Culture

January 17, 1998 Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University opened the Gallery of Arts. The old noble academic tradition of creating centers of national culture in educational institutions was re-established.

Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University was the first one, among the other educational institutions in Mykolaiv region that created an Art Gallery. And it has been displaying deliberate preoccupation about aesthetic, spiritual growth of students in communication with real works of art and spiritual culture, but not substitutes that are proposed to the students by mass media.

This art project was realized by the head of the university Klymenko, pro-rector for the curricular development (at that time) Bandura, the famous artist from Mykolaiv, and, also, by the honored figure in art industry – Senkevych. The colleagues supported and inspired them throughout the time.

Considering that the main part of the artistic life is correlation between the artist, piece of art and public, it comes clear that there exists such a phenomenon as artistic needs. Moreover, these needs should be satisfied by art galleries. That’s why during this time the Art Gallery has become a place of communication not only with the pieces of art but also with the creators, artists, experts in ornamental art, sculpture, artistic photography, etc.

Such creative meetings help to develop high-principled, humanistic, cultural art traditions of our land and to transfer them to the next generations. The exhibitions in the Art Gallery attract people with the high artistic level and diversity. It is not only about private viewing of artists from Mykolaiv but also about artists from Kyiv, Odessa, Rivne, Lviv, Cherkasy, Crimea, etc.

Our students and teachers had an opportunity to see pieces of art made by an artist from Mykolaiv – Berezhnyi (the national artist of Ukraine). Epic landscapes of the native country, which were drawn in the elegant colorful scale naturally combine fluent idea with the emotional satiety of canvas that linger in the memory of the viewers for long. Nevertheless, the main exhibitions of the art gallery are those that characterize the main directions, ideas, genres of the modern descriptive art. The university was honored for holding the exhibition of Antoniuk (the national artist of Ukraine, laureate of different prestigious prizes). At first, it would be nice to focus on one important person for our university.

Well, Sienkiewicz is a well know artist who did not only initiate the opening of the Petro Mohyla Gallery, but also presented her great artworks to the university! She is a creator of many exhibitions and an inspirer for many artists.

The following talented artists participated in the Art Gallery: Fedorchenko, Ozerniy, Zavtury, Matiyko, Makushina; famous artists from Odessa – Prokopenko and Kotlyarov-Prokopenko; Demyanyshyn – an artist from Yuzhny city.

A great number of different united projects gathered artists and were created to celebrate certain dates: anniversary of the university and the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory. On the occasion of this important date the Art Gallery prepared an exhibition of artists – participants of the Second World War. This exhibition contained portraits of the liberators of Mykolaiv made by artist Ryasnyansky. Many works by Karkots were presented at this exhibition (he is a notable combatant and artist from Mykolaiv).

French Embassy in Ukraine provided the French poster exhibition devoted to the works of the composer Berlioz, Goethe Institute organized an exhibition of posters dedicated to the works of German writer, Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass. Embassy of Poland presented photo exhibition “Time reconciliation and hope” of Bujakow who was the personal photographer of Pope John Paul II, where Pope’s activities and his pilgrimage journey to Palestine were shown, and finally, exhibition of Polish posters of Andrzej and Zhebrovsky.

On the basis of the Art Gallery the project “Smile” was carried out owing to the students of Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University who received a grant. Thus, now they have a chance for exhibiting works of pupils from specialized boarding schools (for children with mental disabilities).

It seems difficult to find an artist of National Union Artists of Ukraine who would not participate in exhibitions that were organized by our Art Gallery.