Aug 1 — The Brooklyn Museum changed the label of Ilya Repin’s artwork. Previously called “Winter Scene, Russia,” the work is now labeled “Winter Scene, Ukraine,” said Oksana Semenik, art historian, to Radio Nakypilo from Kharkiv. 

The change happened after multiple inquiries by Ukrainian experts — Repin’s work depicts the city of Chuhuiiv in Kharkiv Oblast. 

Semenik said to Nakypilo that the communication with the Brooklyn Museum lasted for about a year. 

“It’s an absurd story with this museum. Repin himself wrote that the landscape was painted in Chuhuiv. And they had, for some reason, labelled it as Winter Landscape in Russia,” she said. 

Chuhuiv is a city southeast of Kharkiv that had a population of 31,000 before Russia’s full-scale invasion. It has a museum dedicated to Repin’s life and art — the artist was born here in 1844.

Semenik also said that Repin used to be labelled as a Russian artist, but now the museum does not mention nationality at all, leaving only the artist’s date and place of birth. 

Activists and historians from Ukraine often negotiate with museums to label famous painters as Ukrainian, not Russian, since they were born in Ukraine while it was a colony of the Russian empire. Among them, apart from Illya Repin, are Ivan Aivazovsky and Arkhip Kuindzhi. 

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