This autumn season the Lithuanian National Museum of Art introduces previously unexhibited in the country foreign and Lithuanian artists
The Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA) invites to come see its new autumn season exhibitions. The visitors will be offered the first Lithuanian appearances of the artists Maria Prymachenko and David Goldblatt. They will also see the artwork from the collection of the LNMA and from private collections. Visitors to the Lithuanian National Pavilion at the 60th Venice contemporary art biennial as well as to the Museum’s exhibitions, which are part the Season of Lithuania in France, are promised some unforgettable experience.
“The Lithuanian National Museum of Art welcomes this autumn with a new gust of creativity at home and on the international stage. We open a large-scale exceptional exhibition of Aleksandra Kasuba and Marija Olšauskaitė at the famous Contemporary Art Museum Carré d’Art in France; the art of 12 Lithuanian jewellery artists is already on at the Bijou Contemporain Museum of Cagnes-sur-Mer in a exhibition running through 8 December, while the fabulous spaces of the Fondation Fiminco invite viewers, on 8 October, to see Les Ambassadeurs, an event of contemporary Lithuanian art designed especially for the Season by the LNMA’s curators. Meanwhile, The Inflammation of Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė still keeps temperatures high at the Venice Biennial. In Lithuania, too, significant art events are about to open – the exhibitions of the grand master of humanist photography, David Goldblatt, and of the famous creator of naive art, Maria Prymachenko. Her collection arrives from Ukraine, still suffering from the Russian destruction. I am positive that the resourceful and professional team of the LNMA will take by surprise both art fans and the professionals,” Dr Arūnas Gelūnas, director general of the LNMA, speaks of this 2024 autumn season.
The programme of the autumn season of 2024 includes eleven exhibitions across Vilnius, Klaipėda and Palanga venues of the LNMA. The exhibitions will be accompanied by educational events, creative workshops, and open lectures. All displays of the LNMA are open to individual visits, booking a guide is also an option. A special feature are curator and artist-guided tours of the exhibitions.
The colourful world of Maria Prymachenko at Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art
October 15, Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art opens an exhibition I Give You Sunlit Art. A Collection of Maria Prymachenko’s Art Evacuated from Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum.
The artist Maria Prymachenko (1909 – 1997), elevated to the status of a national treasure in Ukraine, is one of the most intense creators of naive art worldwide, with her art deeply embedded in the Ukrainian heritage. Painting in gouache on paper, she created a unique world. Since 2022, her artwork was exhibited by the museums and galleries in Dresden, Kyiv, London, New York City, and Warsaw.
The LNMA continues to evacuate the art treasures from Ukraine and to present them in Lithuania: 100 paintings by Prymachenko were brought to Lithuania from Zaporizhzhya Regional Art Museum. A part of her paintings was destroyed by the Russian bombardment of the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv in February 2022. After arriving in Lithuania, Prymachenko’s works, which rank as the Ukrainian national treasure, went for restoration at Pranas Gudynas Restoration Centre and digitization by the LIMIS. It is the eleventh LNMA-organized exhibition of the art evacuated from Ukraine.
The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the charity organization The Prymachenko Family Foundation and LAWNET Ltd.
The National Gallery of Art presenting the art by the South African photographer David Goldblatt
Mid-November, the National Gallery of Art of the LNMA is opening an exhibition David Goldblatt (1930 – 2018), of one the most renowned artists of social documentary photography in the 2nd half of the 20th century. This exhibition is the first showing of his art in Lithuania, while the artist was linked to Lithuania: the Litvak grandparents of the world class artist were late-19th- century dwellers of a little Lithuanian town of Papilė in Akmenė region.
Goldblatt is acclaimed by art theorists as an artist compassionate to social predicaments and of high political awareness. He documented the abuses of apartheid-era South Africa, the racial discrimination and segregation. His work has entered the history of 20th-century photography as an important part of the global canon.
The photographer was recognized by the top world accolades, the ICP Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievements among them. His art was featured by the leading world art institutions, the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum NYC and MoMA among them.
The exhibition is organized in cooperation with Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, which helps the Goldblatt family with the management of the artist’s estate and the promotion of his creative legacy.
The LNMA venues in the capital showcasing the Latvian avantgarde, bringing into focus the expression of feelings and presenting Lithuanian emigree art returning to Lithuania
The venues of the LNMA in Vilnius – the National Gallery of Art, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art, Vilnius Picture Gallery, Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art will invite visitors to see ten new exhibitions.
Mid-October, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA will open NK-INTERACTIVE, an extended reality exhibition of the Inconvenient Film festival. Late November the museum will present an exhibition revisiting the 1980s and its iconic Latvian experimental art and avantgarde music group NSRD (Nebijušu Sajūtu Restaurēšanas Darbnīca – Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings) The group’s activity stood out through their variety and interdisciplinary approach: the members wrote music and lyrics, collective literary works, experimental music, created architectural visions, they embraced the genres of performance, video, actions in urban and natural spaces, and organized events. The legacy of this avantgarde phenomenon, their communal ideas turned into practice, their irony and unique aesthetics besides continuing relevance to the contemporary art creators in Latvia, encapsulate the shared quest for the creative and political freedom in the historic context of the Baltic region. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Latvian Contemporary Art Centre, researching the rich archive of the group. Late September and early October, the Radvila Palace Museum of Art will invite visitors of all ages and needs to meet for activities in a new creativity space, Educational Chamber.
