When Putin invaded, a historian in Kyiv saw that Ukraine’s cultural heritage was in danger. So he set out to save as much of it as he could
In early March 2022, when his country seemed in danger of falling to the Russians, it occurred to Leonid Marushchak, a historian by training, to call the director of a museum in eastern Ukraine to check that a collection of 20th-century studio pottery was safe.
He had loved the modernist works by artist Natalya Maksymchenko since he had encountered them almost a decade earlier. There were vessels covered with bold abstract glazes in purple, scarlet and yellow; exuberant figurines of musicians and dancers with swirling skirts; dishes painted with birds in flight. The collection was the radiant highlight of the local history museum in Sloviansk, the ceramicist’s home town.
