From evading the tsar’s gendarmes while reminding the world of an occupied land, to presenting itself as a young state capable of appealing to Western tastes, Lithuania was required to show considerable ingenuity at world exhibitions at the turn of the 20th century.
An international exhibition, On the Wave of Paris Exhibitions: Ethnography, Cultural Diplomacy and Identity, is on display at the Lithuanian National Museum's (LNM) House of Histories.
It reconstructs Lithuania’s appearances in Paris at the 1900 and 1937 World’s Fairs, as well as the 1935 Baltic Folk Art Exhibition. Each presentation took place under a different set of circumstances for Lithuanian statehood.
“The exhibition – which is particularly relevant today – reveals the power of culture,” said Dr Miglė Lebednykaitė, head of the museum’s Ethnography and Anthropology Department and one of the exhibition’s curators and concept authors. “Culture is the face of a nation and a state, and it functions as a diplomatic tool.”
A ‘mysterious land’
The Paris exhibition artefacts are being shown together for the first time. Preparations began five years ago, and new items are still being identified.
The scale of the project is striking: objects have been gathered from Lithuanian and international museums, archives and libraries, alongside new academic research and historical reassessments.
While the grand spaces of Paris’s Trocadéro Palace cannot be recreated, the exhibition offers carefully chosen visual cues and detailed narratives, immersing visitors in a dense flow of information.
The project was made possible through collaboration with Marseille’s Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (Mucem) and the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art.
Loans also came from museums in Šiauliai, Latvia and Estonia, as well as libraries and archives in France and Lithuania. The Lithuanian National Museum of Art contributed contemporary artworks responding to ethnographic heritage.
Almost all the exhibits originate from the Paris exhibitions themselves. Many were once held at the Trocadéro ethnographic museum, later inherited by the Musée de l’Homme, before being transferred to Mucem in 2013.
The journey across the exhibit begins with Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian kanklės – traditional string instruments.
“The exhibition aims to explore what national identity is and how it is formed. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the French imagined Lithuania as a mysterious land. Its folktales and the music of the kanklės captured this image well. In fact, folk songs and kanklės players were understood as symbols of Lithuanian national identity,” said Raphaël Bories, associate curator in the Faiths and Religions department at the Mucem museum.
‘We exist!’
In 1900, Lithuania was still part of the Russian Empire. Yet a small display labelled Lithuanie appeared in the Trocadéro vestibule – a bold political statement declaring the existence of a distinct people, language and culture.
The initiative came largely from Lithuanian émigrés in the United States, who came up with the idea of reminding the world that the Lithuanian nation was still alive and revealing its distinctiveness.
Exhibition committees were formed across Europe and East Prussia, working secretly with Lithuanian intellectuals. Artefacts were collected from villages at a time when museum traditions barely existed.
All of this was done in secret, risking capture by the Tsar’s gendarmes. Exhibits were smuggled to Paris in a traditional dowry chest, avoiding the tsarist authorities.
The display included a rich library of Lithuanian-language books, highlighting the theme of book smuggling. The first issue of the first Lithuanian-language newspaper Aušra was also on display.
The main task at the LNM House of Histories was to recreate the central Lithuanian section of the exhibition – a diorama depicting a betrothal scene inside a traditional Lithuanian farmhouse. It was within the peasants’ living environment that the features of traditional life and national identity had been preserved.
The artist Eimantas Ludavičius modelled a figure of the bride’s mother based on an old portrait photograph of Petronėlė Lozoraitienė, the grandmother of diplomat Stasys Lozoraitis Sr.”
A pair of gloves
According to Lebednykaitė, Lithuania’s participation in the world exhibition did not go unnoticed – the Lithuanian section won twelve awards. Dr L. Laloy wrote an article about Lithuania in the journal La Nature, beginning with its history and concluding with impressions of the exhibition.
“A nation that refuses to die deserves respect and sympathy,” he wrote in the widely read publication.
Some exhibits were donated to the Trocadéro museum, one of Europe’s oldest ethnographic institutions. “Even without statehood, Lithuania managed to present itself in a way that was accepted and valued internationally,” said Dr Lebednykaitė.
One of the exhibition’s most evocative stories centres on a pair of knitted gloves.
One remained in France after the 1900 exhibition. It remained hidden the dowry chest that secretly transported it to Paris with other exhibition items for more than a century. It survived two world wars, but due to neglect suffered extensive damage from moth. Its “sister” glove, Lebednykaitė discovered, had remained in good condition in the LNM collections.
The original dowry chest itself was only identified in 2024 and is now also on display.
Independence and recognition
At the 1935 exhibition Folk Art of the Baltic States, Lithuania presented itself as an independent nation for the first time, creating a need to showcase the image of a sovereign state. The exhibition was again held at the Trocadéro Ethnographic Museum.
At that point, the Baltic countries were displaying museum-quality exhibits demonstrating national craftsmanship and distinctiveness. “For example, the Galauniai family home in Kaunas possessed valuable folk art objects,” said Lebednykaitė.
