Viewing will take place on Sunday October 25th from 2-6pm with religious services beginning at 6pm.

Funeral Mass on Monday October 26th at St. George Church beginning at 9:30am. Burial at Holy Spirit Cemetery 12:30pm

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Lubow Wolynetz (1938–2026)

Lubow Wolynetz, 87, distinguished scholar, author, curator, and leading authority on Ukrainian folk art, mythology, and cultural traditions, passed away on October 16, 2026.

Born in 1938 to a Hutsul father and a mother from Podillya, she was six years old when her family fled Ukraine to escape Soviet occupation. After surviving the upheavals of war and life in displaced persons camps in Germany, she emigrated to the United States in 1949. It was in those camps, watching her mother and other Ukrainian women embroider, that she first discovered the beauty and significance of Ukrainian folk art, an experience that would shape her life's work.

Educated at Hunter College and Columbia University, she began her professional career as a researcher in the Slavic Division of the New York Public Library. For more than five decades, she devoted herself to the preservation, study, and interpretation of Ukraine's rich cultural heritage. She served as Folk Art Curator of The Ukrainian Museum in New York City and Head Curator of the Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford, Connecticut, safeguarding and illuminating collections of Ukrainian art, historical artifacts, and traditional craftsmanship.

An accomplished author and lecturer, her publications included The Tree of Life, the Sun, the Goddess: Symbolic Motifs in Ukrainian Folk Art, The Changeless Carpathians: Living Traditions of the Hutsul People, Borshchiv: Its Folk Art, Customs, and Traditions, and Ukrainian Kilims: Journey of a Heritage. She also co-authored Invitation to a Wedding: Ukrainian Wedding Textiles and Traditions.

Her scholarship was distinguished by a profound understanding of Ukrainian mythology and the interplay of ancient pre-Christian beliefs, Christian traditions, folklore, and artistic expression. She recognized that the patterns woven into a textile, the symbols decorating a pysanka, or the rituals surrounding a wedding were not merely ornamental or ceremonial, but expressions of a people's collective memory and identity.

At a time when Ukraine's cultural heritage is once again threatened by war and deliberate destruction, her life's work carries particular significance. She understood that the preservation of a culture required more than safeguarding its treasures; it demanded that their meaning be understood, shared, and passed to future generations.

Lubow Wolynetz dedicated her life to preserving Ukraine's past because she believed passionately in its future.

In lieu of flowers, her family asks that donations be considered in her memory to the Ukrainian Museum and Library of Stamford, Connecticut, an institution to which she devoted so much of her life.

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