Post-Soviet Writing of History: The Case of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius Cover Image
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Post-Soviet Writing of History: The Case of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius
Post-Soviet Writing of History: The Case of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius

Author(s): Linara Dovydaitytė
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts
Published by: Eesti Kunstiteadlaste Ühing
Keywords: National Gallery of Art (Vilnius); national identity; modernist canon; museum; post-Soviet; revisionist history of art; site of memory; history writing

Summary/Abstract: This article concentrates on the problems of history writing in contemporary Lithuania through the case study of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, opened in 2009. The museum is conceived as a site of history writing through its strategies of selecting, contextualising and displaying artefacts. Analysis of the museum's permanent exhibition shows how the critique of the modernist canon of art history collides with residues of socialist modernism, thus forming a specific post-Soviet narrative of history. This article also focuses on the process of establishing the new museum in order to reveal how this site of history writing is perceived in the public imagination of contemporary society.

  • Issue Year: 19/2010
  • Issue No: 03+04
  • Page Range: 105-120
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English