COURAGE

povezovanje zbirk

The Working Group was established on 25 June 1993 by the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania. The leader of the group was Dr Arūnas Bubnys, who was appointed by Gediminas Ilgūnas, the director of the Lithuanian Archive Department (today the Office of the Chief Archivist). Bubnys formed the team of the group, which later in 1995 became the Lithuanian Special Archive.

Wrocław Contemporary Museum (MMW) is a municipal cultural institution of the city of Wroclaw. The institution’s activity is of educational and exhibition nature, it also runs a rich social program, as well as regularly publishes exhibition catalogues and other publications. MMW’s concept is based on the idea of a Current Art Museum indented by Jerzy Ludwiński, whose archive makes one of the two permanent museum’s exhibitions; second permanent exhibition is Stanisław Dróżdż “Pojęciokształty”. MMW is placed in the former bomb shelter.

MMW was founded on 10 February 2011 with the decision of the Wroclaw City Council. The institution’s program was formulated by Piotr Krajewski and Dorota Monkiewicz, who based it on Jerzy Ludwiński’s idea of the Current Art Museum from 1966. It assumes simultaneous researching and catalysing artistic processes. Ludwiński – one of the most important theoreticians of the post-war avant-garde and from the mid-1960s related to Wroclaw – was a central figure for the institution’s creators. Museum was supposed to develop Ludwiński’s reflection on culture and his curator strategies, and on the other hand document and popularise his actions, and the artists associated with him. The second key figure for the MMW’s program became Stanisław Dróżdż, the most outstanding Polish creator of concrete poetry. Starting with those two characters the museum creators decided to focus the MMW’s activity on progressive streams and modern art phenomena, especially on those related to the Lower Silesia region, such as conceptualism, actionism, photomedialism, performance, and applied art.

Since the beginning the museum closely cooperates with Zacheta Lower Silesian Fine Arts Association, whose rich collection is an important asset of MWW’s repository. Besides operating strictly as a museum and a popularising institution, it runs an original social program, which combines artistic matters with the current issues of modern culture, social problems, and humanistic reflexion. This program includes numerous interdisciplinary projects, including those devoted to people endangered with social exclusion, as well as discussions, lectures, research reports’ presentations, and most importantly: a rich and diversified offer of educational workshops for the school pupils and other social groups.

Since 2 September 2011 MMW is placed in the former bomb shelter, built in 1942 accordingly to the project of Richard Konwiarz, Wroclaw citizens. A unique character of the building (in 2010-2011 appropriated to the museum’s purposes) – austere and monumental, with the ring layout of the interior – forces an original exhibition concept. The first director of the museum was a critic and curator Dorota Monkiewicz; whose place in 2017 was taken by an art historian Andrzej Jarosz.

Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) was founded by students at the Tartu State University in 1979, with the aim of doing something useful but not being related to the Komsomol organisation. The core of the movement was made up of Mart Laar, Lauri Vahtre, Heiki Valk, Mart Kalm and Tõnis Lukas. Most of the activists were history students, although the movement was open to other students too. Noor-Tartu had no permanent membership. There were ten to 15 more active members, but on the work days about 100 people altogether contributed to the movement. The exact number of people is not known, because they were never counted. Much more people took part in the open cultural events organised under the name of Noor-Tartu, including many writers and dissidents.

The movement was based on the example of the school student movement Kodulinn (Hometown), which was active in Tallinn. The idea was brought to Tartu by Mart Laar. Until the spring of 1981, the movement used the name Kodulinn, but it was forced to abandon it because the Komsomol organisation in Tartu formed a school student organisation under the same name to counteract and generate confusion (this organisation became unpopular and disappeared quickly). The new name Noor-Tartu came from the name of the writers' group Noor-Eesti (Young-Estonia), which existed in the first half of the 20th century.

Noor-Tartu carried out work in Tartu and its surroundings, especially in the Old St John’s Cemetery (part of the Raadi Cemetery). During the winter, its members collected antiquities from old suburbs for the City Museum. The point of these activities was to unite people through cooperation. The movement obtained a basement room in the city centre from the city administration, which they used to begin and end their work days, and for entertainment and cultural events (such as literary trials to judge figures in the national revival in the 19th century). These experiences were also used by members of the movement in later life.

As a movement without a legal status, Noor-Tartu was soon discredited by the authorities. It was particularly suspected of having connections with dissidents, which was an easier charge to make. Direct assaults begun in February 1983, after a work day under the announcement ‘Don't be afraid of anybody or anything!’ In the same spring, Lauri Vahtre was expelled from the university, and afterwards other activists in the movement were interrogated by the KGB. They avoided direct repressions, though. However, younger students, potential new members, were successfully influenced by the scare tactics of the Party organisation at the university and the dean’s office. Under these conditions, the movement attempted to ‘legalise’ itself, but it was unsuccessful. There was no organisation ready to take on responsibility for Noor-Tartu and risk new problems. The movement gave in to the pressure, and decided to halt its activities at the end of 1984.