Dmytro Antonovych

Dmytro Antonovych (14 November 1877, in Kiev – 12 October 1945, in Prague) was a Ukrainian politician and art historian.

Family

Professor Dmytro Antonovych was the son of a Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Antonovych, the husband of Kateryna Antonovych, the father of Marko Antonovych and Mykhailo Antonovych.

Career

In 1900–1905, he was one of the founders and leaders of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP), established in 1900 in the city of Kharkiv, and from 1905, of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' Party (USDRP). Since 1912, he taught art history at the Lysenko Music and Drama School in Kiev.

Antonovych was a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada, and he served as the minister of naval affairs of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), in cabinets headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Vsevolod Holubovych (1917-1918), and the minister of arts in Volodymyr Chekhivsky’s government (1918/1919). Then Antonovych was the president of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission of the UNR in Rome.

He was an organizer and rector of the Ukrainian Free University in Vienna and Prague and a professor of art history there as well. Antonovych was the director of the Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Independence in Prague for many years. He was president of the Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society, and director of the Ukrainian Studio of Plastic Arts, both in Prague, from 1923 until 1945.