Schedule
6:30pm – Appetizer Reception, Beverages, and Cash Bar, Meet Ms. Luba Markewycz, View Art
7:00pm – Lecture presentation with Ms. Luba Markewycz and Dr. Samuel Gregg
Featuring the art exhibit: “Holodomor Through the Eyes of a Child”
Ukraine, now home to military and political conflict, was once known as the "Breadbasket of the Soviet Union.” But just over 80 years ago, its economy suffered a profound crisis, not because of catastrophic weather or financial collapse, but because of the efforts of Joseph Stalin and his Communist regime’s effort to eliminate Ukraine’s independent farmers in order to collectivize the agricultural process. It is estimated to have resulted in the death, through murder and forced starvation, of almost 7 million Ukrainians in the 1930s. This became known as the Holodomor, meaning "death by hunger" in the Ukrainian language, and it is recognized as a genocide by more than a dozen countries, including the United States.
Through her art exhibit, “Holodomor Through the Eyes of a Child: The Famine Remembered,” Luba Markewycz aims to shed light on this largely unknown chapter of Ukrainian history and expose the tyranny and inhumanity of Stalin’s Communist regime. The exhibit is composed of artwork created by contemporary children throughout Ukraine.
Ms. Markewycz will be joined by the Acton Institute’s Dr. Samuel Gregg, who will discuss the historical context and the ways in which the Holodomor amounted to an assault on human dignity, individual liberty, private property, and religious freedom.
About the Speakers
Luba Markewycz is a teacher by profession and has taught in the Chicago Public School system for over thirty years. She has also worked in several leadership roles at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA) in Chicago. Markewycz has been UIMA president, vice president, and now serves as a board member, a member of the art committee, and chair of the education committee. As a teacher, she has always been interested in children's art and how it reflects life from a child’s perspective.
In 2008, Markewycz became the project director for the exhibit "Holodomor through the Eyes of a Child." She believed the tragic event of the Holodomor in the 1930s was important to keep in the forefront of collective memory, not only of Ukrainians but the entire world. Determining that children’s art would be a powerful medium through which to inform people of this holocaust, Markewycz traveled to several schools and regional centers throughout Ukraine, and asked children (grades 6 – 11) to learn of and represent their understanding of the Holodomor. The process culminated in the exhibit, composed of 400 works of art from 12 cities and over 20 schools. The second Ukrainian student exhibit Markewycz commissioned was "Literature Art,” and she is currently working on the exhibit, "The Vanishing World of My Grandparents and What Treasures They Would Like to Leave Us."
Also a photographer, Markewycz traveled to Chernobyl twice after the 1986 nuclear disaster and has exhibited photography from these experiences in Chicago, Houston, L’viv, Kyjv, and other small cities in Ukraine. Her other photo exhibits that have been showcased in the United States and Ukraine include "The Lovely Cafes of L'viv" and "My Impressions of Chicago.”
Markewycz recently completed her four year tenure as principal of the Ethnic School of Ukrainian Studies in Chicago. She teaches English in the summer program at Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), and has given seminars on Shakespeare at UCU and Ivan Franko University in L'viv.
Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (2001), On Ordered Liberty (2003), his prize-winning The Commercial Society (2007), The Modern Papacy (2009), and Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (2010), and Becoming Europe (2013). Several of these works have been translated into a variety of languages. He has also co-edited books such as Christian Theology and Market Economics (2008) and Natural Law, Economics and the Common Good (2012). He has written for journals such as Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; Economic Affairs; Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy; Oxford Analytica; Communio; Journal of Scottish Philosophy; American Banker; Investor’s Business Daily; and Foreign Affairs. He is a regular writer of opinion-pieces in publications such as the Wall Street Journal Europe; National Review; American Spectator; and Australian Financial Review.
