'We're here to take it back': Campaign urges museums to correct mislabelling of Ukrainian artists

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much effort has been made to preserve Ukrainian culture and educate the world about it.

“The Stolen Art Campaign” is the latest work of NGO Shadows Project, which seeks to promote Ukrainian culture, launching what it calls “the first coordinated, public-facing push to get museums that mislabel Ukrainian artists to correct their attribution.” 

Although the work of the Ukrainian government, NGOs, and several museums has brought attention to Ukrainian artists and their works since Russia’s 2022 invasion, many Western museums are still behind when it comes to their attributions. 

Many of them, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Tate Modern in London, still list Ukrainian artists, especially those who lived during the time of the Russian Empire, as “Russian”.

Such artists include avant-garde pioneer Kazymyr Malevych, an ethnic Pole born in Kyiv, folk-influenced Aleksandra Ekster, and Soviet-era painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin.

While these artists were all multilingual, reflecting the diversity of the cities where they lived and the art scene of their times, they are often mislabeled as “Russian”, which doesn’t account for how they defined themselves or the modern borders of where they were born. 

For Shadows Project activists, this is an act of deliberate erasure. 

“These misattributions are the result of centuries of Russian imperialism and cultural domination that continues to persist to this day,” Shadows Project wrote in a press release on the matter. 

They argue that at a time such as this, museum plaques are a stage for the fight for self-determination, as Russia attempts to erase Ukrainian culture and misattribute its works. 

“With Ukraine’s sovereignty under attack, the country’s representation in global institutions has real consequences, shaping international perception, political support, and aid,” they added.

According to them, many plaques rely on outdated information or use inaccurate sources such as Wikipedia in order to determine their contents, while remaining “unaware of Russia’s coordinated information warfare, including in the cultural sphere.” 

Since it began in July, the campaign has reached over 500,000 people, and several museums, including the Louvre, Tate, and MoMA, have committed to reviewing their own attributions following outreach from the Shadows Project. 

The Cleveland Museum has removed the label “Russian” from one of Aleksandra Ekster’s works and added context on her Ukrainian heritage, while the Brooklyn Museum has changed the description of painter Ilya Repin from “Russian” to “Ukrainian”. 

For Shadows Project co-founder Agatha Gorski, the erasure of Ukrainian culture by Russia makes these projects especially valuable in the current context. 

“Right at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia bombed a museum containing art of one of Ukraine’s most famous painters, today over 2,000 Ukrainian cultural institutions have been bombed or damaged. Putin wants to rewrite Ukraine’s history - and our Western museums are complicit,” she said in a press release.

“Defending our culture means defending our identity - and that’s essential to defending our state,” she added. 

The campaign includes outreach to museums, a public database where anyone can contribute to a community archive to collect data on mislabeled Ukrainian artists, an in-progress research report on Russia’s disinformation tactics online in the cultural space, and a collaboration with Ukrainian streetwear brand RDNY.

Part of the proceeds from the collection, designed around the mislabeled artists, will go to save museums in Sumy from Russian attacks.

It also includes a digital campaign, including an Instagram filter, to spread awareness and call out mislabeled attributions for artworks worldwide.