Scholars at risk in their own countries find a new home at Penn

Other Philadelphia-area colleges that have hosted scholars through the institute’s program include Penn, Rutgers, Drexel, Temple, Arcadia and Villanova, Angelson said.

‘I can order almost anything’

Pavel Golubev, 39, a Russian art historian, had been head curator at a museum in Ukraine when Russia invaded in 2022. He had left Russia after publishing the diaries of Konstantin Somov, highlighting the painter’s homosexuality, a part of his life that had been silenced in Russia.

He had been invited to the Odessa Fine Arts Museum in Ukraine where he had created an exhibition on Somov and was later offered a full-time position there.

Golubev already knew Jonathan D. Katz, an associate professor of practice at Penn in history of art and gender, sexuality and women’s studies. Katz had contacted Golubev when he was putting together “The First Homosexuals,” an exhibition that opened on a small scale in Chicago a couple of years ago and will have a larger debut next year. He was marshaling a group of scholars from around the world to help with the exhibition, which chronicles the earliest appearances of sexual difference in art.

Katz was worried about Golubev in the Ukraine and offered to bring him to Penn. Golubev was hesitant to leave until he could assure the works at Odessa were safe, but eventually came to Philadelphia in August 2022. Golubev found an apartment, and Katz’s colleagues provided the necessary furnishing and supplies.

“I have furniture with a history and provenance,” Golubev said proudly, sitting in the history department office he shares with Katz.

He presented his research on Somov at a Penn colloquium that December and continues to work with Katz on the upcoming exhibition. He also conducts a reading group for doctoral students on queer studies in art history.

“The program did what it was supposed to do, which was to get scholars at risk out of danger,” Katz said.

Katz said through Golubev, he has learned about the large Russian Slavic neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia: “It really was wild,” he said. “I felt like I was somehow in Eastern Europe.”

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