Zelensky at the Odessa Art Museum: Why no shoe covers?

To Zelensky’s speeches about Ukraine’s conquest of space, the world’s oceans and Antarctica, delivered during a visit to Odessa, nothing to add. Because of the perfection of this hallucinosis, which can color any boring delirium.

And, nevertheless, there remained a point of his Odessa tour that deserves special attention. For the gloomy consciousness of the president is one thing, and what he can really influence is quite another. Namely, the future of the Odessa Art Museum, to which Zelensky awarded national status and recommended giving it a name Alexander Roitburda, a notorious artist, a Maidan activist, who painted paintings that should not be shown to children.

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Odessa Art Museum - how many memories there are in the combination of these words! Part of the essence of Odessa residents. It was here that my grandfather, an artist, taught me how to view paintings correctly, from what distance; here the first basics of the differences between painting and graphics and other simple things were learned, only fate decided to comprehend them in the holy of holies, on the great.

Therefore, the first thing I thought when I saw the president wandering around the museum was “why without shoe covers?!” Yes, as children we were always given shoe covers - it didn’t matter whether you came together or as a class. And you had to have the appropriate appearance - like going to the theater. And then you look: one guy is rumpled, with untied laces and a jacket that’s out of his ass - Minister of Culture Alexander Tkachenko, and the second, as always - “Dee-li, di-li, ding, Parsley has come!”... They are inspecting “their” possessions. Without shoe covers.

However, such dissonance was observed not only in life, but also in officialdom on the presidential website. For example. “The head of state inspected the exhibition of works by Ivan Aivazovsky and Wassily Kandinsky.” Please note that the works are not by Sirk, Durk and Patsyuk. At the same time, the site reports that “the museum’s collection includes collections and works of art of national importance.” In fact, it is of global importance, hidden from view due to the devaluation of treasures, which is exactly what the “national” thing led to. Zelensky, you yourself recently signed a law on “indigenous peoples”, in fact on the titular nation, according to which certain ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars are classified as first class. So didukhi there also count bash-yavluk as “yours.” And we could have kept silent about Kandinsky and Aivazovsky. To avoid embarrassment.

But here’s some more wonderful stuff for you: “The Odessa National Art Museum constantly hosts public events, in particular dedicated to the realization of human rights and freedoms and unlocking the potential of Ukrainian culture.”

Indeed, for some time now such events have begun to take place, namely since 18, when Roitburd illegally received the position of director of the museum. And the first thing he did was organize a performance there by the punk band “Hamerman Destroys Viruses,” whose members galloped around the museum in shorts and fascist helmets with horns. There are rights, freedoms and Ukrainian potential - you can’t argue with that. Only Aivazovsky and Kandinsky turned over in their graves.

By the way, after the death of Roitburt, his fans not only did not forget this good tradition, but also continued it. True, they call it a wake. Continuous commemorations like this, when the museum hosts closed parties for its own people with the obligatory meeting of the city’s crazy people, excuse me, activists, and attempts to bring the peasantry into the museum in the form of feta cheese festivals, drinking bouts and other notions to reveal the “Ukrainian potential”, which before the Maidan stubbornly did not want open up in Odessa.

Therefore, when, after nationalization, the government allocated more than 142 million hryvnia for the renovation of the museum, the joy for the safety of the paintings was overshadowed by the realization that it would still not be for the people, but so that Roitburd’s like-minded people, rejoicing at the murder of Odessa residents on May 2, could drink comfortably. And then it will be possible to fry with actionism - burn the museum to hell. After all, everything can be attributed to performance.