GRAND OPENING
The opening of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) will be an outstanding event of national importance. After the reconstruction, the museum is entirely renovated, restored and enlarged. A modern and accessible infrastructure and environment for visitors is created with innovative services for public learning and recreation following the visitor’s needs and interests. After the opening museum aims to be an important creator of the nation’s identity and intercultural dialogue, a place for community, as well a significant tourist attraction in Riga and Latvia. In its first year of opening, the museum plans to welcome more than 100 000 visitors.
Visitors will be welcomed to appreciate the new permanent display Latvian Art. 19th–20th Century (historic building, 2nd and 3rd floor) and two new temporary exhibitions devoted to significant Latvian artists: Miervaldis Polis. Illusion as Reality (Great Exhibition Hall in the New Block) and Boriss Bērziņš (1930–2002). Silver / Gold (historic building, 4th Floor Exhibition Halls).
Starting from 4 May 2016, the Latvian National Museum of Art will be open to the public six days a week – on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 to 18:00, on Fridays from 10:00 to 20:00, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 17:00. Every last Sunday of the month visitors will be able to visit museum’s permanent display free of charge. Museum will be closed on Mondays.
NEW PERMANENT DISPLAY
The new permanent display Latvian art. 19th – 20th Century for the first time covers two centuries of the evolution of art in Latvia. The main objective is to create a visual, emotional story of Latvian art development and its social, geopolitical and historical context. In the display, the most important authors and art works from each period are selected.
It is modern and visitor friendly display, arranged chronologically by the principle of stylistic and narrative forms. A novelty in the display are the artworks from the time period 1945–2000, covering the art that has been created while Latvia was under the Soviet occupation and in the first decade of independence in 1990’s. In addition to traditional art forms – painting, sculpture and graphic art – also art works of the photo, installation and video are exhibited.
Display begins with an insight in Baltic German art scene in the 19th Century in the territory of present-day Latvia. It continues with a significant key moment in Latvian art development in the turn of the centuries – the birth of a conscious national art school. The first Latvian painters (trained at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Art) supplemented their Academic Realism experience with influences of Impressionism and other movements in Europe. The key figures from this period are Vilhelms Purvītis (1872–1945), Janis Rozentāls (1866–1916) and Johans Valters (1869–1932).
Outstanding episode in Latvian art is the period of Classical Modernism. After the founding of the independent national state (1918), artists loyal to the Parisian school continued to introduce contemporary innovations recreating impressions of the movement of classical modernism – Expressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. Artists as Jāzeps Grosvalds (1891–1920), Jēkabs Kazaks (1895–1920), Niklāvs Strunke (1894–1966), Romans Suta (1896–1944), Aleksandra Beļcova (1892–1981), Ģederts Eliass (1887–1975) are among the most important ones.
After the First World War, some of the Latvian artists became involved in developing new art movements in Soviet Russia. Today they are known in the world as significant masters of the Russian Avant-garde. The most famous one is Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938).
The part of the permanent display with the art works from the second half of the 20th century begins with the introduction of Socialist Realism – the depiction of subjects commensurate with communist ideology. In 1956, after Stalin’s cult of personality, Socialist Modernism became current. It featured expressive and abstract forms that were permitted to appear within the bounds of themes acceptable to socialism. As an anti-modernist reaction, the 1970s saw the blossoming of Socialist Post-Modernism – the return to the mimetic image but rejecting ideological themes and developing independent concepts and subjective motifs. The artists which can be highlighted form this period are Jānis Pauļuks (1906–1984), Boriss Bērziņš (1930–2002), Džemma Skulme (1925), Edgars Iltners (1925–1983), Ojārs Ābols (1922–1983), Maija Tabaka (1939).
In the second half of the 1980s Latvian art was in the avant-garde of political events. The young generation artists of this age were known as trespassers. A powerful wave of Neo-Expressionism depicts metaphors of the collapsing Soviet empire and the drama of a passing age. Conceptualists interpreted the age more rationally. In the 90s painters turned to a taboo of the Soviet years – Abstract art. There were radical changes in the hierarchy of art media; installations, objects and performances dominated. As the most important artists of this period we can mention Ilmārs Blumbergs (1943–2016), Aija Zariņa (1954), Kristaps Ģelzis (1962) and Andris Breže (1958).
The information about the display is accessible in different cognitive levels. The artworks have a central role in the display but it is complemented with a multimedia infrastructure to extend the visitor’s experience.
In the new permanent display around 500 art works from the museum’s collection are set. It is housed in the 2nd and 3rd floor of museum’s historic building.
OPENING EXHIBITIONS
The new Great Exhibition Hall in the New Block will be opened with the solo show for one of the most outstanding Latvian contemporary art classic artists Miervaldis Polis (b. 1948) Illusion as Reality (04.05.–24.07.2016). It is the first show of such breadth, representing all the periods of Miervaldis Polis’ art. The creative career of Miervaldis Polis is characterised by reflections on the illusory nature of reality, search for identity, self-reflection of the individual and society.
For more than 40 years, this intellectually restless, passionate artist has strongly influenced the visual culture of Latvia, simultaneously being in its avant-garde and strengthening the understanding of classical values. His technically accomplished and stylistically essential paintings, postmodern collages and performances have become widely recognised symbols of the aesthetic and socio-political changes of the era, which brought forth a paradigm of new thinking in the art of the socialist period. The exhibition will display around 200 works of art from many significant Latvian and foreign museums’ and private collections – paintings, drawings, collages, as well as a wide range of documentary material structured in several thematic sections. The widest part of the exhibition will consist of portraits which has become the sole genre of Miervaldis Polis painting.
Exhibition Silver / Gold (04.05.–28.08.2016) in the 4th Floor Exhibition halls will be devoted to another great Latvian painter, graphic artist and pedagogue Boriss Berzins (1930–2002) representing the collection that museum received from the artist as a heritage. Boriss Bērzins was interested in the formal qualities of art. He was attracted by everyday life and simple things, shapes and line rhythms. The exhibition will show more than 50 oil paintings, collages with gold and silver plates and drawings of landscapes and abstract compositions.
More information: http://www.lnmm.lv/en/
