Chernihiv Regional Art Museum named after Hryhorii Halahan
The museum is located on the territory of the princely city in a nineteenth-century architectural monument and has been open since 1983. It houses the iconographic heritage of the Ukrainian Baroque period, folk paintings "Cossack Mamai," paintings by Dutch, Flemish, French, and Italian artists, including the collection of the Chernihiv Cossack family of Galagan. The most significant part of the collection is the work of Ukrainian luminaries of the 20th century.
As a result of the artillery shelling of Chernihiv, the facade of the building, the basement, the first and second floors, including the collection, were damaged. It became impossible to keep museum objects in the three halls of the storage facility, where the windows were completely destroyed. A large part of the displaced collection, which includes more than 16,000 items, is still stored in unsuitable rooms under the constant threat of temperature and humidity fluctuations.
On the second day after the attack, the museum staff began to preserve the damaged premises with plastic wrap and boards. Immediately after the siege of Chernihiv was lifted, while still under the threat of shelling, they cleaned the premises from the remains of broken glass, bricks, furniture, and other traces of the attacks.
In the summer of 2022, an inspection was conducted at the museum, and an expert opinion was provided on the extent of direct damage for further fundraising and restoration. Since then, the museum team has raised more than 950,000 UAH in grants and individual donations. This money was used to repair some of the windows, strengthen them with protective shields, purchase a solar station as an autonomous backup power source, and re-equip the destroyed restorer’s workshop. The museum restored the heating, lighting, and power supply systems in the damaged premises on its own. At the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, the regional budget funded repairs in one of the basement rooms, where a shelter was arranged.
Twelve windows of the museum (about 360 thousand UAH) and three basement rooms (about 3 million UAH), which were used for the activities of the cultural and artistic space based on the museum before the Russian invasion, still need urgent restoration. The complete restoration of the central facade may cost about 2 million UAH.
In addition, the building was affected by vibrations from shelling and explosions that did not stop during all the days of the siege. Thus, the estimated cost of repairing the damaged lobby is 1.6 million UAH, and the cost of repairing the entire roof of the building will be about 7.5 million UAH. However, it is necessary to draw up a design and estimate documentation to determine the final cost of the work.
