Exhibition

27 September 2024 – 19 January 2025

UKR|RUS, a sculptural work by Molly Gochman, invites us to question the devastating human cost and destruction caused by aggressive imperialism, and to celebrate the resilience of Ukrainians, their rich cultural history, and the future that so many are fighting to defend. Taking the shape of the Ukraine-Russia border as it is defined by Ukraine and recognized by international law, the work draws parallels between physical and metaphorical boundaries, explores the complex dynamics that exist around borders, and provides a space to center and reflect upon the ongoing struggle of Ukraine and its people.

Constructed using an assemblage of reclaimed wood, rubble, and various types of ground surface materials including marble, UKR|RUS recognizes the scars of conflict while simultaneously suggesting the possibility of rebuilding and healing. In the wake of major geopolitical events and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Gochman’s sculptures serve as a stark reminder of the human cost of conflict and the suffering of those caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. By positioning parts of the bench in historically Ukrainian communities across New York City, UKR|RUS will be paired with programming at cultural institutions and organizations that support and exemplify Ukrainian culture.

The installation is on display alongside the Alexandra Exter: The Stage Is a World and Volia: Ukrainian Modernism exhibitions.

21 June – 08 December 2024

This unique exhibition of current and historical maps of Ukraine offers visitors a rare opportunity to delve into the country’s complex and rich history. By juxtaposing modern maps with those from centuries past, the exhibition promotes a deeper understanding of how Ukraine’s borders, cities, and landscapes have evolved over time – for example, by tracing the changing political boundaries of Ukraine, from the 1600s to modern-day independence, and witnessing the impact of historical events such as wars, revolutions, and treaties on the country’s geographical makeup.

The exhibition also features maps of Ukraine that provide a glimpse into the country’s cultural and ethnic diversity. These maps highlight the distribution of various ethnic groups, languages, and religions within Ukraine’s borders, thereby shedding light on the country’s rich tapestry of identities. Additionally, it will be augmented with a variety of rare and contemporary books focusing on the iconography of maps, major cities, and historic locations within Ukraine.

The exhibition serves as a valuable learning tool, allowing visitors to connect with the country’s past and present in a visually engaging manner. The current and historical maps provide an important perspective on Ukraine’s geographical, political, and cultural landscape, inviting viewers to explore and appreciate the country’s complex history.

7 October 2023 – 7 April 2024

For over 60 years, Maria Prymachenko created art based profoundly on her Ukrainian upbringing and wildly creative imagination. Despite having no formal art training, Prymachenko over the years was able to create a wide range of art: drawings, paintings, ceramics, illustrations, and even embroidered garments. She was known during her lifetime for her brilliantly colored and inventive scenes of animals – lions, bears, birds, horses, and strange behemoths – covered in riotously hued, almost psychedelic patterns. Additional themes included traditional village life, the Ukrainian landscape, and flowers. Always drawing on village traditions and later dreams for inspiration, Prymachenko also included creative critiques about various dramatic social events in her work. During the mid and late 20th century, she was Ukraine’s most beloved artist; her artworks have appeared on stamps and even the country’s coinage.

This exhibition at The Ukrainian Museum will feature over 100 paintings, unique ceramic works, bespoke embroidered blouses, wooden plates, and several children’s illustration books. The exhibition will highlight Prymachenko’s creative talent and visionary outsider esthetics born out of a history of traditional Ukrainian village arts and crafts movements. This will be the first exhibition of Prymachenko’s art outside of Europe.

2 May – 1 September 2024

The Ukrainian Museum is excited to present the exhibition Peter Hujar: Rialto, opening on 2 May 2024. Peter Hujar (1934-1987) exemplified the downtown New York arts scene. He was born to an immigrant family, and his Ukrainian grandmother raised him exclusively in the Ukrainian language until he was 5 years old. His difficult and unstable upbringing in a troubled household influenced his artistry and vision significantly as Hujar turned to a career in photography. He learned from some of the greatest photographers in the industry, and his training, paired with his identity and background, resulted in the powerfully disruptive and influential photographs that he created in the early years of his career. He would later plant his roots in the heart of New York City’s East Village, also known as the Ukrainian Village, where he would be enthralled by the world of performance art, music, theatre, and literature. 

The life and art of Peter Hujar were synonymous with a downtown New York that no longer exists. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the East Village was an urban buffet of creativity and danger, yet always vibrant and inexpensive. Private by nature, combative in manner, well-read, and widely connected, Hujar inhabited a world of the known and unknown. This exhibition at the Ukrainian Museum will feature 75 of Hujar’s earliest photographs – from 1955 until 1969. Portraits, country landscapes, and city life will be the focus of the exhibition. Yet, three important vectors or series that appeared in his work during this period will also be highlighted in-depth for the first time: the Southbury (1957), the Florence (1958), and the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (1963). Hujar’s Southbury, Connecticut, work focuses on his visit to the Southbury Training School for mentally challenged students, which still operates today. The Florence photographs were taken during one of Hujar’s trips to Italy and feature neurologically impaired children. The Capuchin Catacombs series documents another of Hujar’s trips, this one to Sicily, where the exposed corpses in the Catacombs create a macabre spectacle that highlights some of the customs and traditions of Palermo society from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. 

In his Ukrainian Village loft studio, near various iconic Ukrainian establishments such as the restaurant Veselka and the Ukrainian Museum, Peter Hujar focused on those who followed their creative instincts and dreamed about mainstream success. His studio in the former Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre (now the Village East Cinema) was a meeting point (rialto) for the original and flamboyant. These earliest Peter Hujar photographs are a little-known prequel to his widely discussed and influential work as one of New York’s seminal photographers. 

