Ukraine is infuriated by an exhibition of works by the Crimean-born 19th-century Armenian artist Ivan Aivazovsky that is drawing record crowds to Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery. The country’s ministry of culture is calling for international institutions to boycott the world-famous museum, saying it is displaying art stolen from occupied territory. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
The Aivazovsky exhibition, which opened at the Tretyakov on 29 July (until 20 November), has been attracting up to 5,000 visitors per day. It features 38 works from the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery in Feodosia, an ancient city on the Black Sea coast of Crimea where the artist was born in 1817 and died in 1900.
The dispute over the artist's works has further darkened relations between Russia and Ukraine, paralleling a sharp rise in tensions over Russia’s military buildup on the peninsula. In a statement issued in July shortly before the exhibition opened, Ukraine’s ministry of culture said:
“Due to the gross violation by the Russian Federation of all norms of international law, including those stemming from its occupation of part of the territory of Ukraine, our state is deprived of any kind of oversight over the preservation of cultural property on the temporarily occupied territories, especially those that are an integral part of the museum fund of Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian ministry called on foreign states to “halt cooperation with Russian institutions” that handle cultural property “unlawfully taken” from the territory of Crimea and “likewise to halt foreign exhibitions in such Russian museums and Russian museum exhibitions abroad.”
According to a report on ru.krymr.com, the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Tatyana Karpova, the deputy director of the Tretyakov Gallery said: “We have not stolen anything from Feodosia nor from Ukraine. We have simply brought it. It is a common enough practice for us to borrow paintings from museums. We greatly regret that our relations are now such that we are unable to borrow works from Ukrainian museums.”
This is the latest in a line of cultural property disputes in Crimea since the 2014 annexation. A museum in Amsterdam became embroiled in the conflict over a display of Scythian gold that was on loan to the museum from Crimea at the time of the annexation. The Crimean institutions want the gold back, but Ukraine says it is the rightful owner. Hearings in that dispute have been scheduled for October by an Amsterdam court.
UPDATE: This article was amended to reflect that Ivan Aivazovsky was of Armenian descent