What’s a Critic Doing in a War Zone?
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A news organization needs all sorts of journalists and professionals to cover a war zone effectively: reporters and photographers who can gather information, local journalists and interpreters to gain access to sources, security experts and drivers to help everyone stay safe. One person you almost never need is a critic.

Yet I spent several weeks this July in Ukraine, leaving behind my usual bailiwick of art galleries and biennials to look head-on at military conflict and humanitarian crisis. As one of The New York Times’s critics at large, my job is to help readers understand culture against wider backdrops of history, politics, cities and climate. And this era-defining war is, at its core, a culture war: an imperial incursion buttressed by misrepresentations of history, language and religion.

So I headed to Kyiv — one of the most artistically vibrant cities in Europe, its avenues now punctuated by military checkpoints — to survey its museums and monasteries, to interview its artists and archivists, and to check on the capital’s fabled nightclubs. I also traveled to several mangled towns north of Kyiv, carefully navigating the ruins of blasted heritage sites, and reported from Lviv, the handsome Hapsburg city in the west of Ukraine, where many of the country’s cultural preservation initiatives have been masterminded.