Paris’s Louvre Museum houses 16 works of art, including valuable Byzantine icons from Kiev, to protect them from the war in Ukraine, we learned from its president on Wednesday.
“From the beginning of the war, like other large museum institutions, we wanted to find out how we could support our Ukrainian colleagues. In the autumn, given the intensity of the conflict, we opted for this rescue,” Laurence des Cars told AFP, confirming information from French daily Le Monde.
Among those works whose largest museum in the world led the evacuation: five Byzantine icons from the Bohdan Museum and Varvara Khanenko, National Museum of Arts in Kyiv. They will be on display to the public from June 14 to November 6, Ms des Cars said.
“It’s a small thing in an ocean of sadness and desolation, but it’s a real symbol,” she added, “aware of the importance of saving this thousand-year-old legacy at the heart of Europe and the need to pass it on.”
Eleven other works, which are “among the most iconic and fragile” of the Ukrainian museum and selected for scientific collaboration in the restoration of works in the Louvre, will be placed in the reserves, according to the Louvre.
In October, Ms. des Cars received a Ukrainian delegation of museum officials, including museum director Khanenko, when Unesco identified 240 war-damaged sites. The inventory of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine then listed 468 damaged, destroyed or damaged cultural sites, including 35 museums.
In early October, a rocket landed near the Khanenko Museum and blew out the windows. With the exception of large paintings, most of the artworks “have been moved to the reservations, where they are subject to temperature fluctuations and power outages that worry our colleagues,” von Cars said.
The operation to save the 16 selected works, which is financially supported by the International Alliance for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones, was officially recorded during a visit by Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak to Ukraine in February and the works were given a military escort via Poland and Germany Early May.
Entitled “At the origin of the sacred image”, the exhibition of Byzantine icons will anticipate the opening in 2027 of a new department dedicated to Byzantine art and Christianity in the East.