On September 12, 2019, a presentation of the themed exhibition “Architect Yakiv Pauchenko and his town”, dedicated to the 265th anniversary of Kropyvnytskyi, took place in O.O.Osmerkin Art-Memorial Museum.
    The basis of the exposition includes colored photos of the buildings constructed on the projects by Yakiv Pauchenko. Nowadays, the buildings are jewels of the historical center of our town. The author of the photographs is Ihor Demchuk, Merited Journalist of Ukraine. For the first time, the works were presented in the museum at the exhibition “Stop and Admire” dedicated to the 145th anniversary of the architect. The exhibition is completed with the original documents, including the Diploma of Yakiv Pauchenko on the graduation from the College of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture of Moscow Art Union in 1896, his architectural projects and sketches, and also unique family photographs given to the museum by Nadiia Hryhorivna, the widow of his nephew, painter Oleksandr Osmerkin. She has been to our town many times and, being the architect, she developed the reconstruction project of the memorial building, nowadays the museum itself.
    The first visitors of the exhibition were pupils of 10- Г grade from Kirovohrad Regional General Educational Complex of Academic and Aesthetic Specialization. And it can be called symbolic because the well-known educational institution is located in the building of the former theatre “Illusion”, one of the first cinematographs in our town. The building is a Monument of Architecture and Town Planning of the end of the 19th century and was built on the project by Yakiv Pauchenko. In this school in February 2014, the local Directorate of Ukrposhta held a presentation and special cancellation of the First day of the jubilee art postal envelopes from the series “Beauty and Greatness of Ukraine” with the stamps depicting architectural works of Yakiv Pauchenko – Theatre “Illusion” in Kropyvnytskyi and the Cathedral of the Ascension in Bobrynets. The event was dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Kirovohrad Region. Vita Chernova, the museum director, presented those envelopes, highly valued among the stamp-collectors, together with the museum booklets, postcards, and a poster of the exhibition to the form master Oleksandra Kostenko and a pupil Daryna Tsarkulian, who came to study at school from Bobrynets.
    Pupils who came to the vernissage listened to Andrii Nadezhdin, the leading researcher of the museum, art historian, Merited Artist of Ukraine, telling about the life and architectural work of Yakiv Pauchenko – one of the architects who created the architectural ensemble of the historical center of our town. It was written in Yelisavethrad newspaper “Holos Yuha”: “The buildings constructed by him represent him as a talented artist and architect… Undisputable merit is that he was the first to create the samples of artistic architecture in our town…” Yakiv Pauchenko’s life wasn’t long; he died at the age of 48 and was buried at Petropavlivske cemetery, that no longer exists, his graveyard disappeared under new buildings. But his town has survived. In 2016, one of the central streets was named in his honor.
    At the end of the art event, the museum staff suggested boys and girls travel in time and watch old photographs with the views of the European cities of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century on a stereoscope. The stereoscope creates an illusion of three-dimensionality that fascinates even more than the modern 3D.