Ukraine’s museums lock their doors

Lviv – To get into the Potocki Palace, a gem of Ukrainian architecture, you have to show your ID, slip past the armed soldiers and duck under some scaffolding.

All that, just to see some bare picture rails. Life has resumed a semblance of quasi-normality in Lviv, western Ukraine, since Russian forces pulled out of the Kyiv region to focus their offensive on the south and east.

But museums in the self-styled capital of culture only dare open their doors a chink, convinced the invaders will pillage Ukraine’s culture as they have its villages.

“We’d like to open up a bit more but security is complicated,” explained Vassyl Mytsko, deputy director of the Lviv National Gallery. Ukraine’s largest fine arts museum has 21 sites, housing a vast collection of 65 000 works of art.

“How can we be sure the Russians aren’t just gathering their strength again so they can chuck all their rockets at us?”

The staff of the National were taken by surprise when Russia invaded on 24 February. “We didn’t think the strikes would get this far” and threaten Lviv, Mytsko said.

The museum curators were “stunned” at first but soon got to work wrapping up sculptures and paintings and squirrelling them to safety in secret locations, where they remain to this day.

Workers are using the absence of its precious paintings to give the bare walls a coating of bright red paint following the removal of works including Georges de la Tour’s Payment of Taxes.

Since early this month, two of the National’s other sites more than an hour away from Lviv have started reopening to the public.

There is no question, however, of the museums in the city itself unlocking their doors “until there is major change – politically or on the ground”, Mytsko said.

Kremlin troops have already bombed a museum near Kyiv dedicated to artist Maria Primachenko and another in Kharkiv about philosopher Grigori Skovoroda, so they remain a threat to Lviv, he said, adding: “They want to destroy Ukraine’s identity and its European roots.”

Roman Shmelik, head of the Lviv History Museum, is just as suspicious.

The museum’s collection is spread across 10 buildings, some dating back to the 16th century, but only two opened on 1 May – one to let people use its cafe, the other for a children’s exhibition. The buildings were otherwise empty, their treasures under wraps elsewhere. –