On February 21, a group exhibition «Kherson: NOT/stolen» will open at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War.
This was announced on the page of the Kherson Regional Art Museum named after Shovkunenko.
The exhibition opens at 15:00 (Lavrska St., 24). The project is dedicated to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion and the Day of Resistance to the occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.
The exhibition is dedicated to works stolen during the occupation from the Kherson Art Museum named after Oleksiy Shovkunenko. Russian military, with the participation of local collaborators, removed the collection on the eve of Kherson’s liberation in November 2022.
The project «Kherson: NOT/stolen» brings together studies and homages by contemporary Ukrainian artists to works that were displayed in the museum before the occupation. The initiative aims to support the Kherson Art Museum and preserve the memory of the stolen collection.
Initially the project, launched in 2024, focused on researching the lost collection of the Kherson museum. Now it is expanding and is intended to draw attention to all Ukrainian museums looted by Russian occupiers since 2014, when the occupation of Crimea began.
Almost 30 artists from various cities of Ukraine are participating in the exhibition, among them Matvii Vaisberg, Oleksandr Zhivotkov, Akhra Adzhindzhal, Vladyslav Shereshevskyi, Olena Pryduvalova, Oleksa Mann and others.
The project was implemented with the support of Sense Bank.
The main image for the exhibition — the work of Akhra Adzhindzhal «Homage to the painting by Heorhiy Kurnakov “Sunny Day”».
Recall that before fleeing Kherson Russian occupiers removed 1,233 exhibits from the Kherson Regional Art Gallery named after O. Shovkunenko. And this is only part of the cultural valuables identified as stolen by the Russian Federation.
It was previously reported that, fleeing from the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ counteroffensive, the Russian army illegally removed more than 20,000 works of art and historical artifacts belonging to Ukraine.
It is also known that part of the museum collection stolen from Kherson could have disappeared on the way to Crimea.
An independent UN commission documented the looting of the museum by the Russian army and the archive in Kherson.