Yesterday, Today and Always. Odesa
An exhibition connecting Odesa’s art, material culture and financial history across ten thematic sections. Paintings, prints, coins and other historical objects sit alongside contemporary works, tracing changes in cultural and social relationships.
About the project
The exhibition brought together art, numismatics and historical artefacts to trace the relationship between culture and finance in Odesa. Ten thematic sections formed a journey from the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries to the contemporary period, placing paintings and sculptures alongside coins, banknotes and other objects through which value circulates.
The project treated these materials as evidence of changing social relationships. How does a society assign value, and how do the forms used to preserve or exchange it change over time? The movement from physical objects towards digital tokens and virtual assets provided a contemporary extension of this history.
Works from the museum collection were also presented in an NFT format. Within the exhibition, this experiment connected the institution’s historical holdings with debates about digital ownership, collecting and the changing conditions under which art is encountered.