#Kherson art museum

[vintage-ukraine]

Fencing Team by Ihor Hryhoriev, 1971

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Earlier this month, Russian soldiers in Ukraine withdrew from the southern city of Kherson. It was the only regional capital Moscow was able to seize since the beginning of the war. But before retreating, Russian troops looted homes and businesses throughout the city and emptied one of Ukraine’s most valuable art museums. 

[anastasiamaru]

Museum and home of famous Ukrainian painter flooded

The home of famed Ukrainian painter Polina Raiko is under water as a result of the Kakhovka dam destruction.

Polina Raiko was a self-taught painter and an important figure in Ukrainian naïve artistry. Raiko passed away in 2004 at the age of 75 but her home became a museum and a national cultural monument of Ukraine.

[blueiscoool]

Russian Art Curators Have Helped Loot Dozens of Ukraine Museums

Russian art curators have reportedly led raids on approximately 30 Ukrainian museums since last years invasion, guiding the pilfering of ancient artifacts from the war-torn country.

Across Ukraine, museums have been looted of their famed Scythian artifacts, which were left behind when the Eastern Iranian nomadic people migrated from Central Asia to modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia between the 7th and 3rd century BC, according to the Sunday Times of London.

The raids have reportedly led to the theft of Scythian ornaments, sculptures, paintings, icons and busts worth millions.

“The orders are coming from someone pretty high up in the Kremlin,” said Sir Antony Beevor, the historian and author of “Russia: Revolution and Civil War” told the Sunday Times. “Putin’s propaganda is that Ukraine as a country doesn’t exist, it’s part of Russia — so they can grab anything they want.”

Others see the raids as a way for Russia to wipe out Ukraine’s cultural identity.

“It’s a deliberate policy to destroy the historical memory of the Ukrainian people,” said Alexsandr Symonenko, a Ukrainian archaeologist and Scythian specialist at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences.

The first raid came last March, shortly after Russia’s invasion, when a curator was kidnapped and thousands of pieces of artwork were stolen during the occupation of Mariupol and Melitopol.

Russian troops stole nearly 200 items from the Museum of Local Lore in Melitopol, including multiple 2,300-year-old gold pieces from the Scythian empire, according to the Museums Association.

The objects were reportedly selected by a man in a white coat who broke into the basement of the museum with Russian soldiers and selected what to steal with “long tweezers and special gloves,” said Leila Ibrahimova, the caretaker of the museum.

The largest Russian art heist targeted the Kherson Regional Art Museum where five trucks were used to steal over 15,000 pieces of artwork.

One canvas was too large to take, so it was left at the door, and an ancient cannon was also left behind because it was too heavy to move.

“It felt like I was losing my mind, that I was in a bad dream,” said the museum director, Alina Dotsenko. “It was terribly painful to see it so empty, this museum that was my pride, my love, my life.”

By Jacob Geanous.

[folklorespring]

Happy vyshyvanka day!

"Portrait of a girl in vyshyvanka" by Mykhailo Bryanksy/"Peasant woman from Ternopilshchyna" by Marta Makarenko

Both paintings were stolen by russians from Kherson Art Museum.

[mybonehouse]

Mykhailo Bryansky (1830-1908), Ukrainian artist, Portrait of a girl in an embroidered dress.

Along with this painting, the Russian occupiers stole more than 10,000 works of art from the Kherson Art Museum, and this is only what we know.

This is what so called 'great Russian culture' is built on: genocide, colonization, appropriation and violence.

[ohsalome]

[unhonestlymirror]

At the exhibition in Tehran, a work from the collection of the Kherson Art Museum, which was stolen by a thief, was presented

The original painting, which is in the collection of the Kherson Regional Art Museum, was taken away by the russian occupiers in November 2022.

[thegirlwhohid]

The Ukrainian brand of silk scarves OLIZ and the fundraising platform UNITED24 released a charity collection dedicated to works of art that were stolen or destroyed by Russia.

This collection includes prints with works of Polina Raiko (her house museum in occupied Oleshki was destroyed after russians blew up the Kahkovka dam), Arkhip Kuindzhi (the Mariupol museum was looted by russians and destroyed with an aerial bomb; the fate of his works is unknown), mosaics from Saint Michael cathedral (the mosaics were moved to Moscow while the cathedral was demolished by soviets in 1938) and paintings from the Kherson museum (almost all the exhibit were stolen by russians).

You can take a look, read more about each piece, and purchase shawls and scarves here: https://u24.gov.ua/stolenart

[manuhigueras]

Every painting, every graphic work, every piece of artwork, everything we identify, is indisputable proof that the stolen works (at least these) are in the hands of Russian art looters.

Ukraine’s Kherson Art Museum claimed 100 artworks were looted by Russian forces, citing a “propaganda video” filmed in a Crimean museum. This startling revelation allegedly represents only less than one percent of the cultural treasures plundered from Ukrainian institutions. Another 15,000 objects were reported missing amid extensive trafficking of cultural property during the ongoing war.

[vintage-ukraine]

Generosity by Mykola Pysanko, 1970s

The painting was stolen from the collection of the Art Museum in Kherson by the russian occupiers in 2022. Its location is now unknown.

