A European Collection

A European Collection. Masterpieces from the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv opens at the Christian Schad Museum in Aschaffenburg on April 30, 2026. The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum in Kyiv holds the most important collection of Western art in Ukraine and ranks among the leading European collections of its kind. For the first time in Germany, 73 masterpieces from the pre-modern era will be presented together in a major exhibition. The works, dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, include paintings by renowned European artists and provide a broad overview of key developments in European art history in keeping with the didactic structure of the Khanenko Collection.

The exhibition features works by some of the most significant figures in European painting, including Peter Paul Rubens, Bernardo Bellotto, Pieter Bruegel the Younger, Jacob Jordaens, and Antonio Canova, as well as works from the workshops of Hieronymus Bosch and Rembrandt. Together, these works reflect the deep cultural interconnections that have shaped Europe over centuries and embody a shared European cultural heritage.

The exhibition is the result of an exceptional international collaboration between the Khanenko National Museum and the Museums of the City of Aschaffenburg. In recent years, selected works from the Khanenko Collection have been shown at different venues across Europe in order to ensure their preservation while maintaining public accessibility. At the Christian Schad Museum, these works are now brought together for the first time in a comprehensive presentation, making this exhibition the most extensive display of Ukrainian cultural heritage in Europe since the beginning of the war.

The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum in Kyiv, founded in 1919, is Ukraine’s foremost art museum. Based on the private collection assembled over decades by Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko, the museum today comprises around 25,000 works ranging from antiquity and ancient Egypt to major examples of Western European art, as well as masterpieces from Persia, China, and Japan.

During the exhibition, a selection of high-calibre works by Christian Schad will remain on view on the ground floor of the museum.