FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Ukrainian Museum Appoints Elena Siyanko as Transitional Executive Director
Internationally Recognized Arts Leader to Guide Institution as it celebrates its 50th Anniversary
NEW YORK, NY — The Ukrainian Museum is pleased to announce the appointment of Elena Siyanko (Олена Сіянко) as Transitional Executive Director. An internationally recognized arts leader and innovator whose expertise embraces performing and visual arts management, higher education, and cultural programming and philanthropy, Siyanko brings unique fundraising capabilities and a track record of artistic excellence at both established and emerging organizations.
“Elena combines managerial and fundraising success with curatorial acumen,” says Adrian Hewryk, Ukrainian Museum Board President. “Having successfully raised funds from scratch for two institutions in recent years and built high-performing, collaborative teams at both organizations, she is uniquely positioned to lead the Museum’s 50th anniversary fundraising campaign and year of activities in 2026-2027.”
Most recently, Siyanko co-founded the ambitious Down to Earth international festival of free multidisciplinary performance in public spaces throughout New York City. The festival focused on the defense of public space and on forging strategic partnerships with numerous cultural and community organizations, NYC parks and public spaces, and international collaborators including Théâtre de la Ville and Wiener Festwochen.
Previously, Siyanko served as the Inaugural Executive and Artistic Director of PS21/Center for Contemporary Performance from 2019 through 2024, where she led the organization from inception to national prominence. During her tenure, she more than doubled the organization’s operating budget, recruited an impressive Board comprised of major philanthropists, distinguished artists, and subject matter experts, launched a year-round residency program, and transformed rural upstate New York into a stable cultural institution and a destination for cutting-edge performance that The New York Times critic Jesse Greene called a “supercool avant-garde hothouse.” Crucially, she centered this growth on access and inclusion—initiating the PS21 PATHWAYS program, which partnered with over 25 local organizations to bring performances into schools, parks, and public spaces. Under her leadership, PS21 presented hundreds of artists from around the world in every conceivable genre—including productions by leading and emerging American and international artists in music, dance, and theater, visual and multimedia arts, and visionaries creating entirely new genres—with over 120 distinct productions from 15 countries, curating more than 250 events for diverse audiences and hosting over 30 artists’ residencies.
Before joining PS21, Siyanko served as Director of Advancement Initiatives at the Clark Museum and Research Center for Visual Culture (2013-2019), where she successfully led the new exhibition-funding initiatives following the Clark’s expansion by celebrated architects Annabel Selldorf and Tadao Ando. Based in New York, she worked with trustees and major donors on exhibition funding strategies, while envisioning and leading prominent thematic programs linking exhibitions to current social and cultural concerns, including the role of the arts in contemporary politics, evolving views of nature, and the intersections of old and new art forms, such as painting, contemporary music, and film. Her work connected the Clark’s distinguished collection with contemporary culture, attracting new and younger audiences and donors through innovative programming that integrated the museum’s distinctive architecture with performance, including a free modern music series and large-scale season-closing festivals.
“As a first-generation immigrant from Kyiv, Ukraine, I am delighted and honored to serve the Ukrainian Museum,” says Siyanko. “In 2026-27 the museum will celebrate its 50th anniversary with exhibitions, community outreach, block parties, and programming that honors five extraordinary decades of cultural stewardship. We want to make sure that the entire community is invited and feels welcome. And of course, in this moment of ongoing aggression against Ukraine, the Museum’s work of advancing both contemporary Ukrainian artistic expression and cultural memory is more urgent than ever. Personally, the East Village is where I settled when I came to New York after graduating from college. I moonlighted as a stage manager for La MaMa’s Yara Arts Group, have been a member of the Ukrainian Self Reliance Credit Union since 1996, and cherish the distinct and often endangered cultural and gastronomic landmarks created by the Ukrainian community, from Veselka and Streecha, to the dearly departed Stage Restaurant.”
Siyanko holds an M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University (in the consortium of the School of the Arts, the Business School, and the Law School) and a B.A. in Asian Studies from Mount Holyoke College.
About the Ukrainian Museum
Founded in 1976, The Ukrainian Museum is one of the nation’s principal institutions dedicated to the art, history, and cultural heritage of Ukrainians. Seated in the heart of Manhattan’s vibrant East Village, the Museum serves as a cultural home for everyone in New York—Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian alike—through exhibitions, educational programs, and stewardship of significant collections. The Museum’s mission is to collect, preserve, exhibit, and interpret one of the largest collections of Ukrainian folk art, fine art, textiles, and archival materials outside of Ukraine. The Museum’s exhibitions are recognized as leading in the field of Ukrainian, Eastern European, and post-Soviet art. As Russia continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the museum aspires to not only represent Ukraine, but to also decolonize Ukrainian culture, continue speaking on the war, and raise awareness on the impact that Ukrainians from the diaspora have had in the arts, and indeed the world. Over the last several years, the Museum has curated major exhibitions, accompanied by fully researched, illustrated catalogues, that display both largely known and largely unknown Ukrainian artists, such as Janet Sobel, Nikifor, Lesia Khomenko, Maria Prymachenko, Yelena Yemchuk, Peter Hujar, Alexandra Exter and more. In response to the war, the Museum launched SAFE in 2022, its global initiative supporting museums and cultural workers in Ukraine through emergency assistance, institutional stabilization, legal advocacy, and long-term recovery strategies for cultural heritage at risk.
