Ihor Poshyvailo

I have spent almost all of my personal and professional life in a cultural environment. My grandparents were renowned folk artists who founded a private museum in their house in the Ukrainian ceramic capital – the village of Opishne. My museum career started at the National Center of Folk Culture, founded by cultural dissident Ivan Honchar in Kyiv, where I was for many years focused on the transition of the post-Soviet cultural heritage sector into important democratic institutions.

My Fulbright scholarship at the Smithsonian Institution empowered me with knowledge and inspired me to take action back home. When the Euromaidan Revolution took place in 2013, I co-founded the Maidan Museum initiative as a platform for conversations discussing the movement. Over the course of two years, that grass-roots initiative developed into the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity (Maidan Museum) in Kyiv, which I led as general director.

When the military conflict unfolded into a large-scale war in February 2022, I focused on coordinating national and international efforts to save Ukrainian heritage from the destructive effects of the war by co-founding the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI).

Besides providing support on the ground to hundreds of cultural institutions and thousands of individuals, we did fieldwork documenting the damage to cultural heritage, collecting objects and oral stories, and providing damage and risk assessment. At the same time we worked on expanding our capacity through close relationships with the Smithsonian Institution, ALIPH Foundation, CER, ICCROM, UNESCO and many other international partners.