On April 11, 2026, the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, hosted their second Slow Art Day.

While many of us can enjoy art without the threat of bombs, missiles or drones, that is not true in Ukraine.

Official casualty figures for the Russian invasion are closely guarded and difficult to verify, but independent analysts and intelligence agencies estimate that combined military and civilian casualties on both sides of the war have surpassed 1.5 to 2 million people.

That is terrible.

Along with this unbelievable loss of life, there has also been the loss of culture, infrastructure, buildings, art, and many, many homes.

With that in mind, the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine in Kyiv chose to focus on an artist, Kateryna Hryshko, whose work is dedicated to two important Ukrainian folk artists, Maria Prymachenko and Polina Rayko.

Olha Frasyniuk led this year’s event, along with museum specialist Olena Shevchuk. Together, they encouraged participants to look slowly at Hryshko’s panel, “Wings”, which was dedicated to these two artists whose works were either damaged or destroyed.

The composition features iconographic images of the Virgin Mary in the center. On the left, Maria Prymachenko is depicted against a night sky with lightning directed towards a house with a stork, symbolizing the Ivankiv Museum destroyed in February 2022. On the right, Polina Rayko’s figure has feet submerged in water with a drowning bird and cat nearby, a symbolic reminder of the Kakhovka tragedy in June 2023, which flooded the artist’s house-museum. At the bottom, a cross “In Memory of the Fallen Heroes” and a line from Lina Kostenko’s poem “Wings” are included. The painting’s field is adorned with recognizable fragments and images characteristic of both artists’ works, framed by a lush carved wooden frame with three cherubs. Kateryna Hryshko donated this deeply meaningful work to the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine in 2024.

Gryshko honored these two Ukrainian folks artists in her panel “Wings” because of what happened to their art.

When a Russian shell struck the museum that housed Maria Prymachenko’s art, the museum’s guard, who lived next door, ran into the burning building and managed to rescue some of the Prymachenko works it housed. Many pieces in the collection were lost.

In a separate attack, the museum-house of Polina Rayko was destroyed forever by the torrential flooding that followed when the Russians blew up the Kakhovka dam in June 2023. And because Rayko’s art was painted directly on the walls, it is gone forever.

One of the most powerful aspects of any Slow Art Day happens after the slow looking, when the participants get a chance to talk, share and see through each other’s eyes.

In this event, participants listened with interest to the stories shared by Olha Frasyniuk and Olena Shevchuk about the destruction of the museum-house of Polina Rayko and of the rescue of paintings from the museum that housed Maria Prymachenko’s paintings.

And then because everyone in the Ukraine has been affected by this war. They then shared their own experiences of loss and destruction including when their homes or offices were bombed and how they too have lost and/or rescued important personal items.

There’s a real beauty to this Ukrainian Slow Art Day that deserves celebration by all of us around the world.

We at Slow Art Day HQ are grateful to the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine for their thoughtful and poignant Slow Art Day event and for reminding us to hold dear the people and art around us.

We look forward to seeing what they design for Slow Art Day 2027, and, more importantly, we look forward to the end of this terrible war.

— Ashley, Johanna, Jessica Jane, and Phyl

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