The exhibition ‘Šiauliai Album’ is an attempt to rethink the city’s identity, to summarize the insights of past generations and today’s investigators and to review the collections of exhibits of Šiauliai Aušra Museum, dedicated to the theme of the city, whose exposition in the exhibition was complemented with the works kept by other institutions or lent by authors.

The exhibition opened at the Photography Museum on February 16, 2023 will run until October 8, 2023.

This exhibition, which occupies the exhibition spaces of as many as seven divisions of the Aušra Museum, like an album of the city’s symbols and relics of its self, reflects the moments of the city’s history, creating a picture of its identity. The passing time also changes the city’s face, new accents appear and the old ones disappear, but the city’s essence, its spirit remain. It is namely the spirit that shapes the townspeople’s self-consciousness and traditions, sometimes bursting forth in unexpected forms and signs.

The exhibition is an attempt to see this core of the city, which is not subject to time, to find evidence of its existence, to reveal how it determines the fate of the city and its inhabitants.

In each division of the Aušra Museum, we will turn a different page of the narration about the city’s past and present, and some stories will be continued outside the museum, in the city’s streets and squares.

The oldest streets in the city – Vilniaus and Tilžės streets – are the main axes of the urban framework of Šiauliai today, intersecting in the very centre of the city, in the core of the old town. These are also the busiest daily routes of Šiauliai people, criss-crossing the city, which outside the city, turn into arteries connecting it with the world.

The evolution of these streets is described in the part of the exhibition ‘Šiauliai Album’ in the Gallery of the Photography Museum.

The exhibition curator Vilija Ulinskytė-Balzienė

Co-curators of parts of the exhibition:
Vilma Karinauskienė (The Venclauskiai House-Museum)
Gabrielė Jasiūnienė (Šiauliai History Museum)
Jūratė Kaučikaitė, Birutė Lukošiūtė (Chaimas Frenkelis’ Villa-Museum)
Andrius Skuolis, Viktoras Gundajevas, Gintaras Miltenis (Studio of the Photography Museum)
Diana Vasiljeva (The Bicycle Museum)
Marius Morozas (The Radio and Television Museum)
Julius Vainorius (Žaliūkiai Millers’ Homestead-Museum)
Odeta Stripinienė (Resurrection Square, Square of the Cock Clock)
Žygimantas Ruškys (educational route)
Sigita Kupscytė (educational booklet)

Architecture, design: Justinas Dūdėnas, Jurgis Dagelis

Graphic design: Juozapas Švelnys

Sponsors:
Lithuanian Council for Culture
Šiauliai City Municipality

Information Sponsors:
Lithuanian Radio and Television
‘Etaplius’