Khanenkos Gambit: why a Kyiv patron built the Russian Pavilion in Venice
I shall begin with a point which I shall endeavour to substantiate below.
Bogdan Khanenko financed the construction of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale not because he saw himself as a 'Russian industrialist and philanthropist', as he is still described in Russian publications. It was a bribe — precise, calculated, and, given the circumstances, flawless. The stakes in the game were a new level of trust for the empire, and the ultimate goal was the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv: a museum of world art in a city where the empire did not permit such an institution. After all, within the logic of the empire, there could be only one centre of knowledge (the capital, the metropolis), which determined the world order, and a periphery that was subject to regulation. In the Russian Empire, Kyiv also belonged to the periphery — a territory that had no knowledge of its own. As a periphery, Kyiv was entitled, at most, to a local history collection or a regional art gallery. But not to a universal museum of world culture and history, which would offer its own narrative with a built-in hierarchy of civilisations, countries, eras, languages, human communities and events. A museum that could have become one of the effective tools of cultural colonisation.
To use a chess term, it was a gambit: a significant tactical sacrifice for the sake of a strategic advantage. To understand why Bohdan Khanenko made this sacrifice, it is worth examining the various — private and public — contexts of Khanenko's gesture, which shaped the evolution of his cultural identity and his public role as a Ukrainian cultural figure.
Who are the Khanenkos?
Bohdan Khanenko was born in 1849 in the Chernihiv Region, in the village of Lotoky, into a noble family. The Khanenkos are a well-known ancient Cossack family. Among his ancestors were: Stepan Khanenko, a Zaporizhyan Cossack, to whom the Polish King John II Casimir Vasa granted noble privileges in 1622; Mykhaylo Khanenko, Hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine; and Mykola Khanenko, General Ensign of the Zaporizhyan Army — an outstanding political figure of the Hetmanate, a close associate of Kyrylo Rozumovskyy and one of the most educated men of the mid-18th century. Bogdan's uncles — Mykhaylo and Oleksandr — were intellectuals, enthusiasts and collectors of Ukrainian antiquities, and active public figures in the Chernihiv Region.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko museum Bohdan Khanenko
Bogdan was thus born into a family of noble and educated people who were interested in history and culture and were socially active.
After graduating from grammar school and the Faculty of Law in Moscow, Khanenko began practising law in St Petersburg. There he joined the Thursday gatherings of the artistic bohemian set at the home of Major-General Druzhinin, a passionate collector and art lover, and became a regular at the Hermitage. Later, Khanenko wrote in his memoirs that it was then that 'my calling was decided — I irrevocably resolved to study old master paintings and collect them'. Given the opportunity to choose a district of the city for his service as a magistrate, Khanenko selected the one that included the Apraksin Yard — a hub for the trade in art and antiquities. This provided the young enthusiast with initial knowledge and experience in identifying antique objects, as well as useful acquaintances.
It was there, in St Petersburg, in the early 1870s, that Bohdan met Varvara Tereshchenko. Varvara was born in 1852 in Hlukhiv into the wealthy family of Mykola Tereshchenko, a merchant of the first guild. At the time of her meeting with Bohdan, she was around 20. Throughout her childhood and youth, she had witnessed at close quarters how her family, thanks to her father's entrepreneurial flair and broad-mindedness, had rapidly risen not only in wealth but also in status. In 1870, the Tereshchenko family was granted a title of nobility in recognition of Mykola's generous philanthropy. The motto on their coat of arms was 'Striving for the common good'. By that time, the Tereshchenkos' main business had become sugar, which soon made Mykola and his brothers the sugar barons of the empire's south. But Varvara grew up surrounded not only by nouveau riche but also by art lovers and generous patrons. These two early inclinations of hers — towards art and philanthropy — shaped her future path.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko Museum Varvara Khanenko (Tereshchenko)
The Hanenkos were married in July 1874 and set off on their honeymoon to Europe the very next day. Bogdan later recalled:
I got married and travelled abroad with my wife; on the way, we visited art galleries and museums in Vienna, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples… those were happy days, everything around us seemed to be smiling, and we bought whatever we came across and liked; incidentally, although we knew very little about painting at the time, we did not make a mistake and bought some quite decent paintings.
This is one of the brightest pages of his memoirs. He recalled how, in Italy, they were overwhelmed by the richness of classical antiquity and their own ignorance in this field. Thus began the collection.
