Bremen (dpa) – The director of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Christoph Grunenberg, is worried about cultural treasures in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. “I found out through contacts that the museums in Kyiv are currently trying desperately to protect their most important works and bring them to safety,” said the art historian of the German Press Agency. The National Art Museum in the city center is in grave danger because of the war and so are its holdings, which are symbols of the long history and independent identity and culture of Ukraine as a people and as a state. “You are irreplaceable,” stressed Grunenberg.
The Kunsthalle Bremen has experienced for itself what it means to have to bring works of art to safety before a war. “During World War II, a major work in the collection, Emanuel Leutze’s iconic 1849 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, burned and was too large to move,” said the Kunsthalle boss. At the same time, hundreds of outsourced works by Albrecht Dürer and Vincent van Gogh, among others, were lost.
Grunenberg finds it “difficult” to imagine mutual loans and cooperation projects with Russia under the current circumstances. In the past, the Kunsthalle has worked “very well and trustingly” with Russian museums and private collectors.
“Both sides suffered extensive destruction of their cultural heritage and loss of their collections during the Second World War,” said the art historian. In recent years, they have tried to research this together. Because of, among other things, works looted by Soviet soldiers that are now in collections in Russia, the relationship was always particularly intense, but also strained.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220303-99-366011/2
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