Welcome to the Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford

The oldest Ukrainian cultural institution in North America, welcomes you with the traditional Ukrainian greeting:

"Bread and salt on a ritual cloth" Bread represents the staple of life, Salt, the riches of the earth and a shield against malice, while the ritual cloth represents a protective talisman. The periwinkle wreath is a symbol of enduring beauty and youth.

December 20, 2006 - A series of photographs depicting groups of people dressed in their regional folk costumes keep reappearing in many of the publications dealing with Ukrainian folk garb and folk art. Although these groups of people are set against the background of a village home (clay house with a thatched roof or a log house), orchard or field, they, nevertheless, have the look of being staged and posed for a special occasion or for a specific purpose.

This is the story behind these photographs. [Read more]

The Library collection has in its holdings three albums of original photographs depicting the  Carpathian Mountains and its inhabitants- the Hutsuls. The photographs were taken by Henryk Gasiorowski  (1878-1947) in the 1920-30s. He was a Major in the Polish Army, a geographer and an author of one of the best tourist guide books to the Carpathian mountains and its environs, which was published in L’viv in 1933. He considered the Hutsul region to be on of the most beautiful corners of the Carpathians and the Hutsuls to be the most fascinating ethnographic group of people not only in the Halychyna area but in the whole of Europe. [Read more]