The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 4 (190), 1023—1033
UDK 72/76.071.1(=161.2)(100)”19″(092)
- Received: 12.08.2026
- Accepted: 19.08.2026
- Published: ??.??.2026
THE FATES OF UKRAINIAN DIASPORA ARTISTS: EPISODES FROM PERSONAL CONTACTS IN THE 1990-s
YATSIV Roman
- ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1509-5367
- PhD, professor at the Artwood department
- of the Lviv National Academy of Arts,
- 38, V. Kubiyovycha str., 79011, Lviv, Ukraine,
- Contacts: e-mail: jaciv@ukr.net
Abstract. The article examines the history of the author’s creative and scholarly relationships with personalities from the Ukrainian diaspora — relationships that, spanning the period from the 1990s to 2025, evolved into numerous research projects and found expression in various formats, including monographs, art albums, scholarly articles, essays, and text anthologies. These personalities include prominent artists, writers, scholars, and socio-cultural activists — bearers of the cultural memory of the Ukrainian community abroad — with whom the author interacted personally or maintained contacts through correspondence. In certain instances, active and trusting relationships were marked by heartfelt events in the personal and family lives of prominent diaspora figures from the creative and intellectual spheres. The publication draws upon epistolary materials introduced into scholarly discourse for the first time.
The object of the study comprises the documented facts regarding the establishment and stages of the author’s professional contacts with various representatives of the scholarly and creative elite within the Ukrainian diaspora across the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and Poland; the subject of the study is the history, chronology, and content of this ongoing communication, which influenced the realization of significant exhibition and publishing projects, as well as the search for ways to popularize — within Ukrainian society — personalities who were previously less known.
The methodological basis of the study comprises creative-biographical, scholarly-reconstructive, and source-study methods, as well as a historical-cultural approach to evaluating the creative and scholarly contributions of intellectuals from the Ukrainian diaspora.
Keywords: visual art of the Ukrainian diaspora, artistic modernism, postmodernism, ethno-national identity, cultural memory, ethnopsychology, scholarly periodicals, specialized art publications, Ukrainian artistic and academic communities in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and Poland.
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