Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum to be known as the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History

 

The new name does not include the indication of the status of the museum (‘state’), just like the names of the vast majority of other Lithuanian state museums, which do not repeatedly indicate the status granted to them in their name.

Restored in 1989 and currently presenting permanent expositions, temporary exhibitions and various educational activities in three operating departments – the Tolerance Centre and the Samuel Bak Museum, the Paneriai Memorial and the Holocaust History Exposition – recently VGMJH has been placing greater focus on research into Lithuanian Jewish history. In the newly created branch of VGMJH – the Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews – we will focus on the historical context that formed the most striking phenomena of Jewish culture in Lithuania. The upcoming new exposition of the Jacques Lipchitz Museum in Druskininkai will present not only Lipchitz's work and connections with Lithuania, but also the history of the Jewish community in Druskininkai. The new Memorial Museum of the Holocaust in Lithuania and the Vilna Ghetto is underway. Research work continues in the territory of the Paneriai Memorial established to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and all victims of Nazism, and historical and documentary material is being collected and reviewed.

In order to emphasize the increasing focus on historical research, the name of the museum has been supplemented and explicated. It should be noted that the word ‘history’ in the activities of VGMJH covers all processes of cultural development, the most significant cultural and artistic phenomena, traditions and personalities, which are reflected in the collections of our museum. In doing so, we reveal that we are a museum dedicated to the presentation of Lithuanian Jewish history in a broad sense.