Morgan Williams, founder of the largest art collection on the Holodomor, passed away a year ago

8 June is the day of remembrance of Morgan Williams, an American businessman, president of the US-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC), collector and philanthropist. The founder of the world’s largest collection of Holodomor-themed artwork passed away a year ago. In autumn 2024, the collection he formed was donated to our museum. Morgan Williams dreamt of this, believing the Holodomor Museum would be the best platform for presenting the collected works. Regrettably, he could not hand over the collection in person.

This impressive collection includes works by Ukrainian artists Volodymyr Bondarenko, Vira Barynova-Kuleba, Volodymyr Kutkin, Viktor Zaretskyi, Ivan Novobranets, Taras and Yurii Honcharenko, a poster artist Valerii Vitra, and other artists. In total, there are over 700 items, including, in addition to artworks, books, brochures, stamps, envelopes, and badges related to the Holodomor.

Today, the Holodomor Museum has this incredible treasure. We pay our respects to Morgan Williams, an American who felt the pain of Ukrainians as his own and realised that the visual expression of the Holodomor, its reflection and understanding by artists are no less crucial than documents and testimonies.

Morgan Williams recalled how it all started: “Around 1995, I contacted James Mace, who was a famous Holodomor researcher and was working in Kyiv. I told him I noticed that there were very few visuals about the Holodomor. Very few photographs, no paintings, no music, no bandura concerts. It was interesting that there was almost nothing visually or musically about the Holodomor. He explained to me about the massive cover-up. He said it was one of the most massive cover-ups in history.” 

Morgan Williams shared how the collection was formed in a video tour published by the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC). You can see the transcript in Ukrainian and English and the video here.