you've heard of death of the author, now get ready for death of the audience: where instead of basing your reaction on a thousand uninformed opinions online, you actually read the text and engage with it
Russia’s recent assault killed two people, injured 90 more and significantly damaged many of the capital’s museums
For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete transformation of Kyiv’s National Chornobyl Museum.
The new sleek displays were designed to tell a fresh story about the reactor explosion of 26 April 1986 – the most serious nuclear accident in history, a factor that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an event that continues to shape Ukraine’s identity today.
The museum was to be devoted not just to the extraordinary work of the “liquidators” who did the initial cleanup after the explosion. It was also the story “of all the people whose lives changed after the disaster”, said Martynovska, the museum’s director.
It reopened to visitors on 26 April, 40 years to the day since the nuclear disaster.
Then, less than a month later, on the night of 23 May, a shock wave from a Russian missile engulfed the museum’s handsome historic building, a former fire station.
Five days later, a still profoundly shocked Martynovska was standing among the museum’s charred remains. Firefighters toiled amid the absolute destruction of everything she and her team had worked so hard to create.
“There is practically no room in the museum that has not suffered damage,” she said. “The building itself sustained significant damage, the roof was destroyed, the floor between the second and third storeys was destroyed, and collapsed; the exhibition rooms and the museum laboratory were affected.”
About 40% of the irreplaceable artefacts on display, according to early assessments, were destroyed.
Martynovska first heard that her building was on fire around 5am on 24 May. Through the night, Russia sent 60 missiles and 600 drones to Ukraine, most of which were targeted at the capital. The attack killed two people and injured 90 more and significantly damaged many of Kyiv’s museums and culturally significant buildings.
As soon as the emergency workers allowed, she and the chief curator plunged into the building to try to save what they could. “We began evacuating the artefacts while the roof was still ablaze and the firefighting operation was still under way,” she said. “We could hear the roof collapsing. We were constantly wading through water.”
The museum stores – housing the bulk of the collection of 22,000 artefacts – were safe, she said. And she had some hope that the 40% loss of artefacts on display may be revised down a little. She was clutching a pretty earthenware jug that the emergency workers had found in the blackened wreckage. They had also found, she said, the tail of a missile.
Across town, wind and rain were blowing into the elegant Doric-pedimented building housing the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Namu). Shock waves had blown out nearly all its windows, ceilings were partly down and panels from its huge wooden front doors had been flung across the foyer. The sculpture of Apollo that sits atop its pediment had cracked.
Its collection – ranging from ancient icons to old masters and Ukrainian modernists – is in storage or out on tour abroad. During the full-scale invasion, it has been hosting temporary exhibitions: the current show, titled Sunrise, of works by the 20th-century painter Anatoly Limarev, was protected from the onslaught of glass and debris by the temporary walls erected in the exhibition space, which acted as baffle walls. Since the attack, the exhibition has been hastily uninstalled and taken to safety.
In one of its elegant galleries, the head of exhibitions, a senior conservator and two students from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, attached to the institution for part of their art history degree, were shovelling rubble into carts.
“It’s definitely an internship they won’t forget,” said the museum spokesperson Veronika Bublei.
“My initial feeling was one of shock,” said Namu’s director, Yulia Lytvynets, who, like the rest of her team, was dressed in workwear as the staff continued with the back-breaking cleanup operation on Thursday. “We understand that there is a war going on. Our halls are empty and our art is safe. But you’ll never be 100% ready for something like this. Even if you hide your collection, you can’t hide the building.”
The museum had been preparing its next exhibition devoted to the modernist theatre designer Anatol Petrytskyi. That will now go ahead online, she said. The building is now closed to the public indefinitely.
Numerous cultural buildings and institutions were reported damaged in the city after the night’s attacks, including the Zhytnyi market, a masterpiece of 1980s modernism.
It was the latest attack to damage cultural buildings and cultural heritage in the country. According to Ukraine’s culture ministry, the Russian army has “destroyed or damaged 1,723 cultural heritage sites and 2,524 cultural infrastructure sites in Ukraine” since 2022.
Fire had raged through a mall and market in the Lukianivka district of the city. At the Mala Opera, a performance venue across the street from the burned-out shopping mall, the venue’s chief technician, Oleksandr Buryma, was fitting plastic sheeting over blown-out windows as a temporary fix. The roof, he said, was damaged and a section of wall blown out at the rear.
I'm a pacifist like institutionally but I'm absolutely certain that violence solves at least some problems on a much smaller level. I don't believe in wars or nuclear weapons or military campaigns I do believe in the power of that guy who punched the nazi in the face so hard his entire media presence immediately crumbled to dust
my apologies to the lovely lady who had only just begun constructing her beautiful spiderweb in the immediate path of the side door this morning when i, in my self-centered desire to vacate my home of assorted household refuse, came oafishly barging through the sum of her efforts. i shall meditate upon my actions and how they harmed not just her, but all women of the world, and endeavour to do better
‘bread is bad for you’ ‘rice is bad for you’ sorry im not subscribing to the idea that staple grains that have been integral to cultures for centuries are evil. i love you carbs
sabrina henrique by mateus augusto rubim for cabe — art direction by ayla de oliveira, creative direction by isis gruber, production by giovana lidizia, styling by tauane luzes & beauty by laís larcher
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