Moshchenko's pysanka watercolors

Nearly 100 years ago, the Ukrainian artist, architect, and ethnographer Konstantyn Moshchenko went beyond simply making two-dimensional reproductions of the patterns of the Ukrainian wax-resist decorated eggs known as pysanky, but he created original miniature artworks inspired by those patters. Hear master pysanka artist and scholar Sofika Zielyk talk about these fascinating watercolors.

Posted 2021-03-22

Taras Shevchenko in the Ukrainian American visual imagination

It’s hard to overstate the impact that Taras Shevchenko has had on Ukrainians. Explore how the face of Ukraine's national poet Taras Shevchenko, whether in folk art, fine art, embroidery, or other objects, has become a fixture of Ukrainian American identity.

Posted 2021-03-08

Witnesses To Revolution: Artifacts from the 2014 Euromaidan Protests

This slideshow features items from the scene of the protest that tell a tiny part the story of those protestors who braved the cold winter weather in downtown Kyiv to demand a better future.

Posted 2021-02-22

A historical detective story—and a remarkable story of survival

Perhaps one of the most interesting historical detective stories to be prompted by an item from the UHEC’s collections has been that of a mysterious letter written by a young man named “Alex” serving in the United States Army in post-World War II Germany.

Posted 2020-11-11

Nicholas Bervinchak and his portrait of Anna Sten

While he is not a household name even among Ukrainian Americans, Nicholas Bervinchak was an important painter and print maker in the American Regionalist and Social Realist style, as well as a church muralist. In this video, guest speaker Michael Buryk tells the story of Bervinchak and one of more unusual works.

Posted 2020-10-19

The story of a 100-year-old passport

This passport is quite unlike any passport we're used to seeing today. It wasn't even issued by the person's country of citizenship.

Posted 2020-10-05

The Ukrainian Festival in Holmdel, NJ

From 1974 to 1997, the Ukrainian American community of New Jersey and the surrounding area organized a large Ukrainian festival at the Garden State Arts Center.

Posted 2020-09-21

Ukrainian American community theater

Amateur theater was a popular activity at Ukrainian American churches and community centers in the first half of the 20th century.

Posted 2020-09-07

The "prehistory" of the Ukrainian national anthem

Learn about the origins and early recordings of "Shche ne vmerla Ukraina" from long before it officially became the national anthem.

Posted 2020-08-24

Virtual exhibition revival -- Cultural Identity to Statehood: Ukraine 1917-1921

This "virtual revival" presents highlights from the UHEC's 2018 exhibition that explored the building of Ukrainian statehood through education, scholarship, culture, religion, and the arts.

Posted 2020-08-17

Ukrainian Americans support Ukrainian independence in 1918

In December 1918, representatives of local Ukrainian American organizations met in Washington, DC under the auspices of the “Federation of Ukrainians in the United States” when the newly-independent Ukrainian state was under its third government in less than one year and was fighting for its survival.

Posted 2020-08-03

Panorama photo - St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Cleveland)

On January 7th (Julian Calendar Christmas) in 1927, the members of the Ukrainian Orthodox parish of St. Vladimir in Cleveland gathered to take a photograph front of the beginnings of the construction of their brand new church building.

Posted 2020-07-27

Kira Arkhimovych's tomatoes

Kira Arkhimovych was a botanist and plant breeder who specialized in tomatoes. Although overshadowed by her more well-known husband, her career spanned several decades and over 5,000 miles -- from Kyiv to Spain to New York.

Posted 2020-07-20

Virtual tour of Visible Music: The Art of Yukhym Mykhailiv

It may be a bit strange to present works that are hanging on a gallery wall in a series called “Stories from Storage”. However, this exhibition opened in the fall of 2019, and because of COVID-19, it has effectively been “in storage” since the beginning of April 2020.

Posted 2020-07-13

Sofia Rusova - Ukrainian educator and activist

The major featured item in the UHEC's 2018 exhibition "Cultural Identity to Statehood: Ukraine 1917-1921" was a greeting addressed to the UNR Directorate hand-lettered by Heorhii Narbut and signed by the workers of the Ministry of Art and Education. Among the many pages of signatures are those of important and famous scholars and leaders, one of the most intriguing is that of Sofia Rusova.

Posted 2019-03-20

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