New Exhibit: Ukrainian Children's Art From the 1930s

In the 1920s and 1930s George S. Counts, Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, traveled to the Soviet Union to collect primary sources for his research on Soviet education; his publications included: The New Education in the Soviet Republic (1929); A Ford Crosses Soviet Russia (1930); New Russia’s Primer (1931); The Soviet Challenge to America (1931); Dare the School Build a New Social Order? (1932); and The Social Foundations of Education (1934). The materials added to the Library’s collections by Counts and his colleagues in the International Institute of Education included representative drawings and paintings by Ukrainian children; in 1935 they arranged an exhibition at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History that was accompanied by a set of photographs depicting school activities in Ukraine. The text prepared by Soviet educators described how art would “unite the child… with the political life and the great socialistic construction of the Country.”  In the Fall of 1999, the artwork and photographs were exhibited in the former Milbank Memorial Library of Teachers College, Columbia University with an official statement of the “socialist” philosophy of art education.

The Ukrainian Children’s Art Collection consists of 26 works created in the 1930s by art students aged 8-15. Typical in their socialist content, as well as form, they illustrate principles of both art education and civic training, and provide a unique view of distinctive features of Soviet education. Socialist realism over self expression is seen as the guiding Soviet artistic method. Daily routines are represented in heroic tones, with art showing how the “illuminated future” is being made, and re-made. In 1991 came the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and from 2014 onward, the Russo-Ukrainian War, with major escalation due to the full-scale invasion by Russia of Ukraine in February 2022.

This exhibit relates directly to the historical relationship between Teachers College and education in Ukraine in the mid 1930s -- a time when Ukraine was an integral part of the Soviet Union. The contents of this exhibit are thus seen through this lens, but with sensitivity to the tragic events in more recent history. Please see the recent Everett Cafe book display, Ukraine: Tracking the Journey of the Sun Across the Sky, which explores the broader history and socio-political context.

This exhibit is funded thanks to the continuing generosity of the Myers Foundations.

Where: Offit Gallery, through March

Poster Image: The Working Class Is Watching Sacco and Vincetti's Trial, by Artist Unknown, from the Ukrainian Children's Art Collection, Courtesy of Teachers College, Columbia University