Spring at the Lithuanian National Museum of Art: the established names of the Lithuanian artists, new art projects, and the National Pavilion in Venice
As the awakening nature treats us to longer daylight hours, the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA) invites to enjoy a new exhibition season. This spring, different subdivisions of the museum across Lithuania open 12 new exhibitions, among them, retrospectives of the iconic Lithuanian artists, projects of contemporary art, and an exhibition presenting the tradition of Ukrainian photography. The spring exhibition spree is not contained by the Lithuanian venues, the LNMA takes the Lithuanian artwork to the international stage. One of the key UK’s contemporary art centres, Tate St Ives will put an exhibition by Aleksandra Kasuba, while Eglė Budvytytė with her installation animism sings anarchy (gyva gyva-ta in Lith.) will represent Lithuanian at the 61st Venice Biennial.
“The Lithuanian National Museum of Art welcomes spring with a vibrant programme, solid exhibitions and creative projects in Lithuania and internationally. Our visitors are invited to revisit legendary Lithuanian artists, to discover contemporary art projects and get the feeling of the broader cultural contexts. The highlights of the upcoming season are Aleksandra Kasuba’s exhibition at Tate St Ives in the UK and Eglė Budvytytė’s project at the Lithuanian Pavilion in Venice. The programme invites to experience art in its prodigious diversity from the foremost names in the Lithuanian art to some surprising discoveries –like a show of the smallest exhibits in the collections of the LNMA, which will come to shine, this season, at the Amber Museum in Palanga,” Dr Arūnas Gelūnas, director general of the LNMA, gives a gist of the museum’s spring.
The first spring exhibitions to narrow the gap between the public and its legendary artists
The early spring bird signalling a new season has already opened at the Vilnius Picture Gallery, celebrating the artist, who earned the name of “a poet of the mundane”. The exhibition by Wincenty Sleńdziński titled With Heart and Eyes is an exhaustive presentation of the painter’s legacy, tracing also his complex life and career, the exile in the wake of the uprising, and his return to Vilnius after many years. Many of Wincenty Sleńdziński’s paintings, currently on at Vilnius Picture Gallery, receive their first public display in Lithuania. Another exhibition, Senses and Sensations, already on at the Clock and Watch Museum in Klaipėda invites to explore how the fine and applied pieces from the 16th to early 20th centuries render human sensations visible, despite these being elusive to the outward form.
On 19 March, the Pranas Domšaitis Gallery in Klaipėda opened an exhibition by Richard Pfeiffer (1878–1962), a painter of public sacral spaces. The artist earned his reputation in the Klaipėda region, by creating, in the 20th century, murals gracing the churches and other public spaces in East Prussia. The exhibition features his artwork from the collections of the East Prussian Regional Museum.
On 27 March, the National Gallery of Art of the LNMA opens an exhibition Virgilijus Šonta: the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. This singular in its scope retrospective of a photography artist unpacks the artistic idiom in the making, which in Šonta’s case was propelled by the search for personal freedom, yet suffered repression by the institutional boundaries. The story of his turbulent life and tragic fate emerges from his biographic documents and records, which go back to his studies at the Kaunas Polytechnical Institute, his activities at the Lithuanian Society of Art Photography, speak of the life under the KGB’s watchful eye, his hidden identity and ties with the US.
New April exhibitions will feature monumental porcelain sculpture pieces, Charkiv Photography School, a miracle working sacred image and a feast of design
On 2 April, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA will open a solo exhibition by Mindaugas Navakas Yesterday and Long Before, presenting his most recent monumental porcelain sculpture pieces. The exhibition explores the cultural and historical context of porcelain, referencing also the current geopolitical realities, as the porcelain used in the pieces on display comes from the presently defunct – damaged by shelling – Zeus Ceramica factory in Sloviansk, the Donetsk region.
On 8 April, the Vilnius Picture Gallery will open one-painting exhibition presenting an image of Our Lady of Sokal by an artist of the late 17th – early 18th C. artist, a copy of the miraculous painting located in the Bernardine Monastery in Sokal, Ukraine. The exhibition will cover the history, iconography, provenance and the process of conservation and restauration of the painting.