Visitors to the Museum of Applied Arts and Design will be able to see a solo jewellery exhibition by Eglė Čėjauskaitė-Gintalė and the 7th International Jewellery and Metal Art Biennial METALLOphone.
This November, Vilnius Picture Gallery of the LNMA will invite visitors to see three new events. Among them, the exhibition of The Young Painter’s Prize, featuring the work of the young artists from the Baltic countries. An exhibition curated jointly by the art and medicine historians, entitled So What Kind of Clinic is This? will revisit 19th-century medical history in Vilnius. It will offer an opportunity to look into the cases of inpatients of the Therapeutical, Surgery and Obstetrics Clinics of Vilnius University, to learn about the instruments of medical diagnostics and the treatment methods, about scholarly publications and the renowned doctors of the period. Vilnius Picture Gallery will close its autumn season by opening an exhibition Senses and Sensations, offering visual expression of human sensations and emotions in the 16th – early 20th century fine and applied art, and the old publications by the Early Modern Period philosophers and scholars, quite often referenced by the artists. Simultaneously the changed permanent exhibitions of the gallery, Vilnius School of Art and Its Traditions and Portraits of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will be open for visit throughout the coming autumn.
At Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art, following the presentation of the art by Maria Prymachenko in October, early November will start with the first retrospective of the Australian-Lithuanian artist Jurgis Medgardas Mikševičius (1923–2013) in Lithuania. It will be mostly formed of 75 paintings and graphic works by the artist, which were gifted to the LNMA in 2023, successfully transported to Lithuania by the joined effort by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the Australian Lithuanian Foundation, and the artist’s family.
The coastal Museum venues showing flowers, fruit and spikes
October 11, Pranas Domšaitis Gallery of the LNMA in Klaipėda will present, to the seaport’s locals and visitors, an exhibition Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces. The curator of the exhibition Akvilė Anglickaitė invites to consider the role of the theme of nature, and in particular, of plants, in the work of contemporary artists. Is it a kind of escapism from overwhelming information noise and ecological threat?
The exhibition will be adjusted to the visitors with visual impairment. The participants of the exhibition are: Rūta Spelskytė, Uliana Damkienė, Donata Minderytė, Vitalijus Červiakovas, Gintas Kavoliūnas, Marija Marcelionytė, Vytautas Juozėnas, Adomas Danusevičius, Viktorija Makauskaitė, Marija Šnipaitė, Varvara Spilt, Daumantas Plechavičius and Aistė Valiūtė.
October 24, Pranas Domšaitis Gallery opens an exhibition by a pioneer of abstract painting in Lithuania Kazė Zimblytė Abstractions: Between Moods and the World compiled from her artwork in the collections of the LNMA. This past summer the exhibition was on at Pamario Gallery.
The gallery also features an updated permanent exhibition by the internationally recognized painter Pranas Domšaitis, Always on the Road, and a solo exhibition by the classic artist of fresco and mosaic, Angelina Banytė.
The Florentempus, an exhibition, which looks at the human efforts of self-perception through the link between man and nature, tracking the development of this link over centuries, is on at the Clock and Watch Museum of the LNMA in Klaipėda through 1 December.
The Palanga Amber Museum of the LNMA invites to see The Last Beach, an exhibition bidding good-bye to the summer through 13 April 2025. The paintings and photography work on display invite the visitors to consider their relationship with the Baltic Sea and the relaxing spa town in the context of the growing ecological issues and concern they cause.
This October-December, Pamario Gallery of the LNMA invites the locals and visitors to the Curonian Spit to take part in the events of the Migrating Museum. The exhibitions and meetings with artists will be accompanied by the local chefs’ masterpieces.
The Lithuanian National Museum of Art on the international stage
The LNMA intensely participates in the programme of the Lithuanian Season in France. Back in June, the LNMA opened a jewellery exhibition in Cagnes-sur-Mer in southern France, Tell Them of Amber, Metal, and Life: Contemporary Lithuanian Jewellery 1990-2023. In October, the LNMA, in collaboration with its partners, will invite French audiences to see two events at the Carré d’Art-Musée in Nîmes, Aleksandra Kasuba. Imagining the Future, and Marija Olšauskaitė’s The Softest Hard. An exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian art The Ambassadors /Les Ambassadeurs hosted by the Fondation Fiminco, in Romainville, Paris, opens 11 October.
The Lithuanian National Pavilion produced by the LNMA for the Venice Biennial presenting a joint project by the contemporary artist duo Pakui Hardware – Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda, and the artist Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933–2007) is still possible to visit.
The international audience is presented an exhibition which combines the experience by these artists, speaking in its images of the fevers shaking the humanity and the world. The theme of inflammation developed into a dialogue by Pakui Hardware with the art of M.T. Rožanskaitė, who analysed the connection between bodies and medicine back in the 1970s. The exhibition narrates of post(human) bodies feverish under the current economic and social circumstances. The canvases by M.T. Rožanskaitė and the Pakui Hardware installation follow the trajectory of the medicine/patient theme across natural, cosmic and industrial scapes. The exhibition in Venice has received 76 thousand visitors during the summer.
Other artwork by the artist duo Pakui Hardware is currently on display at the Radvila Palace Museum of Art of the LNMA in Vilnius. The exhibition Virtual Care looking at another aspect of contemporary medicine, that of robotic surgery and remote medical services, will be on through 1 December.
