Pеволюція! Ukrainian audio tour added to Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution

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For the last two months of “The Declaration’s Journey” exhibition, the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia has added a seventh language to its audio guide: Ukrainian.

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.

The addition of Ukrainian came through the support of the Ukrainian’s First Lady Olena Zelenska. In 2019, she launched an initiative 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.

“The aim of these guides is to ensure that wherever Ukrainians may find themselves, they can hear important things in their native language,” Zelenska said, “and that Ukrainian can be heard freely, on an equal footing with other languages of the world.”

The Ukrainian audio tour is not available for the museum’s core exhibition, which is available in English, Spanish and French.

Philadelphia’s Ukrainian population

There are now more than 135 museums in 59 countries that carry Ukrainian language materials as part of Zelenska’s 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.

The Museum of the American Revolution is the only institution in the Philadelphia region to join the program.

“There’s a decent size Ukrainian American population and recent immigrants from Ukraine here in the Philadelphia region,” said Matthew Skic, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions. “It’s a great way to expand the accessibility of this exhibit.”

Philadelphia has the second-largest population of people of Ukrainian heritage 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.

Skic is part of that population. His grandparents immigrated from Ukraine.

“I grew up hearing Ukrainian spoken all the time. My dad still speaks Ukrainian,” he said. “My grandparents are buried at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. So, it’s particularly meaningful.”