<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/30/ukraine-death-defying-art-rescuers>
"In early March 2022, when his country seemed in danger of falling to the
Russians, it occurred to Leonid Marushchak, a historian by training, to call
the director of a museum in eastern Ukraine to check that a collection of
20th-century studio pottery was safe.
He had loved the modernist works by artist Natalya Maksymchenko since he had
encountered them almost a decade earlier. There were vessels covered with bold
abstract glazes in purple, scarlet and yellow; exuberant figurines of musicians
and dancers with swirling skirts; dishes painted with birds in flight. The
collection was the radiant highlight of the local history museum in Sloviansk,
the ceramicist’s home town.
It was remarkable that they were in this small museum at all. Though she was
born in Ukraine in 1914 and studied in Kharkiv, Maksymchenko had lived the rest
of her life in Russia. But, after her death in 1978, her family, fulfilling her
wishes, oversaw the transfer of about 400 works from her studio in Moscow to
the city of her birth. It was a deeply resonant act. When the historic traffic
of artworks has so often been from Ukraine to Russia, when artists’ national
allegiances have been subsumed by the Soviet Union, when works in international
museums by Ukrainians (such as Kyiv-born Kazimir Malevich) have been routinely
labelled “Russian”, Maksymchenko’s final gift to her home town and country
seemed like a statement of defiance.
Now, as the Russian army inched nearer and nearer to the museum, Marushchak
worried that these works in delicate porcelain could be destroyed by a missile
in a moment – or, if Sloviansk were occupied, taken by the invaders back to
Moscow. Had the ceramics been prioritised for the first round of evacuations,
Marushchak asked the museum director on the phone.
“Lyonya, what round?” came the reply. “We still haven’t got the order to
evacuate!”
Marushchak phoned his friend Kateryna Chuyeva, who was then Ukraine’s deputy
minister for culture. “Katya,” he asked her, “why have you still not given the
order for the Sloviansk museum?” She explained that she couldn’t just authorise
it herself – the regional authorities needed to request it first. So he called
the region’s culture department. They said that to issue an order, they would
first need a full list of items to be evacuated.
Marushchak was furious. The situation was urgent; there was no time for that
kind of paperwork. “Let’s just say I have sometimes had to take my time and
breathe slowly,” said Chuyeva, in the face of her friend’s sometimes volcanic
passion. She found a way to break the bureaucratic impasse. Before the official
order had even arrived, Maruschak was on his way to Sloviansk."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
