The Wreath: A Century of Ukrainian Women Beyond the Ocean, presented at The Ukrainian Museum in New York, is a must-see exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (UNWLA). Tracing the evolution of the Ukrainian feminist tradition in the diaspora, the exhibition honors a century of women’s leadership, resilience, and engagement in global cultural, humanitarian, and diplomatic arenas.
The exhibition’s title references Pershyi Vinok (First Wreath), the landmark 1887 feminist almanac that united Ukrainian women across communities divided by Habsburg and Czarist rule. This legacy was carried forward into the twentieth century through the UNWLA’s vision of women’s responsibility “beyond the ocean,” articulated by UNWLA president Olena Lototsky in her address to the 1934 International Congress of Ukrainian Women in Stanyslaviv.
Founded in 1925, the UNWLA has navigated successive waves of migration and historical upheaval, demonstrating—echoing Dr. Martha Kichorowska Kebalo’s observation—how feminist consciousness can coexist with long-distance nationalism. Many of the artists featured in The Wreath were published in the UNWLA’s magazine Our Life, while additional works and archival materials originate from the organization’s 1930s collection, which later became the foundation of The Ukrainian Museum itself.
Artworks by Halyna Mazepa and Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak recall the UNWLA’s early humanitarian initiatives, including relief efforts for victims of the 1927 Carpathian floods. Still lifes by Iryna Homotiuk-Zielyk and Chrystya Olenska evoke decades of activism dedicated to raising awareness of the Holodomor. Paintings by Olena Kulchytska, Alla Johansen, Sophie Zarycka, and Arcadia Olenska-Petryshyn are shown alongside archival correspondence with women dissidents and the wives of political prisoners in Soviet Ukraine, illuminating the UNWLA’s role in building a transnational network of advocacy and solidarity.
Historic documents further highlight the UNWLA’s presence at the United Nations Decade of Women World Conferences in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen (1980), where members organized demonstrations, disseminated information, and led panels in defense of women prisoners of conscience.
The exhibition also foregrounds later generations, including artists Alina Tenser and Sasha Topolnytska, who arrived in the United States in the 1990s during a period when the UNWLA advised international aid organizations responding to post-Chornobyl Ukraine. Their work appears alongside Yaroslava Surmach-Mills’ illustrated children’s book, reflecting the UNWLA’s involvement with the International Movement of Mothers and its advocacy for vulnerable children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
Building on its Children of Chornobyl initiatives of the 1990s, the UNWLA’s most recent campaigns address the urgent crisis of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia following its full-scale invasion in 2022. Through art, archives, and lived histories, The Wreath brings a century of courage, continuity, and collective action to life—honoring the women who shaped the past and continue to inspire the future.
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