LVIV – As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine reached the Western city of Lviv, museum curators, artist and gallerists sprang into immediate action to protect the city’s priceless artwork.
Known by various names like Leópolis, Lemberg, and Lwów, Lviv, as it is known in Ukrainian, is Ukraine’s sixth-largest city and one of the main cultural centers of the nation. The 1,500-year-old historic city center is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Almost immediately after the Russian invasion began, UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, released a statement on behalf of the organization calling for the “protection of Ukrainian cultural heritage, which bears witness to the country’s rich history, and includes its seven World Heritage sites – notably located in Lviv and Kyiv; the cities of Odesa and Kharkiv, members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network; its national archives, some of which feature in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register; and its sites commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust.”
Lviv lost much of its gothic architecture because of a fire in the 16th Century but still has buildings boasting the styles of the renaissance, baroque, and classical periods. It was a major hub of the Vienna Secession, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco architectural movements.
There are also parks and open-air museums with their own unique collections of buildings and rare trees and plants.
Lviv’s art collection has been described as impressive by many collectors. In the modern era, Lviv was one of the major incubators of the artistic movements of Cubism, Futurism, New Objectivity, and Surrealism. The Lviv National Museum has over 140,000 unique items in its collection that include medieval sacral art pieces including rare ancient books and manuscripts.
Feed me … one of Prymachenko’s works which could be referring to Stalin’s terror-famine, which killed 3.3m Ukrainians. Photograph: Prymachenko Foundation
Everywhere from churches to galleries, Ukrainians – from curators to random civilians – have been working to protect the nation’s treasures despite the shelling and the chaos.
At the same time, many art palaces have become shelters for those fleeing the Russian attacks that have become increasingly frequent.
The museums now have bare walls. Statues have been wrapped and laid on the floor where possible. Others have been bubble-wrapped and some artwork has even been girded with iron cages.
Wild chaplun by Maria Prymachenko. 1977, on Ukrainian postage stamp [public domain]
Liliya Onischenko, the superintendent of Lviv’s heritage protection office, said “At first it was a bit chaotic but it has become more organized” in a conversation with the BBC. “We are photographing everything before we take it away and we are photographing all the pieces in their hidden places,” she added.
The same has happened in Kharkiv, Kyiv, and now Odesa where one museum, Fine Arts Museum, has been encircled with razor wire.
Ihor Korzhan, the director of the National Museum of Lviv, told BBC “Everything, everything is gone.”
Embed from Getty Images
“There was no plan because no one could imagine this would happen,” he said. “We had no plan at all – not before the war, not even in December. You must understand, we did not believe it could come to this.”
Sheltering and securing the artwork may not be enough, however.
The destruction of priceless art because of the Russian invasion is very real and has already happened. The Times reported that when Putin’s troops attacked Ivankiv, a town about 50 miles northwest of Kyiv, a Twitter video showed the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum was ablaze.
The local history museum in #Ivankiv #Kyiv region burned down as the result of the ongoing fighting and invasion #RussiaUkraine. pic.twitter.com/51VB3eh1fS
— Bogdan Voron (@Bogdan_Voron) February 28, 2022
The small museum had about 25 works by celebrated Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko whose work delighted Picasso and Chagall. Prymachenko’s work was featured on postage stamps and her name was given to a major boulevard in Kyiv. Picasso said, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.”
“The museum was the first building in Ivankiv that the Russians destroyed,” the artist’s great-granddaughter, Anastasiia Prymachenko, tells the Times. “I think it is because they want to destroy our Ukrainian culture—the museum is the only thing we have there, with lots of artifacts showing Ukrainian and Ivankiv culture.”
The Maria Prymachenko Family Foundation told CNN that “one heroic man managed to take the paintings away from the fire,” said lawyer Natalia Gnatiuk, one of the foundation’s partners, via phone from western Ukraine, where she has sought refuge. “There are 14 of them, but they are still not safe.” (Two ceramic works are believed to have been destroyed, however.)
Natalia Gnatiuk, one of the foundation’s partners said, “I’m sure it was intentional.” She added, “It was the first building [destroyed in Ivankiv] and the task of the occupants is to destroy our Ukrainian roots, to destroy our Ukrainian culture — they hate it. And Maria Prymachenko is not only the symbol of Ivankiv … and not only the symbol of Ukraine, but a symbol of the whole world today. I am sure it was on purpose.”
Azaoulay said in the UNESCO statement that, “We must safeguard this cultural heritage, as a testimony of the past but also as a vector of peace for the future, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve for future generations. It is also to protect the future that educational institutions must be considered sanctuaries.”
The Lviv Museum of the History of Religion is another such example. Housed in a Dominican monastery its collection of 50,00 exhibits covers the history of the world and national religion and beliefs which includes a collection of objects from Ukraine’s “Religion of Antiquity” and East Slavic beliefs. All the cabinets are now empty and everything is in metal containers and in the basement to protect them from shrapnel.
Anna Naurobska, the head of the rare manuscripts and books department at the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, told ABC News “This is our story; this is our life. It is very important to us.”
Indeed, by all accounts, it is important to the Russian invaders as well. The elimination of cultural heritage portends re-writing history against the oppressed. The stories and artworks forge culture across generations and kindle pride and patriotism.
The museums preserve the culture, and Korzhan said, “Russia wants to destroy that.”
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