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FLORENTEM

2023



exhibition design

Florentem (Latin for 'flowering, flourishing, abundance'), tells the story of a never-ending attempt to explore and capture the elements of living nature. Fragile and predictable, yet at the same time elemental and full of surprises, flora has constantly stirred the human imagination, and when translated into works of art and literature, plants, especially flowering ones, have over time acquired the gift of language that man has given to them and that has manifested itself in symbols. Importantly, the world of vegetation, real and on paper or canvas, was also one of the few "permissible" spaces of female self-expression.


In order to reflect these themes in the Lithuanian and wider European context, the exhibition is divided into five thematic parts: botanical science, the history of gardens and parks, plants in religious art, floral expression and 'language' in secular art, and the importance of vegetation in the artistic and scientific activities of 19th century Lithuanian women. In the exhibition, one can find not only 17th-18th century still-lives of flowers and saints surrounded by blossoms, but also images of historical Lithuanian parks, portraits of botanists and their tools of work, valuable publications, and many other unexpected exhibits. One of the exhibition's greatest intrigues is the boudoir, which allows the visitor to peer through a keyhole into the private space of a creative woman.

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Curators - Aistė Bimbirytė-Mackevičienė, Ramunė Savickaitė, Dalia Tarandaitė, Joana Vitkutė

Exhibition architect - Sigita Simona Paplauskaitė

Graphic design - Jonė Miškinytė

Lighting designer - Mantas Markevičius

Photography - Gintarė Grigėnaitė

Organisers - Vilnius Picture Gallery, Lithuanian National Museum of Art 

 

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