Germany’s museums are employing Ukrainian refugee curators

PARIS: More than 3.2 million people have left Ukraine since the country’s invasion by Russian troops three weeks ago.

And some of them have found refuge in Germany, where the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation is offering Ukrainian museum professionals the opportunity to work in cultural institutions in their host country, facilitating their integration.

This professional integration program was recently launched by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation in response to the scale of this unprecedented population movement on the European continent.

The idea is simple: any German museum can hire a curator from Ukraine to work in their museum.

The foundation will provide financial assistance to participating museums, supporting them in hiring these Ukrainian refugees for one year.

Many museums across Germany seem ready to take the plunge, including institutions located in Berlin, Dresden, Augsburg, Gotha, Lübeck and Potsdam.

Martin Hoernes, the secretary general of the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation, has also extended this program to Russian curators who have fled their country.

Many are anti-war dissidents who have suffered repression at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s government.

According to The Art Newspaper, the two Russian exhibition organizers approached by the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation to benefit from this program declined the offer, believing that their Ukrainian colleagues need it more than they do.

The French Ministry of Culture has adopted a similar position.

It recently announced the establishment of a fund of one million euros to accommodate Ukrainian artists and cultural professionals, as well as dissident Russians who have clearly taken a stand against the Kremlin.

Training Syrian and Iraqi refugees as tour guides

The Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation’s new programme is not unlike the “Multaka” project, which offers Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers the opportunity to be trained as guides and to offer guided tours in their native language in several German museums.

“Through addressing visitors in clear and simple language aimed at all age groups and using peer-to-peer communication, the ‘Multaqa’ project hopes to facilitate refugee access to museums, and to help them to find social and cultural points of connection, as well as to increase their participation in the public sphere,” reads the official project website.

Inspired by this concept, Oxford’s museums partnered with refugee organizations to launch their own version of this initiative last November.

More than 200 refugees and asylum seekers will be trained as tour guides at various cultural institutions in the British city over the next five years.