The Met Is the Latest Museum to Reclassify Russian Art as Ukrainian | Smart News

Around 1899 Edgar Degas was working on a series of paintings depicting folk dancers from the Russian Empire. While the French Impressionist is best known for painting the graceful, disciplined ballerinas of Paris, this foray into folk dance allowed him to explore dynamic movement and vibrant color.

Up until last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City named its piece from this series Russian dancers. However, the dancers probably came from Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire.

Now, under pressure from the art world, the Met has officially retitled the piece Dancers in Ukrainian costume. The museum follows the example of London’s National Gallery, which changed the name of another painting in the series Russian dancers To Ukrainian dancers last year.

The Met has also identified several painters as Ukrainians rather than Russians. These artists are now listed by their Ukrainian names, with their Russian names in parentheses.

The renaming at the Met marks another victory for proponents in the Ukrainian arts community who have been pushing for the changes.

“Putin has one of the largest armies in the world, but he also has other weapons. Culture and history occupy a prominent place in its arsenal,” wrote Olesya Khromeychuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute in London, in the German publication The mirror last year. She adds: “Any visit to a gallery or museum in London with exhibitions of USSR art or cinema reveals a willful or simply lazy misinterpretation of the region as an endless Russia; as the current President of the Russian Federation would like to see.”

Oksana Semenik, an art historian in Kiev, runs a Twitter account called “Ukrainian art history‘ uttered in their calls for major museums to change their names.

“It’s like stealing the inheritance,” Semenik tells Robin Pogrebin New York Times. “How can you find your identity? How can you find your culture?”

We met with @TimListerCNN in Kiev to discuss decolonization, Ukrainian art history and my experiences in occupied Bucha. I am grateful to Tim because this topic is really important. https://t.co/C1fOmzlYBV

— Ukrainian Art History (@ukr_arthistory) March 14, 2023

Semenik will also push for changes in other museums. In a January letter to the Brooklyn Museum, she wrote: “Ukraine is not the former Russian Empire. It was colonized by Russia centuries ago.”

However, the reclassification is far from easy. Take the 19th-century sea painter Ivan Aivazovsky, who was born in Crimea to an Armenian family. When the Met reclassified him as a Ukrainian artist, some in the Armenian community protested, and the Met quickly turned around. According to the Guardian‘s Edward Helmore, the Met has now clarified that Aivazovsky was “born into an Armenian family in the Crimean Black Sea port city of Feodosia”.

One such critic is Vartan Matiossian, a scholar of Armenian history and culture. He believes that admitting ignorance in the original classifications can easily lead to a “new kind of ignorance” that still misunderstands the truth, he writes in hyperallergic.

“Russian imperialism over Ukraine and its culture, and the ex-Soviet peoples in general, do not deserve praise for quite good reasons,” he adds, “but misplaced decolonization efforts should not be praised either.”

However, the Met has stood by its decision, which it had been considering since last summer, working with its own scientists and outside advisers. In a statement to the Justthe museum says that “the changes are consistent with the Met’s efforts to continually research and study objects in its collection.”

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