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Updates from the Founder

Read the latest updates from Luke Olbrich

Florence, November 2026

Dear Friends of the Foundation, Last summer I wrote that we were preparing a new initiative to protect heritage and promote peace through conservation. Since then, armed conflict has intensified and spread, from Palestine and Ukraine to Iran and the Persian Gulf. These are testing times. Nations are retreating from open dialogue, free trade and the shared efforts that once helped to reduce poverty and inequality. And alongside the violence of war runs a slower one: the unintentional but no less destructive violence of pollution and the extraction of resources, two hundred years in the making, still increasing, and something we all continue to be part of.
People carrying framed paintings during an evacuation in Kharkiv
Staff packing artworks during the evacuation of the Kharkiv Museum of Art
Emergency evacuation of artworks from the Kharkiv Art Museum following the Russian drone attack of 14 June 2026.

This November marks sixty years since the Arno flooded my adopted home of Florence and the world came to our rescue. It is also ten years since the Foundation began, in memory of our dear Mircea. We are marking both anniversaries by turning that solidarity around, through our new initiative, Firenze per l’Ucraina.

Watching the world slide towards a new dark age of dictators and democracies in disarray, with people and the environment suffering alike, I felt a deep sense of helplessness. I began looking for a way that the Foundation, and I personally, could push back through what we love: art and its conservation. And so in September, at the kind invitation of the newly formed Ukraine Cultural Heritage Fund (UCHF), I visited Ukraine on behalf of the Foundation. I saw displaced collections in secure underground stores, and came to understand how much work lies ahead.

My studies have shaped this response. After a Master’s in Global Cultures at the University of Bologna, I am now completing a Master of Arts in Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Bringing culture and nature together has taught me that we must act as part of a living world we share with all living creatures.

Our first answer is a pilot: five nineteenth-century icons from Bakhmut, restored at the Khmelnytskyi Regional Art Museum by a Ukrainian restorer working with a Florentine specialist from Associazione Bastioni, in partnership with UCHF.

How you can help:

  • Follow the work: read the story on the Firenze per l’Ucraina page.
  • Lend a hand: we need conservators, translators, photographers and more, remotely or in Florence.
  • Give: our list of specific needs is coming soon.

Thank you for staying with us.

Luke Olbrich

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