Exegi Monumentum: Forms of Commemoration of Lithuania’s Writers
04.02.2021 – 2021.04.18
“I have reared a monument more enduring than bronze...,” the leading Roman lyric poet Horace wrote in his poem. We borrowed the first line of his poem as the title of our exhibition.
The commemoration of Lithuania’s writers can be compared to a crossroads of aesthetics, history and politics. Often we do not take almost any notice of the monuments that surround us. However, sometimes they ignite fiery debates. This exhibition is an invitation to pull back from the issues of the day and to look at the forms of commemoration of the writers from a century-old historical perspective. The tradition of creating various signs of perpetuation to national classics, which began with the Romantic era in Europe, reached Lithuania at the end of the nineteenth century, becoming an integral part of public life. With the change of political systems, some literary classics were replaced by others, the old ones were revised, and new signs of writers’ memorialization appeared. The exhibits, which consist of small coins and postage stamps that could fit in the palm of a hand, solid-looking portraits and massive monuments captured in photographs, tell the stories of eight writers, with an emphasis on a changing context and a flow of history. Have you ever wondered how such writers as Kristijonas Donelaitis, Simonas Daukantas, Vincas Kudirka, Julija Beniuševičiūtė-Žymantienė Žemaitė, Jonas Mačiulis-Maironis, Salomėja Nėris, Bernardas Brazdžionis and Jurga Ivanauskaitė have been perceived over time?
The exhibition “Exegi monumentum” is an exclusive opportunity to see exhibits housed at the National Library of Lithuanian and many other Lithuanian institutions in one place. The exhibits for this exhibition were lent by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, the Lithuania Post, the Money Museum of the Bank of Lithuania, the National Museum of Lithuania, the Maironis Lithuanian Literature Museum, the Trakai History Museum, and the Lithuanian Archives of Literature and Art. Private individuals: the family of Jurga Ivanauskaitė, Ksenija Jaroševaitė, the author of the sculpture “The Cat,” artist Ugnė Žilytė, poet Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, the laureate of Jurga Ivanauskaitė Literary Prize, and architect Robertas Mažeika, kindly gave us a few memorable exhibits, which form part of the exhibition dedicated to the writer Ivanauskaitė.
The project “Forms of Commemoration of Lithuania’s Writers in the 19th-20th Centuries” was supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. It has been implemented in cooperation with the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.
