Arūnas Gelūnas

Artist, Cultural theorist, Curator of museum exhibitions, and Director General of The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Lithuania

Arūnas Gelūnas has a background in arts and philosophy and was enrolled as a researcher of Japanese painting and calligraphy at Tokyo University of the Arts. Currently he is the director general of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (since 2019) and a commissioner of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Gelūnas recently curated an exhibition of Soviet dissident art, Protest Art: The Rebels of the Soviet Era, at Radvila Palace Art Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania (2020), and initiated and curated a series of exhibitions from Ukrainian art museums formed of artworks evacuated by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art from Kyiv, Odessa, and Lviv museums under Russian attack, including the exhibition Magnificent Refugees of War: Masterpieces of 16th–18th Century Western European Painting from the Collections of the Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery. Between 1997 and 2010 he taught printmaking, ink painting, and the philosophy of art at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and Umea Academy of Arts, Sweden, and Japanese art history at Vilnius University. From 2010 to 2012 he served as the minister of culture of the Republic of Lithuania, and from 2012 to 2016 he was the permanent representative of Lithuania and ambassador to UNESCO. He has published scientific articles, translations, and essays, and edited and compiled books on philosophy, cultural studies, art theory, art pedagogy, and history, including Art Studies: Between Method and Fancy (Vilnius Academy of Arts, 2006), Museum of Friends: The Collection of Vladimir Tarasov in the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2020), and Protest Art: The Rebels of the Soviet Era (Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2022). His research interests include Lithuanian and Western art of the second half of the twentieth century and the twenty-first, Japanese classical and contemporary art, artistic expression under totalitarian oppression, and contemporary trends in museology.

The Diverse Roles of Lithuanian Culture and the Arts Today. From the Nucleus of National Identity and the Education Tool to the Leisure and Therapy Destination

Presentation examines the most recent tendencies in the world of Lithuanian Culture and the Arts – from flourishing Arts festivals (Cinema, Contemporary Dance, Jazz, Classical Music, Theatre) to the opening of the new and fascinating museal institutions and their attempt to become the spaces for meaningful social exchange and even the adoption of the therapeutical functions – providing the possibility to relax after the stressful working days. Many concrete examples from the realm of the performative and visual arts of the last decade will be demonstrated.