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.

Straipsnyje analizuojamas XX a. pradžios Lietuvos dailėje itin paplitusio kraštovaizdžio su kryžiumi tipas. Atsekamos jo ištakos XIX a. pradžios romantizmo epochoje, tolesnė raida realizmo bei nacionalinio romantizmo meninių krypčių kūriniuose. Kraštovaizdis su kryžiumi, laikomas lietuviškosios kultūros savastimi, aptariamas atsižvelgiant į platesnį europinį dailės kontekstą, atrandama jo analogų Vokietijos, Lenkijos dailėje. Taip atsiskleidžia bendrumai ir savitumai.

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.[...]

Architectural views in art show when and where a work of art was created and give physical space for the depicted subject. Visionary views of architecture give an illusion of desirable epoch and reveal possibilities of the artist‘s imagination under the sway of particular time rhetoric. In Lithuania, townscapes and views of architecture took off in the 19th century and evolved in two ways – documentary and visionary views. As both were created by the same artists, the depicted object is also the same – memorial architecture such as castles, residences and churches. Such selection was determined by historical circumstances and patriotic and romantic rhetoric of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Artists were attracted by destroyed or damaged buildings which associated with the lost might of the state and idealized past of the nation. Citizens and artists remembered the architectural objects which had been changed or ruined. These buildings became blank spots of the townscape in peoples’ memory. Artists reconstructed the lacking elements and tried to fill the vacuum. In this way, old castles, churches and medieval old towns were reborn in the visionary townscapes of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. These townscapes were often collected from single imaginative details or old written and iconographic sources like puzzles (for example, works of Sigizmundas Čaikovskis, Marcelinas Januševičius, Juozapas Kamarauskas and others). The present article analyzes visionary views of Lithuanian cities and architecture, basing on historical sources and artifice. The biggest part of the visionary reconstructions is efforts to restore the destroyed and changed views of the buildings and city fragments. Different value of these works was determined by the lack of historical knowledge and accessibility to it and subjective interpretations and aims of the artists. [...].

In this article, the aspects of national self-awareness in the Lithuania of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries are ventilated by invoking biographies and creation of artists. Tadas Daugirdas represents the members of such posture, who want to acknowledge the peculiarities of the Lithuanian nation and to express them in creation. Stanislovas Vitkevičius represents the ones under the influence of polonization; the posture of those, who while speaking Polish, though still feeling as the offspring of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, markedly lean to the Polish culture. The aim of this article is to analyze the creation of artists who represent different postures of national identity, revealing possible interactions between the artistic ideas and decisions taken by the persons themselves with regard to the national dependence. The commonly used formulas (the components of which may be language, historical memory, customs, and traditions) are not meant for defining the national self-awareness of the Lithuanians of the analyzed period. Every person tackled the dilemma of being either Lithuanian or Polish individually and “drew“ the dividing lines inside themselves. It was difficult to take the decisions and they were accompanied by both external and inner conflicts. A wish to integrate into the Lithuanian nation and to create a national state was a big challenge, which meant conflicts with the bigger part of the members of the landed nobility and the change of the social position. The expression of national peculiarity in the fine arts’ creation was influenced by the dominant trend of the art at the particular time. It sometimes turns out that what was thought to be peculiar and unique, when looking from the common European art’s context assumes the touch of universality.[...].