A gaggle of arts professionals has referred to as on the Worldwide Council of Museums (ICOM), a non-governmental group that units business requirements for taking part museums, to eject Russia for violating the group’s code of ethics.
In an open letter revealed Monday in Le Monde, the group stated it supposed to take ICOM to court docket in France, the place the NGO is headquartered, if it did not oust Russia.
“As a result of ICOM is an NGO topic to French laws,” Christian Castagna, advocacy supervisor for non-profit For Ukraine, Their Freedom, and Ours! instructed ARTnews, “if it doesn’t comply with what’s written in its statutes, its members can demand that ICOM’s government board respects its statutes and dismisses Russia for violating its code of ethics.”
Within the letter, which Castagna co-authored, the group wrote that “expelling Russia from ICOM is the very least that may be anticipated of an establishment ruled by French legislation and devoted to the safety of cultural heritage.” They declare that Russia has “systematically [been] erasing Ukraine’s centuries-old cultural identification” because the begin of its invasion in 2022.
Signatories of the letter embrace artwork historian Konstantin Akinsha, who curated “Within the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900–1930,” Francesca Thyssen Bornemisza, the founding father of Museums for Ukraine,” and Vitalit Tytych, head of authorized affairs at ICOM Ukraine.
“The case for authorized accountability is powerful,” the letter states, citing Russia’s taking of cultural property after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the absorption of Ukrainian museum collections because the invasion in 2022, and the destruction of Ukrainian cultural websites, documented by UNESCO. “Proof is plentiful, and a few perpetrators have even documented their very own crimes.”
The letter calls on ICOM members to ship a letter to Emma Nardi, the president of ICOM’s government board, demanding that Russia be expelled.
One of many signatories, ICOM Ukraine’s Vitalit Tytych, instructed ARTnews that the the group is in search of two concrete measures: to “exclude ICOM Russia and the Russian museum employees concerned within the looting of Ukrainian collections.” He clarified that he sees two paths ahead—negotiation or court docket trial in France.
“By initiating authorized proceedings in a French court docket, we need to pressure the Committee to start negotiations, or not less than to reply the particular questions we requested ICOM’s government board three years in the past,” he stated. “I hope we will provoke an open and sincere course of to contemplate this concern. At this stage, the first process might be to compel the committee’s governing our bodies to react, talk about this matter, and supply their official response to those blatant and demonstrable violations of the group’s Constitution and Code of Ethics. If we succeed with this, it’ll already be a big achievement given the present circumstances.”
Tytych added that he believes the principle obstacles to negotiation are the “unwillingness of the ICOM management to react” as a consequence of funding offered by Russia, the affect of a “Russian foyer” and “corruption.”
This isn’t the primary time points with ICOM Russia have been raised publicly.
Final September, Nardi wrote to ICOM Russia asking for a proper session to debate “worrying developments” in Ukraine associated the group’s code of ethics. On the time, ICOM Russia president Vasilij Pankratov denied that any actions had been dedicated by “particular person or collective members that violated the code of ethics.”
In August 2022, on the ICOM common meeting in Prague, the manager board condemned the nation’s “deliberate destruction of Ukrainian heritage” and stated it will revise its code of ethics so it may “handle conflicts” extra successfully.
Nonetheless, when ARTnews requested lately if any revisions have since been made, an ICOM spokesperson replied that members had lately shared “priceless suggestions” on a second draft of a revised code of ethics throughout “the fourth and closing session part of the revision course of.” The group added that it wanted extra time earlier than it responded to Monday’s open letter calling for the Russia ban.
Through the 2022 common meeting, vice chair of ICOM Ukraine Anastasiia Cherednychenko accused Russia of committing “cultural genocide” in Ukraine and breaching the code of ethics. ICOM Ukraine later accused the worldwide museum neighborhood of being “complicit in these violations” if it did not act towards ICOM Russia. It went on to say that the worldwide museum neighborhood was “complicit in these violations” if it didn’t take measures towards ICOM Russia.
ICOM Russia didn’t reply to ARTnews’ request for remark.
