Idea for new Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum still lives

Aug 13, 2009
By Rokas M. Tracevskis

VILNIUS - Vilnius can have its Guggenheim Museum despite the current economic crisis, say Vilnius municipality officials. On August 5, a discussion named ‘Guggenheim – an unavoidable good?’ was held in news agency ELTA’s offices. Vilnius’s vice mayor Gintautas Babravicius, and some representatives of the Lithuanian art world, took part.

The envisioned Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum will present collections of modern and contemporary art from the New York Guggenheim Museum and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg of Russia. In April 2008, an international jury named Zaha Hadid, a British-Iraqi architect, the winner in the international design competition for the museum.
The Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum also would have a permanent exhibition of the Fluxus art movement, which flourished in New York during the 1960s, and was led by Lithuanian-born artist Jurgis Maciunas.

The permanent exhibition also would include works by Lithuanian avant-garde film-maker Jonas Mekas, who lives in New York. Such stars as Spanish painter Salvador Dali and Yoko Ono, wife of John Lennon, have acted in his psychedelic films.
Earlier, there were also some discussions about a special hall in this future museum for the art created by the Litvaks (a traditional name for Jews with family roots in Lithuania) from all around the world.

“The idea of the revival of the project appeared in February. There is a working group of 12 Vilnius municipality employees, and I’m its head,” Babravicius said.
“We can build a local and original museum, hiring the best specialists of the world for such money, instead of propagating this international brand,” said Gediminas Urbonas, contemporary artist awarded with a special Venice Biennale 2007 jury award.

“We’ll study the alternatives as well,” Babravicius replied.
Thomas Krens, who was a director of the Guggenheim Foundation for two decades until February 2009, visited Babravicius a week before the discussion at ELTA’s offices. “He came to find out if the project is still alive and proposed his consulting firm’s service,” Babravicius said, adding that the proposal will be considered.

In 1991, Krens negotiated the unique partnership between the Basque regional government and the Guggenheim Foundation, which produced the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. It was opened in 1997. Bilbao’s Guggenheim transformed a derelict industrial town, and the entire Basque country of Spain, into a major international tourist attraction that has come to be known as the “Bilbao Effect.”
The Lithuanian taxpayers have already paid 200,000 litas (57,790 euros) towards the project. The cost of the museum’s construction is estimated to be about 70-84 million euros. According to Babravicius, the museum could be built using private financing.

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