Russia-Related Provenances After Russia’s Attack on Ukraine: A Practical and Moral Challenge
The Russian Revolution had a tremendous impact on the dispersal of Russian artworks and other heritage items in museum collections across the globe. Finnish public collections, including the Finnish National Gallery, house a considerable number of such artworks, coming from the Soviet Union from 1917 until 1938. This topic is especially relevant, but often politically sensitive and understudied in countries which share a border and a long history with Russia. After Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in 2022, research related to Russian provenance has become challenging. In addition to the lack of sources and contacts with the Russian research community, any Russia-related research is now exposed to political disinformation campaigns and other phenomena that severely undermine the freedom of research. In this presentation, the problems of provenance research related to Russia in the turbulent 2020s are made visible. 

Kersti Tainio

Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
Kersti Tainio has been working as a curator at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery since 2023. She has a strong expertise in archival research, including provenance research, and is specialized in the historical connections between Finnish and Russian private and public collections. She started working on a PhD (working title: Bought Heritage: Russian Revolution in Finnish Museum Collections, 1917-1938) at the University of Helsinki in 2018. This PhD project is currently on hold due to the Russian aggression against Ukraine.