One of my first posts on this blog was about famous death masks from museums around the world. But what I really want to know is where I can find the largest collection of death masks in, I don’t know, the Ukraine? Well, I’m in luck. At the One Street Museum in Kiev there is a fascinating and extensive death mask collection. For over ten years, museum director Dmitry Shlyonsky has been collecting authentic wax and plaster face masks of prominent Ukrainian writers, politicians and artists, including figures such as Malevich, Bulgakov, Paustovsky and Petlyura. The museum now displays sixty casts (here’s a slideshow of the exhibit), as well as the work of master of post-mortem masks, famed Soviet sculptor Sergey Merkurov. In Armenia one can visit his house-turned museum where 59 Soviet leader death molds are on display, including the only original one of Lenin.
One Street Museum in Kiev, Ukraine
