The monument protection organization “World Heritage Watch” calls on museums, exhibition halls and galleries to donate packaging materials in order to bring Ukrainian cultural assets to safety. Due to the increasing shelling of Ukrainian cities by Russian invading troops, the country’s art treasures are in increasing danger of being destroyed or stolen, the organization warned in Berlin on Wednesday. It is to be expected that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to destroy the country’s cultural heritage and have his most important objects taken to Moscow to present them there as testimonies of Russian culture.
There is a lack of packaging material and transport options to save art and religious treasures. Only one of the two figures of saints in the Jesuit Church of St. Peter and Paul in Lviv is wrapped protectively.
(Photo: IMAGO/Carol Guzy/IMAGO/ZUMA Wire)
Movable cultural property can now still be brought to safety, either by storing it in bunkers on site or by taking it out of the country. However, the Ukrainian museums and churches lack the material and transport options to pack and transport the art objects properly. “We call on the museums, exhibition halls and galleries in Germany to help quickly with donations in kind from existing stocks,” said the monument protection organization. “World Heritage Watch” is in contact with an initiative in Lviv that can distribute the materials in Ukraine. But this is only possible as long as Lviv, Kyiv and Odessa are still accessible. Therefore, “action must be taken as soon as possible,” it said.
Since the beginning of the war, the employees of Ukrainian museums, together with volunteers, have been trying to bring works of art and other objects from museums, libraries and archives that were acutely threatened by war damage to safety, while IT specialists trying to save their online holdings. Many monuments in public places were wrapped to protect them from damage.