Exhibition "The Romanticisms", July 1, 2025 - January 11, 2026.
Emerging as a counterpoint to the rationality of classicism and sweeping across Europe, the new direction of art and literature – romanticism – opened up space for feelings, dreams and individuality. The genius of the creator began to be boldly exalted, spiritual values were raised above material ones, and those looking for moral support or inspiration were encouraged to boldly turn back to the centuries-old past. In Lithuania, romanticism "took a long time" – instead of giving up its position in the second half of the nineteenth century. The realism that emerged in the West turned into neo-romanticism, or national romanticism, which inventively used means of expression of symbolism, art nouveau and other styles.
The reason for this peculiar transformation is the specific political and cultural situation of Lithuania – having forcibly become a part of Tsarist Russia at the very moment when voices praising the freedom of the individual and the nation began to spread from the West, withstood the failed uprisings of 1830–1831 and 1863–1864, survived the deaths and exile of the bravest, this land clung to its traditions even more firmly than ever. For centuries, the songs of Romanticism with pen, brush and piano keys tirelessly created a picture of the majestic Grand Duchy of Lithuania – a country of dreams and time drowning in the fog of nostalgia, a space in which the nation could survive.
The starting point of the exhibition was chosen in 1822. The first volume of Adomas Mickevičius' "Poetry" was published in Vilnius – after all, it was at Vilnius University that the Vilnius School of Romanticism, common to Lithuanian and Polish culture, emerged and flourished. The end is marked by the beginning of the First World War (1914), which led to major historical, political and social changes in the region, and at the same time delineated the thematic and chronological boundaries of the Vilnius Picture Gallery.
The narrative of the exposition was created contextually, i.e. in such a way as to illuminate the connections between the processes here and to differ from international aesthetic and social topicalities. Thus, the exhibition invites us to look at romanticism as a cultural entity in which various types of art, politics and social changes are closely intertwined, all together creating a complex, multifaceted, and in the case of Lithuania not always "romantic" narrative.