The Taras Shevchenko bronze statue that disappeared from the Shevchenko.
Memorial Park in North Oakville, Ontario in 2001 was found intact in Hamilton in November, 2011.
Shevchenko Memorial Park, owned and operated by the Taras H. Shevchenko.
Museum and Memorial Park Foundation, is devoted to the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), artist, humanist, and founder of the modern Ukrainian language, twice celebrated as a cultural leader of world acclaim by UNESCO. The Foundation also operates a Taras Shevchenko Museum, located at 1614 Bloor Street West, Toronto.
The beautiful bronze statue of the sitting poet, sculptured in Ukraine by the renowned sculptor Ivan Honchar, was a gift from Ukraine to Ukrainian Canadians. The sculpture arrived in Canada in the 1950s and was erected on a concrete pedestal near the first Shevchenko Museum in the Shevchenko Park in Oakville. The statue, which is valued at approximately $25000, disappeared from its pedestal in September 2001.
Police investigation at the time was unsuccessful in solving the theft.
In November, 2011, an antique dealer from Hamilton, Ontario, offered to sell the statue to the Shevchenko Museum. He didn’t know the statue
was previously stolen. It evidently went through several hands before
coming into the possession of the antique dealer.
It is planned that the statue become an exhibit in the Shevchenko Museum in Toronto from March 9, 2012 to commemorate 198th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth. For details, please visit the Shevchenko Museum website at www.infoukes.com/shevchenkomuseum
