Image: Yellowstone Art Museum, Philadelphia
Yellowstone Art Museum is entering the final week of 'Folktales and Fanfare: The Art of Janina Myronova', an exhibition of ceramic sculptures and drawings by Ukrainian artist Janina Myronova that closes on August 15, 2026. The museum’s latest newsletter, sent August 11, notes that the show is on view through Saturday and describes the work as a “new body of work” centered on color, humor, and emotional warmth.
The exhibition is presented in the Charles M. Bair and Northwest Projects Galleries at Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, where it has been on view since March 27. According to the museum, the project is organized by the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art and curated by Nicole Maria Evans, identified on the website as Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. The exhibition page also lists several sponsors, including Red Lodge Clay Center and individual supporters Marilyn Misner Kramer, Gareld Krieg, Deborah Anspach & John Hanson, and Linda Snider.
The museum’s description frames 'Folktales and Fanfare' as an installation that invites visitors into “a garden of playful imagination,” where Myronova’s ceramic sculptures and drawings “burst with life and emotion.” The artist’s bright-cheeked characters, with bold forms and exaggerated expressions, are presented as figures that encourage viewers “to pause, smile, and look closer.” In the exhibition text, Myronova describes each sculpture as “a storyteller,” echoing folklore and “frozen moments of a big performance seen through a cheerful and positive filter.”
The work is built around themes of home, friendship, hope, and renewal. The museum says Myronova transforms ceramic traditions into something both whimsical and profound, while accompanying drawings and painted surfaces extend the narratives and blur the boundary between two and three dimensions. The result, as presented by the museum, is a body of work that emphasizes craft, imagination, and human connection through figurative ceramics and related works on paper.
Myronova was born and raised in Ukraine and is now based in Poland. Yellowstone Art Museum says she earned her PhD from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Wrocław and has completed artist residencies around the globe, including in Taiwan, France, South Korea, and Denmark. The museum also notes that she first came to the United States in 2022 with a McKnight Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis.
Her U.S. residencies continued at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, and at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, where she continues to work. The museum says her sculptures are included in major collections worldwide, naming the Crocker Art Museum in California, Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan, the National Museums of Wrocław and Kraków in Poland, and the Museu de Ceràmica l’Alcora in Spain, among others. A related artist talk with Myronova is listed for May 28 at the museum, while the exhibition itself remains on view only until August 15.
