Disagreement over monuments: cultural planning of national jubilees and public spaces in Vilnius

ABSTRACT

This article explores the emergence of a new cultural policy phenomenon in Lithuania: the debate about public spaces and monuments and its role in urban cultural planning. Between the 1940s and1980s state socialist cultural policy built and transformed public spaces without any discussion involved in the process. In contrast, contemporary cultural policy appears to cause endless controversies. These controversies have followed political decisions to endow Vilnius public spaces with socio-historical meaning via monument-building. By focusing on public critique and disagreement about key cultural events, which include the state sponsored national celebrations Vilnius, European Capital of Culture 2009, the Centennial of the restored Lithuania (2018) and reconstructions of urban public spaces, this study explores the new phenomenon of cultural policy controversy as an example of democratic cultural planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• national jubilees
• pubilc spaces
• Vilnius cultural planning

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their comments. I would also like to sincerely thank the guest editor Eglė Rindzevičiūtė for her help and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although in 2013 the idea of culture as part of creative economy and emphasis on culture and creative industries was introduced in Lithuanian cultural policy documents signifying the neoliberal turn of culture policy and the strengthening of the discourse of Europeanisation (Trilupaitytė 2015, 159–194).

2. Some researchers criticized post-Soviet urban regeneration (Grazulevičiūtė-Vileniškė 2014), but Lithuanian cultural management research tends to draw on optimistic theoretical models, disregarding failures (Trilupaitytė 2015, 176–194).

3. For instance, the NGA was planned to open in 2007, to mark the centenary of the first exhibition of Lithuanian art (1907).

4. ‘Restored Lithuania 100’ http://www.lietuva.lt/100/en

5. ‘2009-iesiems Lukiškių aikštės sutvarkyti nespės’, www.lrt.lt, 2 October 2008. https://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/2009-iesiems-lukiskiu-aikstes-sutvarkyti-nespes.d?id=18737454

6. As was noted in March 2015 by the Chancellor of the Government, who commented on the plans to commence the reconstruction of the square for the upcoming state Centennial, all the uncertainties about the future plans for the monument are embedded in nuances of cultural heritage, obscurity of the land borders and uncertainty of financing: ‘One thing is the political decision, another is bureaucracy; see all those competitions that already happened. The lawyers must tell us if there should be new competitions, or there could be the same results we already have, or maybe we should eventually bring new results,’ BNS (29 March 2015) https://www.tv3.lt/naujiena/829234/lukiskiu-aikste-tvarkomu-objektu-sarase.

7. For example, in 2012, relatives of the émigré architect Jonas Mulokas offered to donate a wayside cross designed by the architect to be placed in this square instead of a monument.

8. ‘Resolution Regarding Urgent Actions in Redeveloping the Lukiškių Square in Vilnius, and Building There a Memorial Commemorating Lithuanian Freedom Fighters, for the Occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Restoration of the Lithuanian State’ (April 2017), https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAP/e8a4ca202b1911e79f4996496b137f39.

9. The only three criteria written in the requirements of the competition stated that the memorial must honor the memory of Lithuania’s Freedom Fighters, take into account the space and scale of the newly reconstructed square and be viable in terms of a final budget not exceeding 500,000 euros.

10. BNS (27 November 2017) https://en.delfi.lt/culture/vilnius-central-square-monument-contest-winner-says-sculpture-tradition-is-dead.d?id=76476551.

11. A deputy director of the Cultural Heritage Department, speculated that this memorial project ‘violates the 2010 conclusion of the Immovable Cultural Heritage Council, which suggests that the Lukiškės Square in central Vilnius should be flat’. BNS (29 November 2017), https://en.delfi.lt/culture/lukiskiu-memorial-short-of-heritage-rules-cultural-heritage-dept.d?id=76491751

12. ‘Restored Lithuania 100’ http://www.lietuva.lt/100/en

13. See www.delfi.lt (19 September 2010) http://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/rusijos-ambasada-lietuva-draudzia-tvarkyti-paminklus-sovietu-kariams.d?id=36688291

14. As Baločkaitė noted,‘the Minister of Culture, Šarūnas Birutis, signed a law amending the criteria for cultural artifacts to be listed as heritage. From now on, objects marked with Soviet symbols will not be included in the Register of Cultural Heritage; however, the Department of Cultural Heritage has yet to decide how to protect objects with such insignia that have already been included in the register’ (Baločkaitė 2015 no page).

15. The writer Cvirka has been recognised as a significant figure in Lithuanian literary history. However, Cvirka legitimised the country’s occupation by the Red Army as a member of a puppet delegation comprised of important political and cultural members who went to Moscow to ask Stalin for Lithuania’s accession to the Soviet Union in 1940. Cvirka was also known for betraying his fellow writers while serving as the head of the Writers’ Union in Soviet Lithuania.

16. BNS (19 April 2018), https://en.delfi.lt/culture/commission-suggests-removing-monument-to-cvirka-in-central-vilnius.d?id=77760063

17. Ibid.

18. The Lithuanian Artists Union and the Lithuanian Writers Union issued statements asking to save this public square, because it contains a unique historical statue from the late 1950s.

19. ‘Soviet Lithuanian author in the crosshairs of memory politics’, www.lrt.lt (23 October 2019)https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1109475/soviet-lithuanian-author-in-the-crosshairs-of-memory-politics. However, although a plaque detailing the horrors of Soviet occupation was installed to accompany the Green Bridge sculpture group with a soldier, it did not help secure the statues in situ.

20. I. Jačauskas, ‘Kultūros paveldo departamento direktorius: P. Cvirkos paminklo negalima nukelti’, www.15min.lt (25 October 2019) https://www.15min.lt/naujiena/aktualu/lietuva/kulturos-paveldo-departamento-direktorius-p-cvirkos-paminklo-negalima-nukelti-56-1222250?copied

21. ‘Soviet Lithuanian author in the crosshairs of memory politics’.

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Skaidra Trilupaityte

Skaidra Trilupaitytė is Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute. She is the author of two monographs: “The Power of Creativity? Criticism of the Policy for Neoliberal Culture” (2015), “The Life of Lithuanian Art and the Changes in Institutions: The End of the Soviet Era to the Beginning of the Independency Era” (2017). Academic interests: cultural policy and city regeneration, (post)soviet culture institutions, discourses of creativity, neoliberal governance, art and politics of artificial intelligence.