In the second half of the 1870s, due to Bohdan's service, the Khanenkos spent several years in Warsaw, where they acquired a number of valuable European paintings and discovered the world of non-European art, particularly Islamic art. In 1881, Bohdan retired, and from then on the Khanenkos devoted almost a decade to travelling abroad — studying cultural history and 'treasure hunting'. Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Warsaw, Rome, Florence, Harbin, Cairo — this is by no means an exhaustive list of their travels.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko museum Italian hall of the Khanenko private gallery, early 20th century
Among Bohdan's correspondents and advisers during those years and the years that followed were some of the most eminent Western art historians: Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Abraham Bredius, Wilhelm Bode, and Max Jacob Friedländer. In a letter dated 1897, held in the Bode Collection at the Central Archive in Berlin, Hanenko wrote:
I was in Berlin and presented Mr Bode with two of my paintings attributed to Rembrandt. After careful examination, he attributed them to the master himself.
As a result of systematic collecting efforts, by the start of the second decade of the 20th century the Khanenkos had formed a classic, encyclopaedic private art collection, the likes of which can be found in the metropolises of the West: paintings and engravings by old European masters, antiquities, Islamic and Asian art, archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Byzantium, Ottoman Turkey, Japan, China and India. And with their move to Kyiv, they also acquired Ukrainian artefacts: ancient icons, so-called Cossack antiquities and folk art objects.
Kyiv as a true home
In the late 1880s, the Khanenkos settled in Kyiv. Mykola Tereshchenko played a decisive role: he purchased a large plot of land with a house on what was then Oleksiyivska Street (now Tereshchenkivska Street), opposite the university, and transferred part of it to his daughter and son-in-law. Thus the Khanenkos acquired a home, conceived from the outset as a private art gallery — to house and display their art collection. At the time, no one even considered the future of this house as a museum.
Photo: UAIN.PRESS Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko
In Kyiv, Bohdan became actively involved in a wide range of public activities, and from 1896 he joined his father-in-law's major business enterprise, heading the board of the Tereshchenko Brothers' Society of Sugar and Refining Factories — becoming CEO of a vast industrial syndicate. Now the Khanenkos are truly wealthy, so their capabilities as collectors and patrons reach a new level.
An equally significant change was their inclusion in the circle of Kyiv's educated elite — enthusiasts, collectors and researchers of local culture. The collection expanded to include a new, Ukrainian section. Khanenko organised excavations, built up a valuable collection of archaeological artefacts ranging from the Stone Age to the early centuries of Christianity, consulted with specialists, and published materials. In particular, in the series of catalogues Antiquities of the Dnieper Ukraine (Kyiv, 1899-1907), for the scholarly editing of which he enlisted the anthropologist Fedir Vovk. Letters to Vovk testify to the depth of Khanenko's approach: he posed genuine scholarly questions and critically assessed his own experience.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko museum
It was largely thanks to the efforts of Bohdan Khanenko that the 11th All-Russian Archaeological Congress was held in Kyiv in 1899, at which Vikentiy Khvoyka first reported on the discovery of the Trypillian culture. Khanenko organised a trip for the participants to Trypillia, where Khvoyka led a guided tour of the excavation site.
At the same time, influenced by the Ukrainian intelligentsia, Varvara Khanenko developed a passion for folk art and became a leading activist in the handicraft movement. In 1904, she founded a school and workshop at the Olenivka estate in the Kyiv Region for the production of carpets and embroidered fabrics in the Ukrainian style. She assembled her own collection of rare Ukrainian folk artefacts, from which she would later donate around 1,500 art objects to the ethnographic department of the city's first museum.
The role of the Khanenkos as founders of Ukrainian cultural heritage can be summarised as follows: today, five key national museums in Kyiv preserve parts of the Khanenko collection as the core of their collections. This is the result of the systematic, purposeful cultural work of two people who consciously chose Kyiv as a place in need of development and support, not only through money and energy, but also through the core values of their own lives.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko museum Varvara Khanenko (sitting on the far left) at the first Ukrainian exhibition of folk crafts, Kyiv City Museum, 1906 A mask for St Petersburg
Against this backdrop, the image of Bohdan Khanenko, as presented to us in the empire's official documents, appears all the more surprising. In Russian academic and popular publications based on these documents, Khanenko is described as a 'Russian collector, industrialist and philanthropist'. Indeed, the list of his involvement in imperial institutions is impressive:
member of the Imperial Archaeological Commission; corresponding member of the Moscow Imperial Archaeological Society;honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts;from 1906, member of the State Council representing industrialists;member of the centre-right monarchist Octobrist Party;from 1914, actual councillor of state;member of the St Petersburg Masonic Lodge of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
It is striking that Khanenko actively and at every opportunity initiated and maintained personal contacts with members of the imperial family. In all the commissions and committees of which he was an honorary member, there was invariably someone from the imperial family. When Nicholas II arrived in Kyiv with his family in November 1911, it was Bohdan Khanenko who welcomed him with bread and salt at the city museum and provided commentary during the tour.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko Museum Exhibition of Ukrainian archeology in the Kyiv City Museum, 1899
It is interesting to note, however, that despite all his ostentatious loyalty to St Petersburg, Khanenko did almost nothing there. During his several years as a member of the State Council, he raised only one minor issue at a meeting. There is no record of him taking an active role in the Octobrist Party or among the St Petersburg Freemasons. One gets the impression that Khanenko's involvement in these communities was largely a formality, for show. In Kyiv, however, he truly invested his energy, intellect, funds and connections: heritage collections, excavations, publications, and the city's first museum. Working within the imperial system of power and knowledge, he quietly reshaped its rules for Kyiv.
