LONDON.- After nearly four years as Director of The Ukrainian Museum in New York, Peter Doroshenko will step down from his position this month. He plans to obtain Ukrainian citizenship and pursue major cultural projects in Ukraine and internationally. Doroshenko will move to Kyiv to begin work on a focused Kazimir Malevich exhibition, which will premiere a never-before-seen short animation film by the artist.
Since his arrival in New York in 2022, he has organized various exhibitions, including: Impact Damage; Janet Sobel: Wartime; Yelena Yemchuk; Maria Prymachenko: Glory to Ukraine; Alexandra Exter: The Stage is a World; Volia: Ukrainian Modernism; Molly Gochman: UKR/RUS; Peter Hujar: Rialto; Oleksandr Glyadelov: Fragments; Tatlin: Kyiv; Ange Leccia: Ghosts of War; Village to Modern (co-curated with Oksana Semenik); and Boris Mikhailov.
These exhibitions highlighted Ukrainian modernism, contemporary and outsider art, attracting global attention. As Russia continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Doroshenko has aspired to not only represent Ukraine, but to also decolonize Ukrainian culture, continue speaking on the war, and raise awareness on the impact that Ukrainians from the diaspora have had in the arts, and indeed the world. Over the years, Doroshenko has welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady, Olena Zelenska to the Museum and expanded both attendance and financial support for the museum and its exhibition and learning programs. Creating a partnership with Rodovid Press in Kyiv, Doroshenko produced seven bilingual catalogues to accompany exhibitions. Independently, he most recently organised and edited Kazimir Malevichs autobiographical texts into English, He and I Were Once Ukrainians.
It has been an honor to expand scholarship and dialogue on Ukraines cultural history. I look forward to bringing new projects to Ukrainian and global audiences, said Doroshenko.
In early March 2022, with the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Peter Doroshenko reached out to Christies to create a major auction of both international and Ukrainian artists which was held on May 13th 2022 in New York and raised $408,000 for Doctors Without Borders and their medical efforts in Ukraine.
Before his appointment as director of The Ukrainian Museum in New York, Doroshenko was the director at the Dallas Contemporary, Texas, the largest non-collecting contemporary art museum in the United States. He has held director positions at: Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv, Ukraine; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom; SMAK-Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; inova-Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee, United States; and curator posts at both the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, United States; and Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, United States. Doroshenko has organised over two hundred exhibitions over the past thirty-five years. He has lectured and taught at post-graduate programs including Core Program, Houston; Le Pavilion/Palais de Tokyo, Paris; de Ateliers, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. In 2007, 2009, and 2017, he was the commissioner for the Ukrainian Pavilions at the Venice Biennale.