Ukrainian museum director reflects on art as memory and why it must be saved

Recently Here & Now spoke to Galina and Yelena Lembersky — the Russian mother and daughter who fled the Soviet Union in the 1980s with hundreds of Galina's father's paintings. Their father was Ukrainian-trained artist Felix Lembersky.

Their paintings are now in Massachusetts, and so, we discovered, is the acting director of the Odesa Fine Arts Museum, Oleksandra Kovalchuk, who recently fled the war in Ukraine for her parents' home in the U.S. Kovalchuk has been working from this country to save the art left behind at the museum.

She was also thrilled to meet the Lemberskys and see their art collection. The women reflect on the meaning of art as memory and the importance of saving it.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Oleksandra Kovalchuk's name. We regret the error.