9 February – 21 April 2024

How do the terms “beauty’” and “culture” function relative to one another in various disciplines, including craft and design? Various art historical models are often used to frame the cultural expressions of a singular community.

Traditional Ukrainian arts and crafts, or folk art, include decorative painting, embroidery, pottery, textile weaving, woodworking, and egg decorating, with styles and designs particular to different regions of Ukraine. A majority of these crafts were traditions that originated and flourished in rural areas and villages. Various symbols and meanings from both the pre-Christian and Christian eras intertwined with each other. Kilims, textiles, and ceramics were incorporated into every home not only as decorative elements, but as family traditions and history. All the objects in the home were interconnected aesthetically; nothing existed on its own.

A key component of Ukrainian folk art is the pysanka (plural: pysanky), an embellished egg whose crafting dates back to pre-Christian culture. The word comes from the Ukrainian verb pysaty, to write.

At first glance, pysanky appear to be well-designed, beautiful self-reflections of the maker. But their rhetoric has an underhanded virtuosity, capable of producing unexpected effects. As the modernist architect Le Corbusier once remarked, the purpose of a home and its design is to move us. Pysanka artisans, then, consistently realize architecture’s highest aim: they create works whose extraordinary power lies not only in how deeply they make us feel, but also in how they let us see the complexity of our feelings, in meaningful environments that help us live or dwell.

Currently, we live in a world with a focus on the individual and on all the goings-on of individual issues. This exhibition will raise questions such as, What is beauty? How does the pinnacle of Ukrainian folk culture, the pysanka, position itself within design? In which spaces did these objects originate? Can these beautiful eggs raise visitors’ spirits? This begins to unravel the subtle elements of beauty, with various definitions of the word.

9 February – 9 June 2024

Pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa were important centers of new artistic movements in Ukraine, and many well-known artists of the historical avant-garde in Europe began or spent a considerable part of their professional careers in those cities. Because the movement originated when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian avant-garde has often been confused with the Russian avant-garde. The slow process of reclaiming what was appropriated by the Russian cultural space began in the late 1980s and became especially invigorated after Ukraine regained its independence in 1991. The Ukrainian Museum has been at the forefront of this process, showcasing the work of such artists as Alexander Archipenko and Borys Kosarev, as well as presenting the group exhibitions Staging the Ukrainian Avant-Garde of the 1910s and 1920s (2015) and The Impact of Modernity: Late 19th and Early 20th Century Ukrainian Art (2019).

This exhibition displays English- and Ukrainian-language books from the Museum’s library, including a few of our own catalogs, that underscore the contributions of Ukrainian artists to the avant-garde movement. The featured artists in print include Alexandra Exter, Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Archipenko, Borys Kosarev, Vadym Meller, Heorhii Narbut, Vasyl Yermilov, Alexander Bogomazov, Mykhailo Boychuk, and Anatol Petrytsky. The exhibition also includes a selection of books discussing the movement as a whole and Ukraine’s place in it. The publications on display are augmented by a few works on paper from the collection donated to the Museum by Dr. Jurij Rybak and Anna Ortynskyj (except Archipenko’s lithograph). For the most part, they are drawings of stage costume designs by Alexandra Exter, Isaac Rabinovich, Anatol Petrytsky, Vadym Meller, and Mykhailo Andriienko-Nechytailo.

7 October 2023 – 21 January 2024

An expansive and new interpretation of traditional Ukrainian embroidery and costumes curated by model and fashion designer Helena Christensen, this exhibition will address the esthetics of embroidered and historic garments and accessories from a female and wearable perspective. Pushing the physical boundaries of institutional fashion exhibitions, the project will start with classic mannequin presentations and morph to large wall installations of both small and large garments, highlighting the stylistic complexities of the many regions of Ukraine. Traditional costumes from the Poltava and Carpathian (Hutsul) regions will also feature build-ups of individual garments all the way to the entire outfit, which will then be presented on two mannequins, delineating the steps a woman takes to dress for a festive occasion. The exhibition will be accentuated by a selection of traditional headdresses and jewelry.

Lobby and second level installation through 8 September 2024

Oleksandr Glyadelov’s photographic exhibition features sites and events documented by him across Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion. The images function as timestamps profoundly recording the devastation and survival during the ongoing war. Glyadelov captures urban scenes and rural settlements often just hours after the destruction. His images instantaneously elicit memories of traumatic news from Irpin, Bucha, Borodianka, Izium, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Moshchun, Kyiv, Kherson, Bakhmut… Glyadelov’s empathetic presence is felt in the startling scenes of life that unravel in the shelters of Ohmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital; in the yards of solitary villagers who decided to stay and rebuild their households; on the routes of evacuation and at the sites of military encampment. The landscapes in his photographs are charged with historical grief and insight, forever altered by the imposed violence, much like a Dnipro estuary pictured on several images in this exhibition where freshwater and saltwater meet.

Born in 1956 in Legnica, Poland, Oleksandr Glyadelov has lived and worked in Kyiv since 1974. He graduated from the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.” His work addresses humanitarian crises, child homelessness, HIV/AIDS, drugs addiction, prisons, and military conflicts. Over the years he has cooperated with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and many others. Since 1989, as an independent professional photojournalist, he has covered military conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, South Sudan, and Ukraine. He deliberately photographs with an analogue camera on black-and-white film. Glyadelov is the winner of the 2020 Shevchenko Prize.