In interwar Lithuania, cleanliness and hygiene were important areas for ensuring public health and well-being. Sewerage systems began to spread in cities, and modern plumbing equipment was no longer surprising in residential buildings. Homemaking courses were organized, lectures were given, and booklets on handwashing and disease prevention were published. Women spared no money for their beauty.

The situation in villages and towns was worse. There was even a lack of outdoor toilets, and cockroaches or fleas often visited homes. People also suffered from scabies, which developed due to unsanitary conditions and lice infestation. Home-made products were used to maintain cleanliness: lye, handmade soap, etc.

The exhibition aims to familiarize visitors with the attitude towards cleanliness and hygiene in Lithuania in the 1910s–1940s. Inconvenient aspects are highlighted: the fight against parasites and neglect, the problem of toilets. The contemporary understanding of cleanliness, intimate hygiene products, everyday objects, and prints are presented. The work of artist Beatričė Milkevičiūtė „Žalioji mėsmusė (Lucilia sericata)“ created especially for the exhibition is also exhibited.

The Open Air Museum of Lithuania archive contains over 11 thousand drawings made during expeditions by students of the Institute of Arts (now Vilnius Academy of Arts) and the Vilnius Engineering and Construction Institute (now Vilnius Gediminas Technical University). Some of them later became famous artists and architects. The objects for the drawings were selected by museum staff. It is very important that detailed metrics and dimensions were recorded.

The archive also contains 122 drawings by one of the most famous Lithuanian artists, the original 20th century graphic artist Elvyra Kairiūkštytė (1950–2006): 63 agricultural implements, 22 household items, 15 folk architecture objects, 12 fabrics, 10 pieces of furniture. They were painted in 1973–1974 in the districts of Anykščiai, Biržai, Ignalina, Kupiškis, Panevėžys, Pasvalys, and Utena. It is likely that these are the artist’s only ethnographic drawings.

The exhibition features 52 works. They are distinguished by their precision and meticulous execution, and it is not for nothing that E. Kairiūkštytė is called a master of lines. They are like color photographs, from which it would be possible to make a copy of the drawn object.

From July 1, the exhibition will be on display at the Pušalotas house in the museum’s town.

From July 3 to October 15, the Kaišiadorys Museum exhibition “A Spoonful of the Past: The Training of Housewives in Interwar Lithuania, 1918–1940” will be on display at the Firefighters’ Shelter of the Lithuanian Ethnographic Museum.

The exhibition invites you to take a look at the education, domestic culture, and everyday life of Lithuanian housewives in the interwar period.

“…how to find that Moses who would lead you through the desert?”

Each of us has our own desert, in which we are born and whose image is only an illusion to us. Each of us receives a name, religion, nationality – an infinite number of things that we cannot choose, and we identify with them. The goal of each of us in such circumstances is to free our mind and embark on a search for Moses. Those who can, find Moses within themselves. Those who cannot, find him in their immediate environment. Those who cannot – remain in the desert.

The search for Moses means the search for the purpose and meaning of each of our lives. All of us, according to our environment, abilities, and understanding, must find our mission, which we must implement in this life. This is our way out of the desert. However, in searching for meaning and purpose, we must also discover ourselves, but on that path of search we cannot destroy what we find in it.

The axis of the exhibition is Moses – a fragment of a sculpture created by Jakovs Bunka in 1986 in memory of the Jewish community of Plateliai town. Over time, the original wooden sculpture of Moses in Plateliai rotted and fell apart, and in 2018 it was replaced by a copy created by sculptor Antanas Vaškis. The only intact fragment of the original sculpture is Moses’ face. Copies of this fragment later became works by artists from Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Israel in the exhibition, in which each of them searched for and tried to reveal their true selves.

“…life brings us to many places, some are doing better, others are a little worse, but each of us must find our own path and role.”

The exhibition will be on display from 2026. August 1 to October 9

Such a title would vividly reflect the many connections, not only known and clear, but also not fully revealed, only conjectural, connecting the painting “A Feast in the Palace of Siesikai Manor” (1889) and its author, the famous Polish artist Franciszek Kostrzewski (1826–1911), with Lithuania.

