London’s National Gallery Renames Degas’s “Russian Dancers” as “Ukrainian Dancers”
Calls to rename the mislabeled work have intensified since the Russian invasion of Ukraine
At the height of La Belle Époque in the late 1890s, Eastern European dance troupes visited Paris and performed at its famed cabaret clubs: the Folies-Bergère, Moulin Rouge, and the Casino de Paris among them. One such show likely inspired a pastel drawing by Edgar Degas formerly known as “Russian Dancers” (circa 1899) and housed in London’s National Gallery. But the performers portrayed are “almost certainly Ukrainian rather than Russian,” according to the museum, which has renamed the work to acknowledge its true protagonists. FOR MORE