A telling episode. Historians are well aware of the activities of the Imperial Archaeological Commission — an institution which, in 1889, was granted the exclusive right to oversee excavations across the empire and direct the most valuable finds to the Hermitage and Moscow's museums. Historian Hanna Shovkoplyas noted that Khanenko was perhaps the only collector in Ukraine who did not hand over to Russia a single collection acquired as a result of excavations in Ukraine. In a letter to Fedir Vovk, he writes directly about this, cautioning regarding a recently discovered treasure from the princely era in Kyiv:
It is premature and dangerous to announce the new find in Russia, as they may demand it be sent to St Petersburg, as has happened before.
This is the voice of a man who perfectly understands the colonial mechanisms of plundering heritage and who, quietly and in a guerrilla-like manner, resists them.
Or take this detail from the organisation of the first public museum in Kyiv. It was Khanenko who insisted on the grandiose dedicatory title 'in the name of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich', and in his opening speech suddenly mentioned collections of soils and minerals which the museum neither possessed nor had planned to acquire. Why? It seems he was keen to fit the new museum pro forma into the 'safe' framework of a provincial local history institution, in order to conceal the real focus from the censors: a museum of Ukrainian history and culture as distinctive and intrinsically valuable phenomena.
A man of keen intellect and pragmatism — it was no coincidence that Mykola Tereshchenko entrusted him with the management of his colossal sugar syndicate — Khanenko had mastered the rules of the game with the empire to perfection. He did not merely meet its expectations; he exceeded them, lulling the empire with its own words, presenting himself as the embodiment of its sweetest desire — the ideal 'Little Russian', impeccably loyal and trustworthy.
The Gambit in Venice
If we accept this as a working hypothesis for understanding Khanenko's strategy, then his voluntary offer to finance the Russian Pavilion appears entirely logical.
By the end of 1912, the matter of the pavilion had come to a head. The sensation caused by Dyahilev's organised participation of Russian artists in the 1907 Biennale had fuelled interest in Russia. In 1909, Nicholas II paid an official visit to the King of Italy. At that time, the Biennale's Secretary-General, Antonio Fradellett, invited the Russian Tsar to visit the Venice exhibition as well. Although the Tsar did not make it to Venice, the situation helped to advance the idea of a Russian pavilion: the Biennale's organising committee offered Russia very favourable terms for its construction. All this took place against the backdrop of a 'parade of pavilions': from 1907 onwards, various European countries — Belgium, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, France — had been opening their own buildings in the Giardini.
These events were keenly felt by the 'most august patroness' of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, aunt of Nicholas II. She was keen for Russia to join the 'parade' with a design by a Russian architect. To this end, she personally selected a beautiful plot in the Giardini overlooking the lagoon.
That was one side of the story. On the other hand, there was an acute shortage of funds in the imperial treasury. In 1912, the Academy's council was once again forced to abandon the project, a decision that deeply wounded the pride of the honorary patroness. The Grand Duchess's dreams and their latest humiliating collapse created the perfect moment for Bohdan Khanenko to step onto the stage.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko Museum The Russian Pavilion in Venice, funded by Bohdan Khanenko in January 1913.
In January 1913, he wrote a letter to the Grand Duchess:
Your Imperial Highness! Bowing deeply in admiration of your tireless and sincere service to Russian art, and wishing to support your energetic endeavours, during my stay in Italy this winter I have decided to place at your disposal 21,000 roubles as the sum required for the construction of the Russian exhibition pavilion in Venice, as well as 10,000 roubles as capital, the interest from which will be used for the necessary expenses of maintaining the building to be erected. Your Imperial Highness's most devoted servant, Bogdan Khanenko.
