SOLANA
OpenSea
The Meta History Museum is raising money for the Ukrainian government through NFTs, but the project is facing an uphill battle. Going viral is harder than it looks.
Karina Kachurovsakaya decided to stay in Ukraine during the war. Kachurovsakaya owns Avangarden, an art gallery and wine bar in the city. Our interview is unconventional: When we first connected, she explained over text that a standard phone or video call wouldn’t work. Her internet connection was bad, she said over Telegram, and people in Ukraine, “need to burrow into hiding places from time to time.” “Air raid alerts,” she clarified.
Kachurovsakaya was until late April part of the approximately 10-person team behind Meta History: Museum of War, an NFT fundraising initiative in Ukraine. Although Kachurovsakaya, her husband, and the project’s anonymous founder are staying in Ukraine, some of their team is now international. The museum’s crypto consultant, Valeriia Panina, revealed that she had moved to Seattle just two and a half weeks before our interview. She explained, “I lived in Kyiv and I fled,” and then repeated herself: “And I fled.”
The Meta History: Museum of War curates and sells NFTs to raise money for the Ukrainian government. So far, it has released two collections of just under 1,700 NFTs each, with a third, collaborative series coming out on May 19. Its primary project, “Warline,” documents Russia’s invasion between February 24 and March 15. Each NFT in “Warline” is a collage, pairing tweets from the likes of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, BBC News, Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and the White House with dark, emotional, and defiant digital artworks by artists from around the world.
