Methodology Seminars for Art History in Ukraine
National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv
The Methodology Seminars for Art History in Ukraine is a two-year scholarly initiative committed to rethinking methodological approaches and future directions of art history within Ukraine. The project is realized with the support of the Getty Foundation, as a part of the Connecting Art Histories program, by the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome and the Max Weber Foundation’s Research Centre Ukraine.
It arises from a recognition of the structural and institutional discontinuities, which continue to shape the academic field in Ukraine today. At the same time, the ongoing Russian military aggression and broader processes of political transformation have intensified the need to preserve cultural heritage, reevaluate dominant narratives, and develop new interpretative tools that are responsive to the complexities of Ukraine’s historical and contemporary experiences. While more traditional methodological frameworks — such as connoisseurship, formalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and semiotics — remain well-integrated within Ukrainian art historical research, the seminars delve into more recent approaches, which are less established in Ukraine. Rather than imposing a single theoretical model, the seminars encourage pluralism, experimentation, and transhistorical inquiry. It draws on a wide range of methodological perspectives, including horizontal models of art historiography, material histories, and posthumanism, while also integrating more interdisciplinary theoretical tools of visual culture, anthropology, and decolonial studies.
The seminars are designed as a platform for early-career researchers from Ukraine to take part in critical, collaborative, and practice-oriented reflection on art historical methodology. It aims to cultivate a deeper awareness of how knowledge is produced, transmitted, and framed — and to explore how disciplinary practices might be reconfigured in light of both local contexts and global shifts in the humanities. Participants are invited to situate their research within a broader intellectual landscape, share their work in progress, and build lasting connections with peers and mentors.
Two iterations of the seminars are planned to be held in hybrid formats, with blocks of deep-reading webinars, and the residency part, during which the participants will present their research. Senior Experts from the international institutions will both engage with the participants in peer-to-peer discussions and join the onsite program.
The first seminar took place from August 13th to October 31st. The onsite part was held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome.
By centering Ukrainian voices and fostering international collaboration, the seminars seek to contribute to the development of a more self-reflexive, inclusive, and interconnected art historical field. It is also a response to the urgent need for sustainable academic support — not only for individual researchers, but for structural renewal of art history as a critical discipline due to Ukraine’s shifting cultural and geopolitical environment.
Webinar topics can be found here.
Public lectures are published here.
Participants of the 1st Epistemologies, Agencies, and Margins seminar
Anna Aliyeva (National Art Museum of Ukraine): The Art of Odesa in the 20th century: problems of continuity in the ‘school’.
Svitlana Antiushyna (University of Fribourg): The Icon of Saint George of the Town of Mariupol, the Sea Routes between Byzantium and Gazaria Genoese from the XIIthe to XVth century
Nataliia Biriuk (Modern Art Research Institute, National Academy of Arts of Ukraine): “Not Waiting For Favours from Nature”: Soviet Ecological Violence and Socialist Realism in Representation of 'Donbas' in Ukrainian art of the 1930s-1950s
Oksana Briukovetska (independent curator and writer): Pain, Shame and Political. Breakthroughs and flashbacks in the art of independent Ukraine
Evelina Kachynska (Polish Academy of Sciences Doctoral School “Anthropos”): Provincial Byzantine Architectural Influence on Eastern Europe: Mastaura Case Study
Oksana Karpovets (University of Sorbonne): Sovereign Grammars: Body, Voice, and Memory in Ukrainian Feminist Video Art
Milena Khomchenko (PinchukArtCentre): The Aesthetics of Contemporary Ukrainian Art and Decoloniality: Ties with Traditional Media and Crafts from the 1910s to Today
Yuliia Kizyma (Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum in Kyiv): Art collecting in 1940s and 1950s East-Central Europe: the case of Julian Kupczyski’s gift to Ukrainian museums
Taras Samchuk (PhD, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv): Exporting Culture: Ukrainian Artists on Latin America’s Stages during the Cold War (1960s–1980s):
Yulia Pivtorak (Ukrainian Catholic University): Language under Pressure: Art Criticism, Fear, and Self-Censorship in Soviet Ukrainian Periodicals of the 1930s
Kateryna Volochniuk (University of St Andrews): Dissonant Heritage and the Visual Archive: Reframing Soviet Legacies through Autoethnography, Memory, and Images
Anna Yanenko (PhD, National Preserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra”): Visual History of Ukrainian Museums: Case of Kyiv in the 1920s and 1930s
Senior Experts
PD Dr Mateusz Kapustka, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich
Dr Olenka Pevny, Associate Professor in Ukrainian Studies and in Medieval and Early Modern Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge
Edit András Ph.D., Dr.h.c., independent scholar, senior member of the HUN-REN, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Art History, Budapest
Prof Dr. David Crowley, National College of Art and Design, Dublin
Dr phil. Seraina Renz, RE:CENT Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Masaryk University, Brno
Advisory Board
Dr Bohdan Shumylovych, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Ukrainian Catholic University
Dr Stefaniia Demchuk, Associate Professor, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Oksana Barshynova, Deputy Director of the National Art Museum of Ukraine