Better to See Once Than to Hear a Hundred Times

A museum is not only the preservation of history but also filling it with new meaning and rethinking it in light of today’s challenges. Today it is a dynamic institution with a range of services adapted to the modern visitor. A museum becomes a place of inspiration and new discoveries.

The K. H. Stetsenko Memorial Museum (Kyiv Oblast communal institution) in the village of Veprik in the Kyiv region is also adapting to the realities of modern life. You may think that we keep dust-covered exhibits and a display that does not change for years. We assure you that this is not so. The K. H. Stetsenko Museum keeps pace with the times, popularises and researches its heritage, introduces interactive working methods, and develops its website and social media. We actively show exhibits to real and virtual visitors, present exhibitions, and digitise and publish our holdings under the projects “Digitised Heritage” and “Exhibit of the Week”, but our greatest love is, of course, communication with real visitors, which slowed down because of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and the start of the full-scale invasion, changed its form, but adapted to modern requirements. Today more and more Ukrainians are interested in the history of their Homeland and the notable places of their native land.

We invite you too to learn about the life of the composer, archpriest of the UAOC, statesman and public figure K. H. Stetsenko, the history of the village of Veprik and its talented residents. For, as folk wisdom says, “Better to see once than to hear a hundred times.”

It will be interesting for adults and children, for a small family or a large tour group. By visiting the composer’s homestead you will feel the warm atmosphere of national everyday life, as if returning to the home of your ancestors, recalling tasty dishes from the stove, a bed of hay and the aroma of childhood, and those who have never felt this will immerse themselves in an incredible ethnic world for the first time.

You will get to know Kyrylo Hryhorovych personally, as it were, and walk his life path with him. You will learn how a simple boy from a large family in the Cherkasy region came to Kyiv and became a landmark figure in the formation of the Ukrainian nation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and joined the elite of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the time: M. Lysenko, V. Lypkivskyi, M. Leontovych and others.

We will tell you the story of how he met and married Yevheniia Frankivska. How one revolution, in 1905, took him away from Kyiv for a long period, while another inspired him to creative fervour and threw him into the whirl of the capital’s events. Why Symon Petliura ordered K. Stetsenko and O. Koshyts in particular to create a choir for a diplomatic trip abroad, and how the members of the ensemble escaped from Kyiv in cattle wagons and then gave triumphant concerts in the finest halls of Europe.

With us you will learn what inspired the famous composer to create musical masterpieces, about his passion for horses and pigeons, and how he and Mykola Leontovych picked raspberries in the enchanting forests of Podillia.

You will learn how the Stetsenko family came to Veprik and about the white grand piano that adorned the composer’s living room; how the Chekists hunted the composer, about the crowded funeral and the subsequent oblivion for 34 years. You will learn who inherited Kyrylo Hryhorovych’s talent and that he was not the only talented child in the family.

Only with us will you see a table with a century of history, made by Kyrylo Hryhorovych with his own hands; a portrait of T. H. Shevchenko painted by the artist Fotii Krasytskyi, great-grandson of the great Kobzar; a graduation photograph after finishing the Kyiv Theological Seminary; icons given by Father Kyrylo after the wedding to the Veprik newlyweds, the Skrypchenkos, members of his village choir; and hear unique recordings playing from an old gramophone.

You will also get to know the heroic figure of the political prisoner V. I. Kosovskyi, who after returning from exile, despite the close watch of the punitive organs, managed to create a museum of the Ukrainian composer and priest and to open a first-aid post with national Ukrainian symbols, which later became the winner of a competition among thousands of similar medical institutions of the USSR.

Inviting you to a tour of the museum, we offer an interesting and educational dialogue and pleasant conversation in a cosy atmosphere. In addition to tours, we offer fragrant herbal tea, a mini photo shoot in a traditional setting, and the chance to take part in a master class and create an original item with your own hands.

So do not delay and come to the village of Veprik to the K. H. Stetsenko Memorial Museum (Kyiv Oblast communal institution). Look for information on opening hours and current services on the official website or on social media.