the late 1880s, the Khanenkos settled in Kyiv. Bohdan got engaged in the city's cultural and social life as well as the Tereshchenko brothers' business activities. Khanenko successfully led the project of establishing the first public museum in Kyiv (consecrated in 1904). Bohdan donated a large part of his collection to the new institution, including invaluable archaeological artefacts. Varvara Khanenko (née Tereshchenko) was the eldest daughter of the prominent Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Nykola Tereshchenko. From her father's family she inherited a passion for charity and arts. Varvara Khanenko was fond of old Italian painting, maiolica, ancient Ukrainian icon, and folk art. In the late 19th and first decades of the 20th centuries, she was among the Ukrainian cultural figures who started a handicraft movement aimed at giving a new life to folk art traditions. The young couple dreamed about their private art collection. They travelled extensively throughout Europe, attended auctions, visited private collections, consulted with leading art historians. As a result of a 40-year research, the Khanenkos built an extremely valuable art collection. In the early 20th century, it was considered among the best private collections of arts and antiques in the contemporaneous Russian Empire. As art collectors, the Khanenkos were interested in European painting, sculpture and applied arts representing the heyday of national artistic schools; rare works of fine arts and traditional crafts from Western, Southern, and Eastern Asia; art of Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; Ukrainian and Russian icon; Ukrainian folk art; European and Eastern weaponry; unique archaeological artefacts and complexes etc. In the 1900s, the Khanenkos donated several thousand items from their collection to the first public museum in Kyiv. Today these artworks are owned by five national museums in Kyiv. Several groups of items in the Khanenkos' collection were featured in catalogues published between 1899 and 1907, namely "B.I. and V.N. Khanenko. The collection of paintings of Italian, Spanish, Flemish and other schools", "Russian antiques. Crosses and icons", "Antiques of the Dnipro region", vol. 1-6. To open a museum of international art in Kyiv was the Khanenkos' life's ambition. This is evident from Bohdan Khanenko's will, signed in April, 1917, a month before his death. In December, 1918, Varvara Khanenko signed the Deed of Gift, by which she handed over the collection, house and library to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences free of cost. One of the gift's conditions was the indivisibility of the collection.