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There was a lot of work in the early stages of preparation for the Museum. The folk art collection already boasted many beautiful large kilims, which had to be brought from Phila delphia, unrolled, inventoried, rolled back and wrapped for storage. Mrs. Riznyk remembered that job as “an all night”effort. Then, Mrs. Riznyk said, there was an office to furnish. People who were aware of the building of the Museum, donated desks, filing cabinets, etc. “The big bookcase, the beautiful mahogany one which is in the office at the present time, came from the Museum of Natural History in the city,” said Mrs. Riznyk. That Museum has a vast storage area filled with furni ture it no longer used and small institutions were welcome to choose what they needed. However, Mrs. Riznyk failed to take into account the size of the bookcase she liked and the fact that it had to go up to the fifth floor of a rather narrow building. Needless to say, the bookcase had to be taken apart and Mrs. Riznyk’s son spent hours putting it together again. But then, this is par-for-the-course in the planning of a museum. “The Museum exhibits only a small part of its collection,” said Mrs. Riznyk, "and while the folk costumes and ceramics were on display, the kilims, cumbersome things that they are, were in need of storage. Temporarily stored in the basement of the building, they were in danger of molding, due to humid and warm conditions. Therefore, they were moved again to Philadelphia, but this time to a specially prepared, airtight, weather controlled storage facil ity. Nothing was easy in the beginning”. Mrs. Riznyk had nice things to say about the staff of the new institution. She praised Director Maria Shust, saying “she is very artistic and very good in planning an exhibit” and spoke about Daria Bajko, presently the Administrative Director, as “the backbone of the Museum and very efficient.” The initial year of operation was a difficult one for the young institution. Although Mrs. Rozankowsky and the UNWLA Executive Board decided that the Museum should belong to the community, it was slow going to drum up support for it. I asked my hostess — why? “Because,” she said, “in spite of what we advertised, that this belongs to the ‘hromada’, people still looked on it as a ‘Soyuz Ukrainok’ museum. But even then, that’s no excuse. The biggest supporters were the Branches, and they didn’t balk at it. They very willingly gave the hundred dollars a year. We got larger donations from Branches and from individuals, but it was a drop in the bucket in the beginning.” “The first year was hard on everybody,” said Mrs. Riznyk, “there were many problems which we hadn’t been faced with before, and we had to look for solutions to them.” But there were also so many wonderful and interesting stories to be told about the collec tions, about the Museum. Mrs. Riznyk painted a maginificent, touching picture, reminiscent of life in a Ukrainian village. She described how one woman took some embroidered shirts from the Museum to Hunter, NY, where she washed them in the mountain stream, and dried these garments on the grass, in the sun. “ It was heartbreaking,” Mrs. Riznyk said, “when several embroidered shirts were pur chased from Russian -Jewish emigrees, bearing the label from the Lviv Museum.” Mrs. Riz nyk also remembered when Patriarch Cardinal Slipyj came for a visit and was very interested in the preservation, storage and exhibition of artifacts. It seemed, his collection in Rome was placed on tables and hung on walls. The dusk of the evening crept around us. I could hardly make out my companion as she sat across the table from me. She didn’t notice. Mrs. Riznyk is blind, but her love of life, her positive attitude and her courage led me on a historical voyage and through her words I was a witness to a great achievement. “ I believe the Museum is very worthwhile, its the best thing the UNWLA ever did, ever!” Mrs. Riznyk emphasized as we concluded our talk. A staunch supporter of the Museum, she believes that to survive as a nation, we must preserve the essence of our cultural heritage, and that pinpoints the job and responsibility of the Ukrainian Museum. “That Museum is our only hope”, concluded Mrs. Riznyk. MARTA BACZYNSKY ’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЖОВТЕНЬ 1986
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