| Adele Eisenstein on Mon, 26 Mar 2001 19:08:03 +0200 (METDST) |
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| Syndicate: Ukraine in Venice - an open letter |
Please insert your name and reply to: mailto: Biennale <[email protected]> An Open Letter To: His Excellency Mykola Zhulynsky Vice-Premier for the Humanities The Honourable Bohdan Stupka Minister, Ministry of Culture and Arts We wish to protest the manner in which the issue of Ukraine's participation at the 49th Venice Biennale, set to open in June, has been dealt with by your government. In September, 2000 the Ministry of Culture and Arts officially accepted the invitation to Ukraine to participate in the Biennale and designated Mr Evhen Kuras as the commissioner, who then appointed Mr Yuri (Jerzy) Onuch, Director of the Center of Contemporary Art in Kyiv as curator. In December, The Masoch Fund were chosen by the curator as the artists for the presentation. We have learned that, on March 20 the Cabinet of Ministers issued a directive, communicated to the Venice Biennale organizers by the Vice Premier, designating another person as commissioner and another curator. Neither Mr Karas, Mr Onuch nor The Masoch Fund have been informed of this maneuver. We support the participation of Ukraine at the Biennale under the leadership of Mr Karas, Mr Onuch and The Masoch Fund, as originally announced. We deplore the attempt of the government bureaucracy to manipulate choice based on artistic merit and to impose control by decree. We are dismayed at the bad image this is creating for independent Ukraine at its first Venice presentation. ___________________________________ Name, Title, Institution, Country Please insert your name and reply to: Biennale <[email protected]> -----Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to post to the Syndicate list: <[email protected]> to unsubscribe, write to <[email protected]>, in the body of the msg: unsubscribe syndicate [email protected]