Stolen Heritage: The Empty Halls of the Kherson Fine Art Museum

Photo story by Mykhaylo Palinchak, editor Nadiia Dryzytska
November, 2024

Under the guise of evacuation and calling it the “preservation of cultural assets”, Russian forces looted the Kherson Fine Museum (also known as the Oleksii Shovkunenko Kherson Regional Art Museum) from October 31 to November 4, 2022, during their retreat from the right bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. Out of nearly 14,000 works of art in the museum’s collection prior to the full-scale invasion and the Russian occupation of the city (which lasted from March 2 to November 11, 2022), over 10,000 valuable exhibits were stolen. The looting, masked as an evacuation, was carried by armed individuals in civilian clothing.

Ukrainian photographer Mykhaylo Palinchak photographed the museum storage in March 2023.

Empty picture frames embedded in the walls of the Kherson Fine Art museum.

As of 2022, the museum was one of the largest cultural centers in the city. Its collection included pieces ranging from intricate 17th-century Orthodox icons and extraordinary 18th-century Italian sculptures to works by numerous Ukrainian, Russian, and other European masters, such as August von Bayer, Sir Peter Lely, Ivan Aivazovsky, Vasily Polenov, Oleksy P. Bogolyubov, Vladimir Makovsky, Mykola Pymonenko, and others.

Ihor Rusol, Deputy Director of the Kherson Fine Art Museum, shows the emptied halls of the museum’s storage.

Some of the few paintings the occupiers left in the museum. The museum staff were astonished that Lenin’s portraits were among those not stolen.

One of the stolen artwork — Ivan Aivazovsky, View of the city of Odesa. 1846. Oil on canvas. From the collection of the Kherson Fine Art Museum.

One of the stolen artwork – Painting “Palm Sunday” by Mykola Pymonenko. Oil on canvas. From the collection of the Kherson Fine Art Museum.

One of the stolen artwork – Oleksii Shovkunenko, Girls with a goat. 1940, oil on canvas. From the collection of the Kherson Fine Art Museum.

After the retreating, on November 30, 2022, the museum building — a historical architectural landmark and a symbol of the city — came under shelling by Russian army, which damaged its facade. Since then, the museum building has been repeatedly shelled.

Today, the museum’s storage holds thousands empty frames and display stands. All that remains now of the once flourishing museum is the building itself, and inside it, the last staff members who refused to collaborate with Russia.

Empty picture frames in the storage of the Kherson Fine Art museum.

In March 2024 the workers of Kherson Art Museum have identified 100 works looted from its collection by Russian forces thanks to a “propaganda video” shot in a Crimean Central Museum of Tavrida in Simferopol in September 2023 that aired on Russian television. Whether everything remains there now is unknown.

There are risks of the stolen collection being transported to Russia and the possibility of artworks being pilfered for private collectors during their illegal transfer.

Despite the city being shelled daily, the museum team is currently working on processing archives and digitized versions of paintings to compile all possible data on the thefts.

In total, Russians have taken more than 480,000 artworks from Ukrainian museums, and at least 38 museums have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, according to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy.

In January 2023, The New York Times described the looting of Ukrainian museums as the largest theft since World War II, when the Nazis plundered Europe.

Mykhaylo Palinchak is a Ukrainian street and documentary photographer residing and working in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since 2012 member of Ukrainian Photographic Alternative (UPHA) and member  of Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF) since 2014. Founder of Untitled magazine and co-founder of Ukrainian Street Photography group. Author of the photo book “Anamnesis” (2020) and art book “Maidan Faces” (2020). His works are stored in private collections and permanent collections of photography museums.