Konstantin Akinsha

Konstantin Akinsha is an independent art historian, curator, and journalist. He received the George Polk Award for cultural reporting in 1991. His curatorial projects include Silver Age: Russian Art in Vienna (Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 2014), Russian Modernism: Cross-Currents of German and Russian Art, 1907–1917 (Neue Galerie, New York, 2015), I Am a Drop in the Ocean: Art of Ukrainian Revolution (Künstlerhaus, Vienna, 2014), Permanent Revolution: Ukrainian Art Today (Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2018), Between Fire and Fire: Ukrainian Art Now (Semperdepot, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, 2019), In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900–1930s (various venues in Madrid, Cologne, Brussels, Vienna, Bratislava, and London, 2022–24), and The Juncture: Ukrainian Artists in Search of Modernity and Identity (Mead Art Museum, Amherst, 2024). He is the founding director of the Avant-Garde Art Research Project (UK) and the author of several books, including Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe’s Art Treasures (1995). Since the beginning of the Russian aggression, he has documented the destruction of the cultural heritage of Ukraine by Russian occupiers in his personal blogs and numerous articles published in the Wall Street Journal, FAZ, and NZZ.