And those connections are very diverse, starting with P. Kostrzewski’s teachers at the Warsaw School of Art (now the Warsaw Academy of Arts), who were very closely connected with Lithuania – Professor Marcin Zaleski (1796–1877), who painted scenes of Kaunas and Vilnius, with Chrystian Breslauer (1802–1882), who often sent students to Lithuania for summer internships, and whose brushwork includes romantic scenes of Trakai Castle, or with fellow students Wojciech Gerson (1831–1901) and Józef Simmler (1823–1868), who often turned to Lithuanian motifs and the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in their work.

The ties with Lithuania are related to P. Kostżewski’s travels to our country, starting during his student years and continuing later – together with painters from the Warsaw Bohemian circle, painting natural scenes in nature, traveling to Trakai or during the artist’s individual visits to Lithuania, Samogitia and the Panemunė estates owned by famous Lithuanian noble families, described in his “Diary” (“Pamiętnik”, 1891).

Kostżewski is also brought closer to Lithuania by patriotic themes – the wounded young rebel and his old father depicted praying at a roadside chapel pillar seem to symbolize the joint struggles of both nations for the independence of their countries in the uprisings of the 19th century.

And where are the links with Lithuania, illustrating Adam Mickiewicz’s poem “Mr. Tadas” and with Vilnius, where he participated in exhibitions at least four times at the end of the 19th century. In 1891 and 1893. The Warsaw “Salon Artystyczny” in Vilnius organized exhibitions of Polish painters, in which P. Kostżewski participated. His works were also exhibited in 1897 and 1899 in Vilnius at large, joint exhibitions of Lithuanian and Polish artists, organized by Warsaw residents and sponsored by the Lithuanian banker and philanthropist Juozapas Montvila.

It is much more difficult to reveal the connections of the painting itself with Lithuania – they can only be guessed at. The painting entered the Open Air Museum of Lithuania in 1986 together with other exhibits from Samogitia – the Mantvidiškės manor in Šarnelė manor (Plungė district), and the painting was named so at that time by the well-known museum worker, long-time director of the Kretinga Museum, Juozas Mickevičius (1900–1984). How the painting appeared in Samogitia and what is the origin of its name remains a mystery. Perhaps it was purchased at the popular art salon of Aleksander Krywult (1845–1903) in Warsaw in the summer of 1889. at a large personal exhibition of P. Kostzewski, and from there brought to Lithuania? Perhaps the painting was purchased by the Daugėla nobles – the then owners of Siesikai Castle – for their famous art collection? The archives of Siesikai Castle have not survived. The painting’s connections with Lithuania remain a mystery. At least for now.

Exhibition location: Manor in Open Air Museum of Lithuania.

The exhibition authors: Ina Dringelytė and Neringa Norvaišaitė. The poster author is N. Norvaišaitė.

Dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Open Air Museum of Lithuania.

The Open Air Museum of Lithuania began its existence on January 1, 1966. On this day, an order of the Minister of Culture announced the founding of this museum. In those days, the museum had no physical body – neither premises nor the land area where we are now. A creative process began that lasted for many years and continues to this day. However, in the time we are talking about, the Open Air Museum of Lithuania existed only in the ideas of its first employees and its council, who shaped its future image.

What were those ideas?

The Soviet era is an extremely controversial period. It is a time rich in ideology, full of universal fear, surveillance, lies, and silence. It is difficult for a contemporary historian to study it. Documentary evidence paints a completely different picture than the stories of contemporaries. Illegibly crossed out places in the text, missing pages are followed by significant omissions, and the real instructions were often never written down. Finding reality in a distorted image is a difficult task.

Just as truth hides among lies, completely different ideas can sometimes be hidden among communist ideology. A phenomenon of Soviet-era bureaucracy is institutional informalism. This is a process during which an institution, for various reasons, stopped functioning for the purpose for which it was created. Most often, it is a negative phenomenon. An institution intended to serve society, but in which people’s needs are not satisfied without bribes or acquaintances, functions only for its own sake. And what if an institution with a negative purpose deviates from its original purpose?

This museum was built by people with various experiences and the ideas conditioned by them. These ideas did not appear out of nowhere – some brought them from the still independent Lithuania, others successfully adopted them. In an environment surrounded by ideology, they were united by one idea – Lithuanian ethnography.

By setting up the museum, they created a reduced image of Lithuania’s past. The diverse Lithuania, as it was and is – occupied and free, fighting and adapting.

We invite you to enjoy this work, born sixty years ago, today.

Exhibition location: Rectory barn in museum’s town.

Exhibition curators
Justas Rimavičius, Ramūnas Bučas, Milda Šemeklytė

Exhibition designer
Daiva Zubrienė