Sixteen works of art, including precious Byzantine icons from kyiv, will be collected at the Louvre Museum. The president of the museum, Laurence des Cars, indicates a measure intended to protect these works from the war in Ukraine. “From the start of the war, like other major museum institutions, our concern was to see how to support our Ukrainian colleagues. In the fall, faced with the intensity of the conflict, we decided on this rescue,” she told AFP, confirming information from the newspaper. The world.
“It’s a small thing in an ocean of sadness and desolation, but it’s quite a symbol”, she added, “aware of the importance of saving this thousand-year-old heritage in the heart of Europe and of the need to transmit it”.
Some works on display next week
Among these works, the largest museum in the world piloted the evacuation, are five Byzantine icons from the Bohdan Museum and Varvara Khanenko, National Museum of Arts in Kyiv. They will be exhibited to the public from June 14 and until November 6, said Laurence des Cars.
Eleven other works, “among the most emblematic and fragile” of the Ukrainian museum, selected for scientific collaboration on the restoration of works at the Louvre, will be housed in the reserves, detailed the Louvre.
Nearly 500 cultural sites damaged in Ukraine
At the end of October 2022, the president of the Louvre had received a Ukrainian delegation of museum representatives, including the director of the museum Khanenko, when Unesco had identified 240 sites damaged by the war. The inventory of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture then reported 468 damaged, destroyed or damaged cultural sites, including 35 museums.
A rocket fell in early October near the Khanenko Museum, blowing out the windows. With the exception of large paintings, the majority of the works of art had been “moved to the reserves, where they are subject to temperature variations and power cuts, which worry our counterparts”, said Laurence of Cars.
Works escorted militarily via Poland and Germany
The operation to rescue the 16 selected works, financially supported by the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Zones, was officially recorded during a visit to Ukraine by the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, in February. The works were militarily escorted via Poland and Germany in early May.
Entitled “At the origins of the sacred image”, the exhibition of Byzantine icons will prefigure the opening in 2027 of a new department of Byzantine Arts and Christianity in the East.