The Cultural Freedom Project at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center has published “Swag: A Crystal from Mariupol,” an article by Viktoriia Savchuk Kennet about Lada Nakonechna’s 2026 installation Swag.
The work centers on a chandelier crystal from the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol, which was destroyed in March 2022 and later listed in the Russian Ministry of Culture’s state catalogue. The article examines how the object’s removal and reinterpretation reflect a wider process of absorbing Ukrainian cultural heritage into Russian-controlled museum systems.
It also features the analysis of Daryna Pidhorna, legal expert at the Raphael Lemkin Society, who outlined four stages of this process during an April 2026 conference co-hosted by the Society. The article further addresses the unanswered request for ICOM to review whether ICOM Russia complies with its governing documents and Code of Ethics for Museums.