The walls are empty but not for long.
The National Art Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine's largest fine arts museum since 1907, is about to reopen its doors after weeks of closure due to the Russian invasion.
The approximately 65,000 works it owns, including works by Goya, Rubens, Titian and La Tour, will gradually be presented to the public again through the 18 branches the gallery has in the province of Lviv.
A resistance action for the director of the institution, which goes against the current of the protection strategy of other Ukrainian museums, most of which are still closed to fight against destruction and looting.
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"Putin's goal now is to annihilate Ukrainians, to deny our existence,"
Taras Voznyak, director of the National Art Gallery in Lviv
, told the
New York Times .
"In order to show that we are alive, we have opened several branches"
, he added, including castles, towers and cathedrals which serve as museums in the province of Lviv, located for the most part at about sixty kilometers from the Polish border.
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To honor the cultural capital of Ukraine, also a tourist destination which attracted nearly 2.5 million visitors a year before the war, Taras Voznyak has the ambition to also open the main gallery by June, located in the historic Lozinsky Palace in downtown Lviv.
Founded in the Middle Ages and rich in several centuries of artistic influences, notably from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city center of Lviv has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.
Earlier in the year, on March 7, the National Art Gallery in Lviv completely emptied its collections to protect them from looting and destruction.
Yuriy Dyachyshyn / AFP
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"It's living art"
Sitting in front of the portrait of the Austrian Empress Marie-Thérèse, one of the only ones still hanging on the walls of the palace, Taras Voznyak explains that the main building of the museum is currently being repainted in an apricot color in view of its potential reopening.
And in his momentum, he mentioned his desire to create underground spaces dedicated to culture, specifies the specialized site Artnet.
If of course he has the necessary funds.
A way to allow the exhibition of art in time of war, in this city which like others has become, over the Russian attacks, a refuge for artists and Ukrainians from the East.
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To illustrate his point, the director of the museum also reports that two Ukrainian artists, Vlada Ralko and Volodymyr Budnikov, have already lived for a month in the basement of the gallery.
During these four weeks, they created several works, which they then donated to the institution to bear witness to the atrocities.
“This art was created at this time, in this palace, it is living art”
, described Taras Voznyak to the
New York Times
, specifying that their works will be exhibited from the end of spring or the beginning of been in one of the branches of the gallery, probably in a castle located 80 kilometers east of Lviv.
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The cultural institution proudly displays a Ukrainian flag above its heavy front door.
But the director wishes to point out the presence of a good number of other banners, like Switzerland, Australia, the United States, Canada and even Poland, in recognition of their help.
Several companies in these countries have indeed participated in the supply of protective equipment for the works, such as foam, protective tarpaulins and fireproof fabrics.
They also provided, free of charge, the equipment needed to transform the damp underground spaces into temperature-regulated storage sites for large works of art.