Jurii and Rose

Jurii V. Maniichuk assembled his collection of 140 Ukrainian paintings of the Soviet era while living and working in Kyiv in the 1990s. Born in L’viv province in western Ukraine, he earned his Ph.D. in international law from T. Shevchenko Kyiv State University and was a university professor there until moving to Canada and earning a master’s degree in law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto in 1991.

He immigrated to the U.S. and began working as a legal specialist for the Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, eventually becoming an American citizen. In 1993, two years after Ukraine attained its independence, Maniichuk returned to Kyiv as a legal consultant to the Ukrainian parliament and presidential administration for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank.

With the country and its art world undergoing colossal changes, Maniichuk began collecting paintings in his spare time. His goal was to preserve leading examples of an art genre in danger of being destroyed. In 1999, he brought his collection to the U.S. and a year later married New York-based journalist, Rose Brady. Maniichuk died unexpectedly in 2009 while visiting Kyiv. The majority of his collection is now located at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis, The Mead Art Museum of Amherst College, and the Georgia Museum of Art of University of Georgia.