{"id":323649,"date":"2026-11-08T11:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T11:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/323649\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T11:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T11:52:07","slug":"museum-of-the-american-revolution-adds-ukrainian-audio-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/323649\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum of the American Revolution adds Ukrainian audio tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

For the last two months of \u201cThe Declaration\u2019s Journey\u201d<\/a> exhibition, the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia has added a seventh language to its audio guide: Ukrainian.\n<\/p>\n

The exhibition, showing how the Declaration of Independence inspired revolutionary acts globally, opened in October 2025 with an optional audio guide in six languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese.\n<\/p>\n

The addition of Ukrainian came through the support of the Ukrainian\u2019s First Lady Olena Zelenska. In 2019, she launched an initiative<\/a> to bring Ukrainian language material into museums around the world. The Museum of the American Revolution is the latest to become part of the initiative.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cThe aim of these guides is to ensure that wherever Ukrainians may find themselves, they can hear important things in their native language,\u201d Zelenska said<\/a>, \u201cand that Ukrainian can be heard freely, on an equal footing with other languages of the world.\u201d
\n\"FirstFirst Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska, who advocates for Ukrainian language materials in museums around the world, delivers a video message to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. (Still from video)\n<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian audio tour is not available for the museum\u2019s core exhibition, which is available in English, Spanish and French.\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s Ukrainian population<\/p>\n

There are now more than 135 museums in 59 countries that carry Ukrainian language materials as part of Zelenska\u2019s project, including the Alte Pinakothek in Germany; the Royal Delft Museum in The Netherlands; the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion Museum in Peru; and the Dallas Holocaust Museum in Texas.\n<\/p>\n

The Museum of the American Revolution is the only institution in the Philadelphia region to join the program.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a decent size Ukrainian American population and recent immigrants from Ukraine here in the Philadelphia region,\u201d said Matthew Skic, the museum\u2019s director of collections and exhibitions. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way to expand the accessibility of this exhibit.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia has the second-largest population of people of Ukrainian heritage<\/a> in the country, behind New York City. According to U.S. Census data, there are about 11,000 Ukrainian immigrants in Philadelphia, and roughly another 50,000 with a Ukrainian background.\n<\/p>\n

Skic is part of that population. His grandparents immigrated from Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up hearing Ukrainian spoken all the time. My dad still speaks Ukrainian,\u201d he said. \u201cMy grandparents are buried at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. So, it\u2019s particularly meaningful.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[20960,7345,69,71,70,26544],"class_list":["post-323649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-declaration-of-independence","tag-museum-of-the-american-revolution","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}