[1/2] A journalist takes a picture of Saint John the Baptist 6th century Encaustic painting on wood panel, a rare Byzantine icon from the collections of the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, one of 16 icons that were evacuated in the utmost secrecy to be safeguarded by the Paris... Read morePARIS, June 13 (Reuters) - The Louvre Museum in Paris will exhibit five rare icons evacuated from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to protect them from the war. The icons, on display from Wednesday, are from a group of 16 extremely fragile works from Kyiv's Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum that were secretly evacuated in May to be safeguarded by the Paris museum. "It's a very symbolic and effective gesture of support for Ukrainian culture," Oleksander Tkachenko, Ukrainian culture minister, told reporters at the Louvre. At the start of the Russian invasion, the collections of the Khanenko Museum were hidden and the historic building is currently empty. The Louvre exhibition, titled "The Origins of the Sacred Image: Icons from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kyiv", will continue until Nov. 6.

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Persons: Saint John the Baptist, Bohdan, Varvara Khanenko, Read, Kyiv's Bohdan, Saint Nicholas, Elizabeth Pineau, Antony Paone, Dominique Vidalon, Alexandra Hudson Organizations: Louvre Museum, Varvara Khanenko Museum, Khanenko, Museum of Arts, Moscow, Alexandra Hudson Our, Thomson Locations: Kyiv, Ukraine, Paris, PARIS, France, Poland, Germany, Saint Catherine's, Egypt's, Constantinople