A total of 31,000 roubles. This is equivalent to 24 kilograms of pure gold, worth over three million euros at the current exchange rate.
Khanenko was immediately summoned for an audience, and the matter was settled. Alexey Shchusev was appointed as the project's architect (in the 1900s he worked as an architect at the Kyiv-Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavras; in 1924 he designed Lenin's temporary wooden mausoleum in Moscow, and six years later — the permanent stone one). In September 1913, the foundation stone was laid with great ceremony, and by March 1914 the pavilion had been opened in the presence of the Grand Duchess, Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich, the Russian Ambassador to Italy, and the principal benefactor, Bohdan Khanenko.
Khanenko's pragmatism in the matter of the Russian pavilion seems to have been quite obvious to the architect Shchusev. In a letter to Fyodor Berestham, the project manager, Shchusev bitterly complained about Khanenko's refusal to allocate additional funds:
It is difficult to sway Khanenko, but if you promise him the title of court chamberlain, he will give another 5-6, or even 30 [thousand].
This phrase is the key to understanding the whole operation. Khanenko did not hand out money out of reckless generosity. He knew exactly what he was buying: the favour and trust of the imperial family. That — and nothing else — was the aim of this investment.
In another letter, Shchusev recalls how he resorted to outright blackmail: he threatened to complain to the princess herself about Khanenko's stinginess. The effect was immediate — Khanenko apologised and promised additional funds. And again: the reaction of a man for whom the patroness's favour was the primary goal.
Why was this necessary?
In 1913 — the year of the donation for the pavilion — the Khanenkos had finally decided: their precious encyclopaedic art collection would remain in the house on Tereshchenkivska Street. The mansion, in the style of an 18th-century Venetian palace, was to become a publicly accessible museum — the Khanenko Museum. A museum of world art in Kyiv.
We have already mentioned above the logic of imperial thinking and the colonial distribution of knowledge. Museums of world art and world history — which shape and disseminate global historical narratives — could exist only in the imperial metropolises: St Petersburg and Moscow. The provinces were entitled only to museums of local, minor histories: local nature, everyday life, and regional studies. The British Museum, the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Royal Museums of Berlin were institutions of power. They declared: we are the centre; the world's most valuable heritage belongs to us; and only we have the right to name, explain and classify this world.
Photo: Provided by the Khanenko Museum The Khanenko Museum
Bohdan Khanenko wanted to build precisely such a museum. In Kyiv — the heart of a land that the empire deliberately kept on the periphery of knowledge, systematically banning Ukrainian education, the press, theatre and book printing, and persecuting scholars, poets and artists. This land was to remain a territory without its own memory, cultural identity or historical narrative.
At the end of 1913, a brief announcement appeared in the journal Art of Southern Russia:
Varvara and Bohdan Khanenko intend to establish an art museum bearing their name, for which purpose they plan to convert their home and gather within it the paintings and objects of applied art that belong to them; thereafter, the museum will be bequeathed to the city of Kyiv and will be maintained using funds provided by a special endowment established by the donors.
The announcement was published in that very same year, 1913, at the beginning of which Bohdan Khanenko sent a letter of proposal to the Grand Duchess. Is it a coincidence?
The logic behind Hanenko's gambit can be interpreted as follows: to open a museum in Kyiv of a type reserved solely for metropolises, he needed such a vote of confidence from the highest authorities that refusal would be impossible. After the pavilion — a charitable donation of 31,000 roubles — and after a personal, warm letter of thanks from the Grand Duchess, which of the imperial officials would dare to question your loyalty? Who would say 'no' to a man who had just inscribed his name in the stone of Venice for the sake of 'the glory of Russian art'?
Bogdan Khanenko died in 1917, before the museum was established. Thanks to the exceptional faith, will and courage of the elderly Varvara Khanenko, who remained the sole custodian of this priceless collection of world heritage in a Kyiv engulfed by the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Khanenko Museum opened its doors to visitors in the spring of 1919.
***
Khanenko's gambit achieved its goal: the museum of world art in Kyiv exists; it remains active for the public even today, in times of war, winning international accolades. Throughout the 20th century, this museum served as a source of spiritual support, professional development and a link to the world for the Ukrainian intelligentsia, particularly artists. In the biographies of the Khanenkos, prominent Ukrainians, the Russian pavilion in itself held no particular significance — anything could have served as a bribe to the system. However, today this topic and this story take on new significance for us, as, in the midst of Russia's brutal genocidal war against Ukraine, the Venice Biennale organising committee supports Russia's return to this important international platform.
This text was created with the support of the advertising and communications group Havas Village.
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