city of Kyiv
Olesya Honchara St, 33а
The Museum of the Sixties — a branch of the Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv — was created on the initiative of a public organization with a similar name. The museum's collection is based on private collections of Ukrainian sixties and participants of the movement of resistance to Soviet totalitarianism of the 1970s-1980s. The exposition presents artistic works of talented and original artists (painting, graphics, sculpture, explebris, appliqué, poster), samizdat samples, thematic library (Ukrainian and foreign editions), manuscripts, unique photographs and documents, personal things of the sixties, including those made by them in prison. Together, the collection has up to 30 thousand items of museum value. The museum explores and highlights the topic of the Ukrainian sixties as a link of the national liberation struggle of Ukraine in the twentieth century.
The list of topics presented in the exposition is extremely rich. These are historical prerequisites, socio-historical atmosphere in Ukraine in the late 1950s — early 1960s; periodization and differential characterization of different groups of sixties; literature about the sixties (then in Ukraine and the diaspora); modern view of the sixties (documents, articles, publications); activity of Creative Youth Clubs (Kyiv, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Odessa); youth literary and artistic associations; samizdat, artistic works, political and journalistic materials, reprints in the West; literary adaptations of the sixties; the importance of the diaspora; persons and organizations disseminated their improvements; the resistance movement in Ukraine of the 1960s-1980s; the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and its defeat, activities in the 1980s. Ukrainian Helsinki Union (which later became the Ukrainian Republican Party); materials of court cases of the sixties; imprisonment in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, camps, exile; connection with the All-Union dissident movement, dissidents — Lithuanians, Latvians, Jews, Russians and others (in particular, V. Nekrasov, G. Galich, B. Okudzhava, I. Ratushinska, N. Sadunaite); wives of political prisoners; repression among those who supported and shared the ideas of the sixties; sixties-artists, musicians, theater and film actors; the importance of the sixties in the social renewal of the 1980-1990s, the struggle against the USSR and the construction of the Ukrainian State.
The exposition of the museum is built on original documents and photographs of the sixties, memorial items of heroes, highly artistic works of artists. It is difficult to imagine how it is possible to raise a generation of patriots of our state without the poems of Vasily Symonenko, Lina Kostenko, Vasily Stus. Nothing compares with the powerful graphics of Alla Gorskaya, artistic ceramics on historical themes, deeply philosophical graphics and painting of Galina Sevruk, artistic works of Opanas Zalyvakha and Veniamin Kushnir, etc. The museum constantly organizes thematic photo-documentary and art exhibitions, literary and musical evenings, presentations of books (including contemporary Ukrainian artists), meetings with living heroes of the sixties resistance movement. In addition to the sightseeing tour, the museum also offers thematic excursions (literary, artistic direction), which require prior reservation. In the period from May to November, the museum conducts a walking tour of the city center “Kiev of the Ukrainian Sixties”.