American businessman has assembled the world's largest collection of paintings about the Holodomor in Ukraine
US businessman Morgan Williams has put together the world's largest collection of paintings on the Holodomor. Over a quarter century, he has acquired more than 400 works of Ukrainian artists. Writes about it "Voice of America".
American businessman Morgan Williams arrived in Ukraine in the early nineties. In this country, he was engaged in agricultural business. In his free time he also studied Ukrainian history.
“Most of my life has been around agriculture. And it so happened that I became interested in the topic of hunger in different countries and its causes. And I came to the paradoxical conclusion that only 20% of famines were caused by some kind of natural disaster. And the rest are man-made, organized either by governments or corrupt politicians,” says the businessman. “When I learned about the mass extermination of people in Ukraine in 1932-1933, I began to research how it happened, how Stalin starved millions of people to death in order to eliminate family farms.”
“It was just incredible. Of course, they tried to hide all this. And they hid it for seventy years. So, I began to study this issue, looking for photographs. But there were no photographs, there were no paintings, there was nothing,” Williams adds.
On the subject: Mr. Jones: the story of a journalist who told the world about the Holodomor and interviewed Stalin
In Kyiv, Morgan met another American, the famous Holodomor researcher James Mace. He says that after talking with a historian, he decided to collect works of art about this tragedy.
“I became very good friends with James Mays. He studied this topic and did research on the Holodomor for the US Congress. Once I saw photographs in a book published by Harvard that were signed “Holodomor in Ukraine 1933.” I tell James - the photo is not Ukraine in 1922. This is Russia 1989. He answers - but we didn’t have any photographs about the Ukrainian famine, we had to illustrate the book with what we had. Although this is not correct, Morgan recalls. — I ask: where can I get some illustrations of the Ukrainian Holodomor? He replies: Morgan, you don't understand. There are none at all. They could have been shot for this. In Soviet times, it was dangerous to even talk about this, let alone any pictures. So it was very difficult to search. And I almost never managed to find anything written earlier than XNUMX.”
He visited hundreds of workshops and exhibitions and met artists. He remembers that in the early nineties it was almost impossible to find paintings dedicated to the Holodomor. The Soviet government imposed a complete taboo on everything related to the tragedy.
At one of the exhibitions, Morgan met the artist Vera Kuleba. She had several works on famine in a village in the Poltava region.
“The system trained artist-ideologists of communism for us so that we would glorify the party. But I couldn’t, I painted my peasant women, my women. Back in the Soviet years, I painted pictures about famine. Only they were stored somewhere in some funds,” Kuleba recalls.
On the subject: From Holodomor to the Holocaust: the story of an American family with Ukrainian roots
Her paintings depict the history of her own family. “In my paintings it is specifically my grandfather and woman. Baba Marfa and grandfather Nikolai. They both died, even though they had a beautiful garden and everything else on the farm. But everything was taken from them, nothing was left. Of course, I don’t remember my grandmother, because she died on hunger strike. Only my mother told me about her,” the artist continues her story.
“There is no commercial interest in collecting paintings about the Holodomor,” explains the collector. “These are not works that you can make money from selling.” On the contrary, at some exhibitions Morgan was threatened by communists who did not like the way Lenin and Stalin were depicted. But the collector continues to exhibit paintings both in Ukraine and at foreign venues. He wants as much information as possible to be known about this tragedy.
“It’s simply amazing how little is still known about the Holodomor in Ukraine. And even less is known about this in the world. Russia carefully hides information about this tragedy,” the American shares his thoughts.
Now in the collection of Morgan more than 400 works. He regularly arranges expositions of collected paintings and posters in various exhibition halls both in Ukraine and abroad. He hopes to once show his world's largest collection in the Holodomor Museum. When it is finally built.
Read also on ForumDaily:
Mr. Jones: the story of a journalist who told the world about the Holodomor and interviewed Stalin
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