Art at the Institute

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern: Confronting Catastrophes
September 18 – November 16, 2025
Opening reception for the artist and book signing: Thursday, September 18, 2025, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
2 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075

The Ukrainian Institute of America is pleased to present Confronting Catastrophes, an exhibition of paintings by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern. Acting as a miniature survey, this exhibition features past and new works reflecting on personal and communal feedback to the resistance, stamina, and suffering of the Ukrainian people. The artist uses parallels between the fate of the Ukrainians at war and of Jews during the Holocaust and the catastrophe that befell Jews on October 7. Such topical parallelism have become part of a widely accepted and cultural war-time discourse in Ukraine and beyond. This marks Petrovsky-Shtern’s third solo exhibition with the UIA.

Confronting Catastrophes displays a compelling evolution of Petrovsky-Shtern’s art, shaped by the tragedies of the 20th and 21st centuries. His narrative paintings combine memory, myth, and allegory, drawing on traditions from Renaissance masters, the avant-garde, and Ukrainian folk art. Balancing abstraction and figuration, his works confront war, devastation, and resilience while placing humanity at their center. Deeply rooted in Jewish cultural memory yet universal in scope, Petrovsky-Shtern’s art reflects both personal history and collective trauma. His layered identity as artist, scholar, and humanitarian underscores the transformative power of art amid catastrophe.

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish material culture; history and culture of Ukraine; origins of Zionism; and Slavic-Jewish literary interaction.

He has published more than a hundred articles and eight books and edited volumes, three of them award-winning, including The Jews in the Russian Army: Drafted into Modernity (2008, 2nd ed. 2014); The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew (2009); Lenin’s Jewish Question (2010); Jews and Ukrainians: Polin, vol. 26 (2011, co-edited with Antony Polonsky); Cultural Interference of Jews and Ukrainians: a Field in the Making (2014); The Golden-Age Shtetl: a New History of Jewish Life in East Europe (2014, 2nd ed. 2015); Jews and Ukrainians:A Millennium of Coexistence (2016, co-authored with Paul Robert Magocsi; 2nd ed. 2018). His essays, books and book chapters have appeared in Greek, Spanish, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, French, Hebrew, and German.

As an artist, Petrovsky-Shtern combines the traditions of European avant-garde, Polish political poster, and Ukrainian folk art. He enjoyed a dozen international and national shows, exhibiting his artwork in Kyiv, Lviv, Greenwich (CT), Chicago, and New York, including solo shows at Spertus Gallery, National Ukrainian Museum, and Ukrainian Institute of America. His work was featured at Crosscurrents, Antikvar, Ukrainian Weekly, The New York Jewish Week, and Arts Illustrated.

An illustrated catalog published by ibidem-Verlag (Hannover, Germany) in conjunction with the exhibition and will be available at the UIA. Confronting Catastrophes is edited by Anastasia Simferovska with contributions from Alex Averbuch, Rory Finnin, Amelia Glaser, Olena Grozovska, Anna Gruver, Borys Gudziak, Yuriy Gurzhy, Tamara Hundorova, Rodger Kamenetz, Mykola Kniazhytsky, Serhii Kvit, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Vasyl Makhno, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Joel Mokyr, Myroslava Mudrak, Mykhailo Nazarenko, Oxana Pachlovska, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Katja Petrowskaya, Ilia Rodov, Edward Serotta, Anastasiia Simferovska, Benjamin Sloan, Edjan Westerman, and Marcin Wodzinski. Introduction by Andrew Horodysky.

The Ukrainian Institute of America and Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern are immensely grateful to the Temerty Foundation and Ronald Winston for their support of this cultural undertaking. We have been most fortunate in their generous help and in the good will with which it has been given to realize the Confronting Catastrophes exhibition project and its public display.

Image: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Via Crucis (2024), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 26 in. Copyright the artist. All rights reserved.

Exhibition hours: Thursday to Sunday, 12:00–6:00 p.m., or by appointment. Please consult the UIA website for opening hours in effect, as there are occasional closures.

For further information: Please contact Lydia Zaininger, Executive Director at (212) 288-8660 or director@ukrainianinstitute.org.