How Artists and Museums Are Responding to Russia’s War in Ukraine
New York’s Guggenheim Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts in London are among the institutions distancing themselves from Russian benefactors.
Museum patrons watch a “paper planes” protest organized by Ukrainian artists at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City on March 5, 2022.
Courtesy of Tanya and Zhenya Posternak
Katya Pavlevych and a group of fellow Ukrainian artists living in New York City dropped hundreds of paper planes over the ledges of the gently sloped spiral ramp that wraps around the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The planes whirled their way through the air before landing on the rotunda floor where museum patrons unfolded them, read their contents and erupted into applause.
“This jet is made of paper. But what if it were made of steel… And carried bombs… over the heads of the ones you love,” read the letter on the inside of the paper planes, referencing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.