Existing comment:
Making the Holodomor Memorial
Context & Questions
From 1932 to 1933, Josef Stalin's communist government engineered and exploited a wheat shortage to starve millions of Ukrainians to death as the regime swept away small farms for a system of collectivist agriculture. The genocide was denied by the Soviet Union and largely overlooked in the West as Ukrainians struggled to make it part of accepted history. Finally, in 2015, the Holodomor Memorial, a tribute to the victims designed by University of Maryland MAPP alumna Larysa Kurylas, was unveiled in downtown Washington.
This exhibit explores how the memorial came to be and how to interpret its significance. The perimeter walls trace its development from design competition to construction -- the interplay between Ukrainian-Americans who pressed for a memorial, architects and engineers who designed it, government staffers who reviewed it, and artisans who built it.
Nooks in the gallery's center provide space to reflect on the tragedy itself and on the broader questions of propaganda, official lies, the role of memorials in contesting historical truth and commemorating loss, and the significance of building memorials in Washington, DC. |