The Ministry of Culture of Poland is developing plans to evacuate the most valuable cultural properties abroad against the background of the growing threat of Russian aggression. About it in an interview with the Financial Times told Minister of Culture of Poland Hanna Wrublevska.
Currently, the department is working on updating the logistics protocols and accompanying documentation to ensure the possibility of tracking the moved exhibits. The Ministry is also negotiating with other states regarding the possibility of accepting evacuated works of art. It is not only about painting and sculpture, but also about rare books and musical instruments. According to Vrublevska, private museums and galleries will also be involved in the preparation of security plans.
The head of the Ministry of Culture stressed that the measures are forced, because more than 1,000 Polish museums cannot focus only on “theoretical concepts of security” while Russia continues to attack Ukraine. In total, according to her, about 160 cultural institutions in Poland need evacuation solutions.
It is planned to complete the evacuation planning of the museum collections by the end of the year. The initiative is part of a broader security program implemented by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government — including strengthening the borders and increasing the size of the Polish army to 500,000 troops. The cultural security strategy is managed by Macei Matysiak, a former army colonel and ex-deputy head of military counterintelligence, who currently heads the Department of Security and Crisis Management under the Ministry of Culture, which has 40 specialists.
In preparation for the evacuation, the Polish side relies on the experience of helping Ukraine — after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, Ukrainian museum artifacts were already taken to Poland, some of which are still kept there. These issues were also discussed at the informal meeting of EU culture ministers in April in Warsaw. Wrublevska emphasized that Poland’s position is also shared by the Baltic countries.
