Antwerp Refuses to Drop Russian Artist from Museum Night

The city of Antwerp has refused a request from Ukraine’s embassy to remove Russian-born artist Daria Patrikeeva from the programme of Museum Night, defending her scheduled performance as a matter of fundamental artistic freedom. In an open letter reported by VRT NWS, the embassy argued that giving an artist from Russia a stage while the country continues its war against Ukraine is ethically inappropriate. The city said it has no intention of dropping the performance.

Patrikeeva, who lives and works in Antwerp, is scheduled to perform “Narcissist” on Saturday evening in the Sint-Jacobskerk, the church where Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens is buried. According to the city’s promotional material, the piece sees the artist move through the space wearing a portable, kinetic peacock-tail sculpture, entering into a “symbolic dialogue” with Rubens’s grave. The performance is part of the 20th edition of Museum Night, an annual event that opens dozens of museums and cultural venues across Antwerp for a single evening of special activities.

The request landed against a grim backdrop. The day before the embassy’s letter was published, eight people — including two children — were killed in Russian rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities, according to VRT NWS’s live coverage of the war.

“In a time when Ukraine must defend itself every day against Russia’s large-scale military aggression, while Ukrainian civilians continue to die and cultural heritage in Ukrainian cities is destroyed daily, the participation of an artist from the aggressor state raises at least ethical and social questions,” the embassy wrote.

“Thousands of Ukrainian artists are currently unable to take part in cultural life. Many are fighting in the war, are not allowed to leave the country, or have already lost their lives,” it added.

Supporting the embassy’s call, the Brussels-based non-profit Promote Ukraine and the refugee organisation Ukrainian Voices — which together say they represent the Ukrainian community in Belgium — demanded Patrikeeva’s exclusion. “By allowing Daria to participate, the city of Antwerp is giving Russia a European cultural platform,” they said. “This carries the risk that culture will be used for state propaganda.” They stressed that their demand was not about nationality, but about what they described as her ongoing professional ties to the Russian cultural establishment and her failure to distance herself from the war.

City officials were unmoved. “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a terrible attack on freedom and democratic values,” said Lien Van de Kelder, Antwerp’s alderman for culture. “Nevertheless, the Russian artist Daria Patrikeeva will not be removed from the Museum Night programme, because artistic freedom is also a fundamental value.”

Van de Kelder added: “As long as there is no hate speech, discrimination or incitement to violence, we do not ban artists. Nor do we condemn people solely because of their nationality or origin.” She voiced full confidence in the professionalism of Antwerp’s cultural institutions, noting that Patrikeeva has lived and worked in the city for years and must be able to present her performance in complete freedom.

VRT NWS later appended a correction to its article: an earlier version had said Patrikeeva had ties to Russia’s rulers and did not condemn the war. The broadcaster said that information proved incorrect and was removed.

The clash echoes a wider European debate over how cultural institutions should treat Russian artists since the full-scale invasion of February 2022. This year’s Venice Biennale became a flashpoint when Russia returned with a group exhibition for the first time since the invasion. Protests by Pussy Riot and Femen forced the pavilion to close, the European Commission threatened to cut subsidies, and the Biennale’s jury resigned. Promote Ukraine had also criticised that edition.

At the time, Flanders’ culture minister, Caroline Gennez, said artists protesting regimes that “commit genocide or attack Europe and our values” should be supported. The Antwerp dispute now tests the same question in miniature: where does the line fall between refusing to give a platform to a state and penalising an individual for her nationality?

For now, the city’s answer is clear. Patrikeeva’s performance is scheduled to go ahead on Saturday night as part of the 20th Museum Night, which organisers expect to draw tens of thousands of visitors across Antwerp. Whether the debate over who gets a stage — and on what terms — will fade with the applause, or follow the artist out of the church, remains to be seen.