On 23 April, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art opens an exhibition Ukrainian Dreamers: The Kharkiv School of Photography presenting one of the key phenomena of the contemporary Ukrainian art – a community of photographers who emerged in the 1960s, branding themselves through their experimental practices and critical take on political and social reality. The exhibition presents an overview of the development of the school from the soviet years through the present day, showcasing the art born in the conditions of ideological censorship, later, capturing the turning point towards independence, the onset and continuation of the war. The themes emerging in the exhibition will be further developed at the international academic symposium, held on April 24 – 25. It will discuss the amateur photo clubs in the former USSR and the satellite countries as sites of artistic experimentation, nonconformist practice and creative collaboration.
On the occasion of the International Design Day, the Applied Art and Design Museum of the LNMA, starting on 21 April, will arrange displays of design work inviting the public to reflect on their everyday environment and the role of design plays in it. It will also include an introductory island into Tadas Baginskas’s legacy, as a prelude to a late May event, a comprehensive exhibition celebrating the 90th anniversary of one of the foremost figures of Lithuanian design. The event is going to embrace different stages in the career of Baginskas and different aspects of his practice, design and pedagogy, and to present his designs, inclusive of the architectural projects, authentic artefacts, archival documents, and contemporary artist’s interpretations and dedications to the professor of design.
Lithuanian creatives to be presented on the international scene
On 2 May, Tate St Ives in England opens an exhibition Shelters for the Senses by the Lithuanian-American artist Aleksandra Kasuba (1923–2019) curated by Tate St Ives Director Anne Barlow in collaboration with the LNMA curator, senior researcher Elona Lubytė. The show will cover the seven-decade prodigious career of the artist from her early paintings and mosaics to later sculpture pieces, projects in public spaces and her innovative spatial environments, a broad range of Kasuba’s artwork from the collection of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, where the artist donated her works.
A publication, to be put out by the Tate publishing division, in collaboration with the LNMA, will accompany the exhibition. A symposium dedicated to the art by Aleksandra Kasuba will be held on 30 May at the Tate Modern in London. It is being organized by the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, the Tate research centre organizing international symposia, seminars and other events with a mission of expanding stories of art and exploration of the movement of artists and ideas transculturally.
For the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Eglė Budvytytė will represent Lithuania. Her practice embracing song, video and performance, explores the persuasive power of collectivity, vulnerability and permeable relationships between bodies and the environment. From 9 May through 22 November, her new film installation animism sings anarchy will be shown in Venice at the National Pavilion. Inscribed on 16mm, animism sings anarchy is a performative and poetic attempt to translate archaeological research and materials into songs, feelings, movement, and altered states. Commissioner of the Lithuanian Pavilion is Dr Lolita Jablonskienė, Director of the National Gallery of Art of the LNMA, the event is curated by Louise O’Kelly, a London based independent curator and founding Director of Block Universe, an international performance art festival.
May exhibitions to bring the smallest museum’s exhibits close-up and contemporary art explorations of the disappearing boundaries
On 12 May, the Palanga Amber Museum will open an exhibition Small Is Beautiful showcasing the tinniest exhibits in the collections of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art.
On 13 May, the Pranas Domšaitis Gallery opens a retrospect The Worlds of Jurgis Mikševičius introducing the legacy of the Australian-Lithuanian artist. The exhibition features 77 paintings and prints from the collection donated by the artist’s daughters Carolyn Leigh and Helena Miksevicius to Lithuania, and a part of the painter’s private archive.
On 22 May, the National Gallery of Art will open an exhibition Margins and Miracles by Vsevolod Kovalevski. The site-specific installation celebrating the politic and poetics of the queer archive takes inspiration from the first Baltic Pride march in Vilnius in 2010 – full of tensions and confrontation, it stirred a new wave of solidarity.
The spring season ends with a contemporary art event Borders of (In)Security, opening on 28 May at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art. It will consider the increasingly eroding concepts of geographic, meteorological and national borders, and their interface with the digital reality and biological world.
Like the awakening nature, this spring programme of the LNMA is a profusion of colours, stories and artistic experiences to be enjoyed not only at home: the artwork by the Lithuanian artists goes abroad to inspire international public. The information on the exhibitions and other events is posted on the LNMA’s website and social media.
