On 7 December 2010, the audio and video exhibition “A Glimpse of Jung Vilne” was launched at the Centre for Tolerance of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. On display are the artworks and historical written documents from the museum stocks. Ilona Murauskaitė, the curator of the literary and documents collections, organised the exhibition.

Displayed are works by the avant-garde writers and artists movement of Jung Vilne (1929–1943): Bencion Michtom’s graphic works and watercolours; and works by Rafael Chvoles, Sheina Efron and Rachel Sutskever. The movement’s writers are represented by verses of Abraham Sutskever, Chaim Grade and others that were translated from Yiddish into Lithuanian for the first time. There is a recording of poetry by Abraham Sutskever and Peretz Miransky recited in Yiddish, Lithuanian and English. 

Director of the VGSJM greets the audience

Markas Zingeris, director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, opened the show, taking pleasure in the fact that the exhibition had been enriched with the audio and video recordings, which gave visitors the chance to listen to the poetry by members of the Jung Vilne movement in Yiddish, Lithuanian and English.

 Dr Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, director of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, spoke at the opening of the exhibition, emphasising the historical importance of the Jung Vilne avant-garde movement in the European context.

Ilona Murauskaitė, the curator of the exhibition and the editor of the catalogue, spoke shortly about the concept of the exhibition, reminding the guests that the last member of the Jung Vilne movement, Abraham Sutskever, died early this year, and the event pays a symbolic tribute to him.

Audelin Chappuis, the cultural attaché of the French Embassy and deputy director of the French Culture Centre who spoke at the end of the opening ceremony, introduced the exhibition that is on at the mediatheque of the centre in Vilnius about the member of the Jung Vilne movement Sutskever. The Judaica Art and History Museum in Paris presented the exhibits to the centre.

Francois Laumonier, the French ambassador, Helmut Koller, the Austrian ambassador, Radek Pech, the Czech ambassador, Joao Manuel da Cruz Silva Leitao, the Portuguese ambassador, and Irena Veisaitė, the musicologist, were among the guests at the opening of the exhibition.  

Ilona Murauskaitė, curator of the exhibition

Moment from the opening of the exhibition

Photographer Sebastian Pammer