The Petryakova Center has been set up to commemorate the life of Faina Petryakova – a passionate defender and promoter of Jewish art, and a great scholar.

Faina Petryakova was born in 1931 in Old Buxov (now its Belarus territory) in Jewish family. Her father was an officer and her mother was a nurse. She was studying Russian philology at the Lviv University and art criticism in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Ms. Faina was extraordinary person, she was very popular among her colleagues scholars, critics and artists. Popular not only because extravagance in clothes, emotional gestures, but above all because of her knowledge, criticism and diligence.  

In 1990 she curated the first exhibition in the USSR, titled Jewish Traditional Art of the 17th -early 20th century, which was exhibited at the Museum of Ethnography and Art Crafts in Lviv. The exhibition also traveled to Moscow and Kyiv.

She wanted to make the collection available to the public. The exibition was a unique event in the 90s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a political system that forbade and supressed an open display of Jewish collections.

Doctor Petryakova passed away in 2002. She was a professor at the Lviv Academy of Arts, Doctor of Art History, and senior scientist at the Lviv Department of the Folklore Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

She left behind a remarkable scientific legacy worthy of her stature as a renowned scholar in such fields as Ukrainian glass, porcelain, ceramics and Ukrainian Judaica.

At the moment, numerous artcles written by Doctor Petryakova are being prepared for publication.