The history of the Šiauliai Aušra Museum, one of the city’s oldest cultural institutions, is directly connected to Šiauliai. In anticipation of its 100th anniversary (March 11, 2023), the museum continues its mission of presenting the city’s identity, culture, spirit, and the museum itself as well as its place in the city’s history. This anniversary is about making sense of deep traditions and accumulated experience and conveying them to the public through thematic events and activities for the people of Šiauliai and the city’ s guests.

One hundred years ago, the intellectuals of the society and culture of Šiauliai city created a museum with the idea that it would nurture and represent the past heritage and historical memory of Šiauliai region. As the generations of museologists changed, the activities of the Aušra Museum expanded both in Lithuania and abroad, but at the same time, they also focused on the importance of the history of Šiauliai. It is not surprising that when planning the activities of the centenary, the museum workers set a goal to actualize the city’s historical and cultural identity, to revive the historical memory that forms the residents’ identity, to enhance the image and prestige of Šiauliai as a historical city and the city residents’ heritage protection approaches, to create an aesthetic and creative environment of the city streets, and to reveal the spirit and peculiarity of the old town.

The Aušra Museum invites you to develop the theme of historical memory and identity in the newly established places of memory in the old town of Šiauliai. A neo-fresco has been created in the arch leading to the yard of the Photography Museum, which will give meaning to a new art space in the city – a street gallery. The neo-fresco, created based on a photograph of an unknown author stored in the collections of the Aušra Museum in Šiauliai, depicts a Jewish family on Tilžės Street in Šiauliai around 1935. The work is dedicated to the memory of the large Jewish community that existed in Šiauliai until World War II. The neo-fresco was created by Lina Šlipavičiūtė-Černiauskienė, a monumentalist artist with Šiauliai roots, who moved it onto the wall together with metal artist Lauryna Kiškytė.

The gallery created in the arch leading to the yard of the Photography Museum (Vilniaus St. 140) and the house at the address Tilžės St. 164 will attract people’s attention, make them pause, carefully look, get to know and feel the history of the city and the people who created it through art. It will also draw attention to the historical architecture, which may be passed by every day without recognizing its historicity.

The historical storms not only changed the composition of the city’s population – there are few old Šiauliai residents who remember and can pass on the experiences of the historical past to their descendants and this way maintain the continuity of memory. The historical events also changed the shape of the city, erasing or nullifying the heritage of the city’s historical architecture, which testifies to its historicity. It is expected that through art, the outdoor gallery will stimulate the interest, discussions, and cognition of the city’s residents and guests as well as open up a new space for creative ideas interpreting the themes of the city’s history and identity for its artists.

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In order to preserve and give meaning to the memory about Jankelis and Estera Fainbergai, the former owners of the current Photography Museum building before World War II, a miniature was created on the building from the side of Vilniaus Street (author Lauryna Kiškytė).

The work uses a photograph of grandchildren of the Fainbergai, taken by an unknown photographer (from Estera Šeinkman’s archive) in Šiauliai around 1936-1937.

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The project was implemented by:

Šiauliai Aušra Museum
Photography Museum

The project was sponsored by:

Šiauliai City Municipality
Lithuanian Council for Culture