This article aims to present the main aspects of the New Museology theory and discuss the possibilities of its adaptation in Lithuanian museum practice. To date, the New Museology theory, which was formed in the 1980’s and places the emphasis on the contextual presentation of artworks and the social role museums play in public cultural life, is not widely used in Lithuanian museum practice and a comprehensive survey of art museum permanent collection displays has not been carried out in regards to this particular framework. The first part of this article presents the New Museology theory and its historiography, including main authors, who have contributed to the formation and development of the ‘new’ theory. The second part presents an overview of different methods of display, including aesthetic, contextual/educational and white cube models. The third part shows how a recent establishment of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Lithuania completely ignored the New Museology theory and was based on the modernist view of art history, made popular in the Soviet period. Thus, it comes as no surprise, that the permanent collection display at the NGA has received a lot of criticism from various cultural and art historians and other academics. It is expected that the presentation of the main aspects of the New Museology theory and an assessment of a permanent collection display at the National Gallery of Art will help inform Lithuanian museum practice and form a basis for further studies in Lithuanian museological research.

The point of this article is to distinguish and characterize the waves of migration and departures by Lithuanian and Litvak artists that periodically took place in Lithuania since the middle of the nineteenth century, and to discuss artists’ experiences after they had left Lithuania. Artist migrations, moving to art centers is a part of European artists’ life. The artist profession throughout the ages has been considered to be inseparable from moving and networking. Studying abroad, travels, search for commissions, founding of artist colonies, working in residencies was, and still is, an element of a fully-fledged creative lifestyle. However, in this article, a different type of artist migration is being analyzed. A specific phenomenon of long term or complete retreat of artists from their homelands, determined not only by artistic goals but also by complex social, political or economic circumstances, is being analyzed. Artists started emigrating from Lithuania (and its surrounding territories) to the West in the middle of the nineteenth century and continues to this day. In this article, Lithuanian artists’ migration waves, from the end of the nineteenth century to the current day, are chronologically distinguished and systematically presented, intrinsic causes of emigration (and phenomena related to it – migration and re-emigration) are described and the problems of integration in new locations for artists, the effects of these problems on the artists’ identities are discussed. It is deduced that the causes of Lithuanian and Litvak emigration were often similar but the degree of adjusting differed. Many emigrated Lithuanians changed professions, unable or unwilling to adapt to intense international art lifestyle. Lithuanian emigrant artists even under politically hostile circumstances looked for a connection with their home country. Artists in exile managed to form connections and influence their countrymen who created in Soviet Lithuania.[...]