[tomorrowusa]

When Russians weren't looting washing machines, toilets, and used underwear from Ukraine in the early weeks of the invasion, they were looting museums.

As a result of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2022, the Russian army was forced to withdraw from the area around Kherson. On November 11, the city was liberated by the Ukrainian army. One of the many consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the months of turbulence in the Kherson region has been the devastation of the cultural sector. For example, at the beginning of November 2022, entire collections were removed from the Kherson Art Museum, the Kherson Regional Museum and the Kherson Region National Archives. Tombstones of Russian Tsarist commanders and even the remains of Russian Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin, a confidant of Tsarina Catherine II (Empress Catherine the Great), were looted.

Yep, Putin's troops (I use troops loosely) even took the bones of Grigory Potemkin of "Potemkin village" fame.

The Kherson Regional Museum director, Olga Goncharova, laments the loss of the most valuable collection items. The Russians took ancient Greek amphorae, gold ornaments from steppe nomads, medieval weapons and Orthodox icons to the left bank of the Dnipro River, an area still occupied by Russia. Goncharova says that since the occupying forces withdrew, the museum has also lacked important lists of exhibits and documents proving their historical value. She can therefore only roughly estimate the number of looted objects at around 23,000.

Putin is attempting to eradicate even the idea of Ukraine. That's part of the definition of genocide.

During the Russian invasion, more than 40 museums in the occupied territories were looted, says Ukraine's first deputy prosecutor general, Oleksiy Khomenko. The loss has not yet been fully quantified. "It could take years," he says. By the end of the year, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy intends to create a register in which all available information on collections located in the occupied territories will be entered. This should later help to find art and valuables. However, this will probably only be possible after the end of the war.

For anybody who"s interested, here's the DW article about Russia looting Ukrainian museums in Ukrainian. 🇺🇦

Де шукати зниклі під час російської окупації колекції музеїв

[anastasiamaru]

The ruzzians looted the Kherson art museum and brought valuable works of the XVII-XX centuries to Simferopol. Kherson is under temporary occupation now. And then you ask why precious 🇺🇦 artworks in russian museums? Because they stole it.

[blueiscoool]

Moscow Auction House Sells a $1 Million Painting Stolen from a Ukrainian Museum

In Russia, Ukrainian artist Ivan Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” has been put up for auction, according to Ukraine’s former Deputy Attorney General and Prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Gyunduz Mamedov, who has reported the auction plans.

Russia’s looting and destruction of Ukrainian museums and cultural heritage sites have resulted in significant losses, with nearly 40 museums plundered and almost 700 heritage sites damaged or destroyed since the invasion began in February 2022, causing cultural losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros.

The first report that “Moonlit Night” will be the main lot of the auction, which will take place at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February, appeared on the Telegram channel by Russia’s state-funded news agency RIA Novosti, noting that the painting was estimated at 100 million rubles (approximately $1.09 million) before the sale.

‘In 2017, [Interpol], at the request of [Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Crimea], put the paintings on the international wanted list. Thus, Russia openly disregards [international law], as according to the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the export of cultural properties and transfer of ownership is prohibited,” Mamedov emphasized on X.

In 2014, during the early stages of Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Aivazovsky’s painting “Moonlit Night” was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum, along with 52 other artworks.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some of his works were destroyed in an airstrike on the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, and others were looted by Russian forces from Mariupol and Kherson museums, including “The Storm Subsides,” which was moved to the Central Taurida Museum in Simferopol, Crimea.

[folklorespring]

RESOURCES TO LEARN MORE ABOUT UKRAINE IN ENGLISH:

1. News and articles

Hromadske

Kyiv Independent

Ukraïner

2. Twitter

Writings from the war

United24

Ukraine Explainers

Ukrainian Art History

Ukrainian LGBTQ+ Military

ukrartarchive

Alice Zhuravel

Тетяна Denford

Oriannalyla

ліна

Mariya Dekhtyaruk

3. Instagram

Libkos (war photography)

rafaelyaghobzadeh (war photography)

mariankushnir (war photography)

marikinoo (illustrator)

olga.shtonda (illustrator)

polusunya (illustrator)

4. Videos (subtitles)

One day of evacuation with combat medics

Testimonies of tortures and sexual assault done by russians

How village in Kherson region lived under occupation

"Winter on Fire" documentary

Mariupol before and after

Tragedy of Nova Kakhovka dam

City of Izium after deoccupation

Entire village that was held in a basement for a month by russians

Life near the frontline in Zaporizhzhia region

Vovchansk after heavy russian shelling

"20 Days in Mariupol" documentary

5. TikTok

qirimlia

yewleea

thatolgagirl

showmedasha

ukraineisus

new4andy (all of the above accounts are educational, this one funny)

6. Other

National Museum of Holodomor Genocide (Holodomor and Digital History sections on a website have a lot of sources to learn about Holodomor)

Izolyatsia Must Speak (information about torture chamber in the russian-occupied Donetsk)

War Stories from Ukraine

Virtual museum of destruction in Kyiv region

Chytomo (about books and publishing)

Free translated books

Old khata project (photography project about rural architecture)