On the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people, the Mission, together with 14 cultural institutions, initiated a series of exhibition projects “Crimea. A Different View”. In Kyiv, Dnipro, Chernihiv, Lviv, and Kmytiv, Ukrainian museums and other art venues presented exhibitions and individual artworks related to the occupied Crimea, the history of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, and the unity of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar peoples.

“As you know, Russia has already appropriated and looted objects of Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar culture after the annexation of Crimea in 1783. Both the USSR and Russia tried to ignore the Crimean Tatars, and this was clearly reflected in the art of the Soviet period. We see paintings with beautiful Crimean landscapes, but often there are no people, no indigenous people,” said Permanent Representative Tamila Tasheva during a public discussion “Cultural reception of Crimea: the decolonial aspect” at the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

Each of the projects was unique and attracted the attention of many visitors. Some of the exhibitions will last longer, so we invite you to visit them.

The exhibition at the I.P. Kavaleridze Museum and Workshop in Kyiv will run until June 10. In two halls, visitors will see lithographs and engravings by 19th-century European authors such as James Gray, Joseph Mayer, Carl Helfart, and Roland Weibensal, made during their stay on the Crimean peninsula, from the private collection of Lera Litvinova. A separate exhibition will feature rare old maps depicting the Crimean peninsula from the Sheremetyev Museum. The exhibition also features contemporary sculpture.

Many of the works can be an eye-opener for Ukrainian society, for example, sketches of Crimean Tatar patterns made by Lesya Ukrainka during her stay in Crimea and her acquaintance with the culture of the indigenous people.

The Museum of Outstanding Figures of Ukrainian Culture of Lesia Ukrainka, Mykola Lysenko, Panas Saksahanskii, and Mykhailo Staritskyi will host an exhibition of Lesia Ukrainka’s sketches of Crimean Tatar ornaments until May 31. Restrictions of martial law did not allow to show the originals, the exhibition presents exact photocopies of the poetess’ sketches. The artist mentioned these sketches in a letter to Mykhailo Drahomanov dated September 3, 1891: “I would like to publish one thing, in fact, Tatar patterns that I collected in the Crimea, there are many of them and they are very good, and they are very similar to Ukrainian ones.” The Mission supported the printing of Lesya Ukrainka’s sketches of Crimean Tatar ornaments in the format of presentation materials. The museum invites you to excursions that tell little-known facts about the life of Lesya Ukrainka and her family, including those related to Crimea.

Lviv hosted 2 exhibitions at once: the National Museum named after Andrey Sheptytsky hosted a one-day exhibition of Crimean works by Ivan Trush, a tour and a lecture on his Crimean works.

Also in Lviv, Madame Palmgren Art Gallery presented a group exhibition of works by young and well-known Ukrainian artists whose works were created in Crimea or dedicated to the Ukrainian peninsula. Director of the art gallery Victoria Rybak said: “In 2014, from March 14 to March 31, to support the Crimeans (a pseudo-referendum was to be held on March 16 on the separation of Crimea from Ukraine), the gallery, with the support of the city council, opened an exhibition “Crimea in the Heart of Lviv”, which featured works by ten of the brightest representatives of the Crimean school of painting of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – both internationally recognized masters and young talented authors.”

In Dnipro, two exhibitions of Serhiy Burbel’s series of works dedicated to Crimea and the deportation of Crimean Tatars opened: at the Dnipro Art Museum and the Vadym Sidur School of Contemporary Fine Arts and Design. Also, Serhiy Burbel’s works were presented at the Consulate General of Ukraine and in Hamburg (Germany).

