Lesya Ukrainka was one of Ukrainian literature's foremost writers, best known for her poems and plays. She was also an active political, civil, and feminist activist.
The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of contemporary self-taught artists from the United States and abroad.
Alison Saar is a Los Angeles-based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion." Saar credits her parents, collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar and painter and art conservator Richard Saar, for her early exposure to are and to these metaphysical and spiritual practices. Saar followed in her parents footsteps along with her sisters, Lezley Saar and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh who are also artists. Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City. She has received achievement awards from institutions including the New York City Art Commission as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
The Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) is a non-profit organization located in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Founded in 1974, it's one of the earliest Asian American community organizations in the United States. The Arts Centre presents the ongoing developments between contemporary Asian & Asian American art forms and Western art forms through the presentation of performance, exhibitions, and public education. AAAC's permanent collection, which it has accumulated since 1989, contains hundreds of contemporary Asian American art works and traditional/folk art pieces. The organization also has an Artists Archive which documents, preserves, and promotes the presence of Asian American visual culture in the United States since 1945. This includes the East Coast, especially the greater New York area; the West Coast; and some artists in Canada, Hawaii, and overseas. The artists include Asian Americans producing art, Asian artists who are active in the United States, and other Americans who are significantly influenced by Asia. Pan-Asian in outlook, the Arts Centre's understanding of 'Asia' encompasses traditions and influences with sources ranging from Afghanistan to Hawaii.
Thomas Allen Harris is a critically acclaimed, interdisciplinary artist who explores family, identity, and spirituality in a participatory practice. Since 1990, Harris has remixed archives from multiple origins throughout his work, challenging hierarchy within historical narratives through the use of pioneering documentary and research methodologies that center vernacular image and collaboration. He is currently working on a new television show, Family Pictures USA, which takes a radical look at neighborhoods and cities of the United States through the lens of family photographs, collaborative performances, and personal testimony sourced from their communities..
Mary Virginia Beck was a Detroit Democratic Party politician, female activist and journalist from Pennsylvania, most notable for being Detroit's first female city council woman. She was also the first Ukrainian-American of Lemko descent to serve in that capacity. In 1957 she was also elected as the president of the city council. As a member of the council, Mary served for two decades from 1950 to 1970. In 1958-62 she also served as an acting mayor of Detroit city. During that period the Michigan scandalous politician Louis Miriani was the Mayor of Detroit (1957-1962).
The Ukrainian National Women's League of America (UNWLA) is a charitable and cultural organization that unites women of Ukrainian descent and affiliation. Established in 1945, the organization has launched numerous social welfare, cultural, and education projects, aiming to support the Ukrainian people in Ukraine and diasporas. It works independently as a charitable and cultural organization and has been granted a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
Ukrainian Americans have been present in New York City as early as the 17th century when the city was called New Amsterdam. However, the first Ukrainian mass immigration wave to New York City occurred during 1870–1899, coinciding with other mass European influxes into the city.
Miriam Beerman was an American abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. She was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1923, and died in February 2022, at the age of 98.
Nina Kuo is an Asian American painter, photographer, sculptor, author, video artist and activist who lives and works in New York City. Her work examines the role of women, feminism and identity in Asian-American art. Kuo has worked in partnership with the artist Lorin Roser. Kuo has been described as being a pioneer of AAPI and Chinese American art and culture.
Maren Hassinger is an African-American artist and educator whose career spans four decades. Hassinger uses sculpture, film, dance, performance art, and public art to explore the relationship between the natural world and industrial materials. She incorporates everyday materials in her art, like wire rope, plastic bags, branches, dirt, newspaper, garbage, leaves, and cardboard boxes. Hassinger has stated that her work “focuses on elements, or even problems—social and environmental—that we all share, and in which we all have a stake…. I want it to be a humane and humanistic statement about our future together.”
Carol Sauvion is an American crafts scholar and patron, and the executive Producer and director of the PBS documentary series Craft in America.
Kostіantyn Doroshenko, Kostyantyn is a Ukrainian art critic, publicist, contemporary art curator, media manager, and radio host. Doroshenko is well known as a cultural and social journalist with works published in Ukraine, Australia, Azerbaijan, and Italy. He is the host of the radio station Radio Vesti. He is a columnist to company Public Culture; is a curator of the Research Platform PinchukArtCentre since 2019; and is the author of the books 'The End of the Late Iron Age' and 'Aria of Mary'. He is one of the most influential Ukrainian art curators and art critics of Ukraine according to Art Ukraine magazine and Focus magazine. He is also a member of the World League "Mind without drugs". On 1 April 2017, Doroshenko was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic Užupis among art critics of the world.
Tara Sabharwal is an Indian-born, US-based painter and printmaker. Known for her colorful, subtly layered paintings, Sabharwal has had 42 solo shows in the UK, US, India, among others. She has received several awards, including the Joan Mitchell CALL, The British Council Scholarship, and the Gottlieb Foundation awards. Her work is in the collection of The British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Peabody Essex Museum among others.
Janet Henry is a visual artist based in New York City.
The Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) is a non-profit organization advocating for and providing documentation, presentation, education, and collaborative research to folk and traditional arts across the Philadelphia region in service of social change. Founded in 1987 by folklorist Debora Kodish, PFP offers workshops and assistance to local artists and communities through organizing concerts, events, and exhibitions. Their driving philosophy is that "diversity and equity are central elements of thriving communities." One of a handful of independent folk and traditional arts nonprofits nationwide, the organization is widely regarded as a powerful instrument for socially conscious and anti-racist activism and serves as a model for sustaining living cultural heritage in the fields of applied folklore, ethnomusicology, and anthropology. It seeks to foster growth in communities through access to grant funding and artistic venues, but also material and social infrastructure in defense against gentrification and through cultivating positive inter-communal relationships.
Russia began an invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014. It is the largest military attack in Europe since World War II. During the fighting, many pieces of Ukrainian cultural heritage were either destroyed, damaged, or put at risk due to the widespread destruction across the country. This deliberate destruction and looting of over 500 Ukrainian cultural heritage sites is considered a war crime and has been described by Ukraine's Minister of Culture as cultural genocide.
Liudmyla Yevhenivna Zhogol was a Ukrainian decorative textile artist and one of the founders of the National Tapestry School of Ukraine in the second half of the 20th century. Candidate of Art History (1965), People's Artist of Ukraine (1994), Academician of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (2000).
Christina Saj is a Ukrainian American artist living and working in New Jersey. She is best known for her paintings bridging traditional Byzantine iconography and contemporary art. She has created icons in the modern vernacular, that are neither pastiche, nor nostalgic reference, but rather a meant religious symbol.
Slava Gerulak is a Ukrainian-American ceramic artist known for her sculpture based in New York. In the mid-1950's she was part of the New York Group [Нью-Йоркська Група; Niu-Iorkska hrupa], a group of poets and artists, which developed spontaneously from friendships and discussions around the Students’ke slovo supplement to the Ukrainian American newspaper Svoboda.
