Throughout the Night: Reflections on the Exhibition Between Dawns and Museum Collection Policy

The exhibition Between Dawns, currently on view at the National Gallery of Art, presents works that have been added to the collection of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA) between 2015 and 2025. From more than 22,000 works, a carefully curated selection is displayed in the main hall. This exhibition not only reflects the conceptual choices of the curators but also offers insight into the cultural memory preservation strategies and collection policies of art institutions in Lithuania. What features of these policies become visible in the exhibition? What does this collection reveal about history, the present, and the shifting concept of photography (and) art?

Photo by Laima Kreivytė

Laima Kreivytė is an independent curator, writer, artist, and associate professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She has curated over 60 exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad, including the Baltic Pavilion at the 3rd Prague Biennale, the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the 20th–21st century permanent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and Unframed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė at KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn and the M. K. Čiurlionis Museum in Vilnius. She exhibits with the collective Cooltūristės and hosts the LRT radio show From the Balcony.

Photo by Tomas Petreikis