We also remind you that the series of exhibition projects “Crimea. A Different View” series has been joined:

In Kyiv:

• Museum of Kyiv City History (May 15-21) – an exhibition of the painting “Balaklava August Mood” dedicated to the memories of Crimea by artist Leonora Yanko after her family returned from deportation.
• National Museum of Taras Shevchenko (May 15-21) – with an excursion where visitors learned the history of the chair that belonged to the famous orientalist and writer Agatangel Krymsky and the peculiarities of his biography.
• M. Rylsky Kyiv Literary and Memorial Museum (May 15-21) – an exhibition of the Crimean landscape and excursions dedicated to the Crimea in the works of Maksym Rylsky.
• National Museum “Kyiv Art Gallery” (May 15-21) – an exhibition of Rustem Skibin’s poster dedicated to Crimea.
• Auction house “Goldens” (May 8-27) – exhibition “Ukrainian collectible art”, among the works are works dedicated to the original Crimean nature, performed by artists Valentin Feldman, Pavel Gorobets, Isaac Tartakovsky and Peter Stolyarenko.
• Gallery NY ART (May 15-21) – an exhibition of the painting “View of Crimea” by Pavel Myasnikov.

In Chernihiv:

• Chernihiv Regional Art Museum named after Hryhorii Halahan (May 15-21) – an exhibition of Crimean landscape from the museum’s funds and private collection of the artist Yurii Rasin, works by Oleksandr Belozor, Volodymyr Natalushko, and Kostiantyn Shapovalov from a private collection.

In the village of Kmitiv (Zhytomyr region):

• Kmytiv Museum of Fine Arts named after Y.D. Bukhanchuk (May 15-21) – an exhibition from the museum’s funds, including paintings and watercolors of the Soviet period by artists Petro Stoliarenko, Mykhailo Kokin, and Volodymyr Kirkevych.

We would also like to mention and recommend the exhibition “MIRAS. Heritage”, which opened in the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine on October 30, 2022 and is still open to the public.

“MIRAS. Heritage” is one of the largest exhibition projects, which for the first time comprehensively presents one of the most prominent Crimean Tatar collections on the mainland of Ukraine. The exhibition includes more than a hundred items of jewelry, embroidery, and household items from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the presented artifacts, one can see silver women’s belts and topeliks (tops of women’s fez headdresses), which impress with the elegance of work in the Crimean Tatar filigree technique, silver cases for the Quran, men’s amulets, coffee utensils, traditional embroidery with gilded thread, and much more. These artifacts reveal different aspects of the life of the indigenous people and allow us to learn more about how the culture bearers perceived the world, nature, and each other.

The exhibition is curated by Oleksii Savchenko, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow at the National Museum of History of Ukraine, and Esma Adzhieva, Head of the NGO “Alem”. The exhibition is being implemented as part of the project “Senses that Unite” by the NGO “Alem”, which is being implemented with the support of Switzerland. The exhibition features items from the private collections of Esma Adzhieva, Vitalii Provolovskyi, and Elmira Seit-Ametova.

A soldier at the exhibition in the I.P. Kavaleridze Museum-Workshop looks at old maps depicting Crimea

The opening of the exhibition at the Museum-Workshop of I. P. Kavaleridze. In the photo from left to right: guest of the exhibition, museum director Oleksandr Yunin, writer and literary critic Dmytro Stus

A fragment of the exhibition of Lesya Ukrainka’s sketches of Crimean Tatar ornaments

Lecture as part of the exhibition project “Crimea. A Different View” at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum

The guests of the exhibition look at the works by Hugo Schaufler “Ilaka, Karasan, Partenit and Ayu Dag” (2009), Pavlo Miroshnychenko “The Path to the Village of Tylove” (1989) and Lera Litvinova “The Way Home” (2020).

Visitors to Serhiy Burbel’s exhibition in Dnipro

The chair that belonged to the famous orientalist and writer Agatangel Krymsky

Head of the NGO “Alem” Esma Adzhieva, singer Jamala, senior researcher at the National Museum of History of Ukraine Oleksiy Savchenko (photo from the Facebook page of the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine)

A visitor to the exhibition. A master class by the exhibition curator Esma Adzhieva (photo from the Facebook page of the Treasury of the National Museum of History of Ukraine)