A key figure in organising the Paris exhibition was the art historian Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr (1903–1988), who had settled in France in the mid-1930s. According to curator Raphaël Bories, it was thanks to Baltrušaitis that he began studying the Lithuanian collection at Mucem.
By 1935, Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr was already one of France’s leading medieval art historians and had connections with the country’s intellectual circles. In addition to his research, he worked at the Lithuanian Embassy in Paris and lectured at Vytautas Magnus University (VDU).
For the exhibition catalogue, Baltrušaitis wrote an article reviewing Lithuania’s history, comparing Lithuanian art with examples from medieval France, and presenting Lithuania as part of the Western world and a custodian of European values.
Well-versed in Western European artistic taste, he understood what would appeal to French audiences. The catalogue’s introduction was written by his renowned teacher, Henri Focillon, which further contributed to the exhibition’s popularity. The show attracted large audiences and received praise from leading figures in French art.
Lithuania’s distinctiveness at the Paris exhibition was showcased through cross-crafting, while Latvia focused on jewellery and Estonia emphasised woodwork and wedding beer mugs.
Photographs of the Paris exhibition, uncovered with Bories’ assistance, enabled a more accurate reconstruction of the old Lithuanian display at the House of Histories.
The pride of the room is a portrait of the opera soprano Adelė Nezabitauskaitė-Galaunienė, painted by Olga Dubeneckienė. The painting was loaned for the exhibition by Galaunienė’s daughter, Dalia Galaunytė, aged 102, who lives in the United States.
Beside the painting, a wedding crown and a set of large amber necklaces from the Galauniai family museum are also on display; these were worn by the subject of the portrait.
The task of locating Olga Dubeneckienė’s painting, which had remained in the United States after the 1939 New York World’s Fair, was undertaken by art historian Professor Ramutė Rachlevičiūtė, who published a book on the artist and ballet performer in 2022.
She contacted Galaunytė’s son from her first marriage, Algirdas Kaupas, who travelled “a thousand miles” to visit his mother and photograph the portrait, beginning a five-year journey to return the painting home.
Initially, Dalia Galaunytė was reluctant to part with the artwork, as it reminded her of her mother each morning. According to Lebednykaitė, the portrait had been a daily connection to her mother, separated from her permanently by war and occupation. It is now hoped the painting will remain in Lithuania for good.
“This is the only formal portrait in national costume featuring a real opera star, our Violeta – Adelė Galaunienė. She is dressed not in stage costume but traditional attire. Interestingly, the artist was Russian and had moved to Lithuania after the Bolshevik Revolution,” noted Rachlevičiūtė.
The journey to Paris
At the 1937 World’s Fair, Art and Technology in Modern Life, the Baltic states again participated together in a single pavilion, demonstrating cultural and political solidarity.
This time, professional artists represented the countries. At the House of Histories, visitors can explore how they travelled to Paris in 1937, which exhibitions they visited, and which leaflets helped them navigate the displays.
For example, an item loaned from the Aušra Museum shows what the transit visa issued to 13 participants on the trip looked like. The choir of Vytautas Magnus University meticulously documented their journey with a camera, and these images are presented in the exhibition on digital tablets.
Rachlevičiūtė noted that, for couples barred from a church marriage – which was the only form of marriage recognised in Lithuania at the time – the exhibition became an excuse to travel to Paris and exchange rings.
Heads held high
Miglė Banytė, curator of the Applied Arts Department at the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, explained that the young Lithuanian state was eager to integrate into Europe and the wider world.
“The Lithuanians left the exhibition with their heads held high. Forty-four artists received 58 awards, including several Grand Prix. The appearance was regarded as Lithuania’s international recognition and the emergence of its professional artists on the global stage. This notion was reflected in the pages of the national press,” Banytė said.
The Lithuanian hall was dominated by a massive figure of Juozas Mikėnas’ Rūpintojėlis, with Adomas Galdikas’ Lithuania triptych displayed on the back wall.
The House of Histories was able to recreate Galdikas’ work, though that required ingenuity, including modifications to the ceiling structure.
Woodworms
One of the House of Histories exhibition’s distinctive features is the inclusion of contemporary art interventions, woven into the dense, multilayered fabric of ethnography, cultural diplomacy, and identity by art historian and curator Jolanta Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė.
Alongside historical and ethnographic objects, visitors can see works by contemporary artists including Andrius Erminas, Laura Garbštienė, Morta Jonynaitė, Žilvinas Landzbergas, Lina Lapelytė, and Laura Stasiulytė.
“The contemporary art interventions in the exhibition aim to create imaginary bridges between past and present; they are a kind of ‘woodworm’ into our time. We wanted to explore which themes remain relevant and how, through the perspective of contemporary artists,” Marcišauskytė-Jurašienė explained.
The international exhibition On the Wave of Paris Exhibitions: Ethnography, Cultural Diplomacy and Identity at the Lithuanian National Museum will run until September 13, 2026 at the House of Histories, Tado Kosciuškos Street 3, Vilnius.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
