The fate of Ukraine’s museums

Plus: the future of the anti-abortion movement |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Since the Russian invasion a month ago, museums and archives in Ukraine that hold key artifacts documenting the country’s history remain at high risk of damage and destruction. These institutions are taking several wartime measures, from evacuating select works to hiding items in underground bomb shelters. This week, I spoke to directors of museums and archives in Ukraine about their efforts to preserve their collections, and all reiterated that Ukrainian national identity is at stake. “This is a war against our history, our culture,” Ihor Poshyvailo, director of the Maidan museum in Kyiv, a history museum focused on pro-democracy efforts in Ukraine, told TIME. Click here to read the full story Find all of TIME’s coverage of the war at time.com/ukraine. Here’s more history to know:

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FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1938: Bette Davis “What Bette Davis dislikes most about Hollywood is its la-de-da parties and glamor girls. She also dislikes toadying to the powers-that-be. In Hollywood it is considered policy to court fat Hearst Gossip-Writer Louella 0. (‘Lolly’) Parsons. But Bette does no courting. What she fears more than anything else is the fate of the worn-out player. ‘I shiver each time I see an auction of a star's personal belongings advertised in the papers. I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to own anything in Hollywood that can't be packed in a trunk.’” (Mar. 28, 1938) Read More » This week in 1947: Future Queen Elizabeth II “Elizabeth loves horses (she rides superbly), racing (if possible, she never misses a race when the royal stable is entered), swing music, nightclubs, and having her own way. But Elizabeth's rebellions are those of any headstrong, well-reared child suffering an overdose of family. ‘I'd like a car of my own,’ she told a friend recently, ‘but there's so damn much family talk about which make I must have that I don't think I'll ever get one.’” (Mar. 31, 1947) Read More » This week in 1955: IBM President Thomas J. Watson “IBM's President Thomas J. Watson Jr. is applying to machines the slogan which his father, IBM's Board Chairman Thomas J. Watson Sr., applied only to men. President Watson hopes to mechanize hundreds of processes which require the drab, repetitive ‘thought’ of everyday business. Thus liberated from grinding routine, man can put his own brain to work on problems requiring a function beyond the capabilities of the machine: creative thought. Says Watson: ‘Our job is to make automatic a lot of things now done by slow and laborious human drudgery. A hundred years ago there was an industrial revolution in which seven to ten horsepower was put behind each pair of industrial hands in America. Today we're beginning to put horsepower behind office hands, electric energy in the place of brain power.’” (Mar. 28, 1955) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Family history: The New Republic’s Walter Shapiro writes about how his great uncle was charged with grand larceny for “defrauding the Nazis.” Royals: On The Guardian’s website, historian Trevor Burnard details the long history of slavery in Jamaica to provide context for protests during Prince William and Kate Middleton’s recent visit to the island. Culture wars: Amid a wave of book-ban attempts nationwide. Livia Gershon looks into an effort to ban John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath from school libraries in 1939, for JSTOR Daily. Game on: For the Atlantic, Luka Ivan Jukić reports on the video games that are inspiring students to sign up for college history courses. Profile: USA Today named historian Heather Cox Richardson one of its “Women of the Year” for her newsletter “Letters from an American,” and Suzette Hackney interviewed her about everything from women’s role in social change and progress to her advice to young people.

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