On Friday, 27 September, Belgium’s first audio guides in Ukrainian were launched at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. The launch happened thanks to the efforts of First Lady Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Even though many Ukrainians have sought refuge in Belgium since the beginning of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, no Ukrainian audio guides were available in the country up until now.
“Since the beginning of Russia’s armed invasion of Ukraine, many Ukrainians have fled their country to save their lives, as the enemy demolished and looted their homes. Simultaneously, Ukraine continues to fight for its identity, freedom, democratic values, and culture,” the Ukrainian Embassy in Belgium said in a statement.
La présidente du Sénat @ValerieDeBue a assisté à l’introduction des audioguides en ukrainien aux Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts 🎧
— MR Sénat (@MRSenat) September 30, 2024
Un geste de solidarité culturelle et de soutien à la souveraineté de l’Ukraine 🇺🇦🇧🇪 pic.twitter.com/oavQghNKaj
Since 2020, Olena Zelenska has been spearheading a project aiming at launching Ukrainian audio guides in some of the world’s biggest museums. So far, 80 Ukrainian audio tours are available in 44 countries across the globe. The Louvre in France, Westminster Abbey in the United Kingdom, the Colosseum and the Borghese Gallery in Italy and the Albertina Palace in Austria are some of the museums which already have a Ukrainian audio guide available.
The timing for the launch of a Ukrainian audio tour at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels is not by chance. “Recently, this museum hosted the ‘In the Eye of the Storm’ exhibition, which highlighted early 20th-Century Ukrainian modernism and featured works by Kazymyr Malevych, specifically presented as a Ukrainian artist,” said Zelenska. “The time has come to make the exhibitions at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts more accessible to Ukrainian visitors through these audio guides.”
According to Zelenska, it is currently of utmost importance to make as many Ukrainian audio tours available as possible, at a “time when Ukraine is still fighting against invasion, and when the Russian invader is destroying our museums”. Moreover, according to the First Lady, art becomes ever-more accessible when different language tours are available.
Even though Ukrainian might sound a lot like Russian for outsiders, the two languages present have differences between them, which are largely due to the peculiarities of the formation of the two nations.
