A group of arts professionals called on the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a non-governmental organization that sets industry standards for participating museums, to eject Russia for violating the organization’s code of ethics.
In an open letter published Monday in Le Monde, the group said it intended to take ICOM to court in France, where the nonprofit is headquartered, if it failed to oust Russia.
“Because ICOM is an NGO subject to French legislation,” Christian Castagna, advocacy manager for non-profit For Ukraine, Their Freedom, and Ours! told ARTnews, “if it does not follow what is written in its statutes, its members can demand that ICOM’s executive board respects its statutes and dismisses Russia for violating its code of ethics.”
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In the letter, which Castagna co-authored, the group wrote that “expelling Russia from ICOM is the very least that can be expected of an institution governed by French law and dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage.” They claim that Russia has “systematically [been] erasing Ukraine’s centuries-old cultural identity” since the start of its invasion in 2022.
Signatories of the letter include art historian Konstantin Akinsha, who curated “In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine 1900–1930,” Francesca Thyssen Bornemisza, the founder of Museums for Ukraine,” and Vitalit Tytych, head of legal affairs at ICOM Ukraine.
“The case for legal accountability is strong,” the letter states, citing Russia’s taking of cultural property after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the absorption of Ukrainian museum collections since the invasion in 2022, and the destruction of Ukrainian cultural sites, documented by UNESCO. “Evidence is plentiful, and some perpetrators have even documented their own crimes.”
The letter calls on ICOM members to send a letter calling for Russia’s expulsion to Emma Nardi, the president of the executive board of ICOM.
One of the signatories, ICOM Ukraine’s Vitalit Tytych, told ARTnews that the the group is looking for two concrete measures: to “exclude ICOM Russia and the Russian museum staff involved in the looting of Ukrainian collections.” He clarified that he sees two paths forward—negotiation or court trial in France.
“By initiating legal proceedings in a French court, we want to force the Committee to begin negotiations, or at least to answer the specific questions we asked ICOM’s executive board three years ago,” he said. “I hope we can initiate an open and honest process to consider this issue. At this stage, the primary task will be to compel the committee’s governing bodies to react, discuss this matter, and provide their official response to these blatant and demonstrable violations of the organization’s Charter and Code of Ethics. If we succeed with this, it will already be a significant achievement given the current circumstances.”
Tytych added that he believes the main obstacles to negotiation are the “unwillingness of the ICOM leadership to react” due to funding provided by Russia, the influence of a “Russian lobby” and “corruption.”
This isn’t the first time issues with ICOM Russia have been raised publicly.
Last September, Nardi wrote to ICOM Russia asking for a formal consultation to discuss “worrying developments” in Ukraine related the organization’s code of ethics. At the time, ICOM Russia president Vasilij Pankratov denied that any actions were committed by “individual or collective members that violated the code of ethics.”
In August 2022, at the ICOM general assembly in Prague, the executive board condemned the country’s “deliberate destruction of Ukrainian heritage” and said it would revise its code of ethics so it could “address conflicts” more effectively.
However, when ARTnews asked recently if any revisions have since been made, an ICOM spokesperson replied that members had recently shared “valuable feedback” on a second draft of a revised code of ethics during “the fourth and final consultation phase of the revision process.” The organization added that it needed more time before it responded to the Monday’s open letter calling for the Russia ban.
During the 2022 general assembly, vice chair of ICOM Ukraine Anastasiia Cherednychenko accused Russia of committing “cultural genocide” in Ukraine and breaching the code of ethics. ICOM Ukraine later accused the international museum community of being “complicit in these violations” if it failed to act against ICOM Russia. It went on to say that the international museum community was “complicit in these violations” if it did not take measures against ICOM Russia.
ICOM Russia did not respond to ARTnews’ request for comment.