How the war changed a Kyiv museum’s view of its past.

KYIV, Ukraine — Many of the galleries are actually empty on the Mystetskyi Arsenal, certainly one of Europe’s largest artwork museums. As at virtually each cultural establishment within the Ukrainian capital, its curators and archivists introduced down the shows when conflict broke out on Feb. 24. A lot of the gathering of about 4,500 objects has been moved to a safe location. Gallery after gallery sits in darkness. And but: this summer time, the Mystetskyi Arsenal is open to the general public, with a forceful and exquisite exhibition that’s all of the extra spectacular for its modesty and frank feelings.

“An Exhibition About Our Emotions,” inaugurated on June 10 at this main modern artwork museum, is the primary vital exhibition right here to take the Russian invasion of Ukraine as its focus — although not in the way in which you would possibly anticipate. It provides a view of life throughout the current conflict via works of Ukrainian artwork from the Sixties to the 2010s; nothing present has been commissioned or added for example what its viewers resides via right this moment.

A portray of sunbathers by the Odesa painter Yurii Kovalenko calls forth, with none prompting, the land mines now beneath that metropolis’s seashores — but it surely dates to 1989. A near-abstraction of shady grey strokes by Halina Neledva seems as a line of troopers, or a queue of refugees; it was painted in 1991.