Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn is hosting an exhibition that showcases the sacred Ukrainian embroidery tradition known as rushnyk, practiced by many Ukrainian American families in the region, writes Emily Neil for the WHYY.
A rushnyk is a traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloth used in rituals such as births, weddings, and funerals. Many Ukrainian homes display them draped over family photographs as well as on religious icons. A Ukrainian proverb best captures the cloth’s significance: “A house without a rushnyk is not a home.”
The exhibit is displaying rushnyky, the plural form of the word in Ukrainian, from various periods and regions of Ukraine through November 9. The collection belongs to Franklin Sciaccia, emeritus associate professor of Russian language and literature at Hamilton College in New York.
Sciaccia said that the endurance of rushnyky powerfully reflects the resilience of Ukrainian culture, which has long endured war, struggle, cultural oppression, and genocide.
“After all the period of wars, of collectivization, of the Holodomor, of the famine of the 1930s … this tradition remains alive and active in Ukraine, and to a large degree in Ukrainian American communities,” he said.
Read more about the new rushnyk exhibit at the Glencairn Museum in WHYY.
