Georgia’s museums host night-time events for Museum Week 2016

It is not often that museums remain open until the early hours of the morning but that is exactly what is happening in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi this weekend.

This Saturday, May 21, nine venues of the Georgian National Museum (GNM) network will host a range of educational and entertainment events marking the end of National Museum Week.

From 9pm until the late evening hours visitors can enjoy lectures, interactive games, theatre shows and tours of the museums in capital Tbilisi and three other cities. Entry to the museums on Saturday night will be free.

Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi will be part of the evening celebrations on Saturday May 21. Photo from the Georgian National Museum/Facebook.

The evening program, named Night at the Museum, will conclude the GNM's celebration of National Museum Week, which launched on Tuesday.

At the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi, visitors can see a unique version of the theatre play Pirosmani - A Vision, where people and animals from paintings by famous Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani will become stage characters played by professional actors, puppets and disabled children.

Meanwhile at the Ioseb Grishashvili Tbilisi History Museum (also known as Karvasla), groups of painters, poets and Tbilisi historians will present their works within the Night at the Museumcelebrations.

People who want to learn more about Georgia are encouraged to visit Karvasla and listen to three researchers of Tbilisi city history, who will narrate a detailed story of the rich cultural history of Georgia’s capital city.

The Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography will be one of three regional venues hosting Museum Night. Photo from the Georgian National Museum.

At the same venue visitors will be able to listen to poets perform readings of their works, enjoy a musical performance by invited Iranian artists or see five Georgian painters create a piece on the theme ‘Oriental World’.

Oriental themes will also be the subject of the evening events at the Literature Museum, where well-known authors and critics Ana Kordzaia-Samadashvili, Lasha Bugadze and Rati Amaglobeli will read passages from the famous Georgian medieval poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin.

Children visiting the museum will be invited to paint scenes from the historic literary work, while the yard of the venue will host an exhibition and book sale of old books.

Three other museums in Tbilisi will open their doors for Night at the Museum celebrations on Saturday, May 21. These venues are: The Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia and Elene Akhvlediani House Museum.

Meanwhile several museums in Georgia’s regions will host tours, music concerts and exhibitions within the Night at the Museum events.

Venues in Akhaltsikhe in southwestern Georgia, in Kakheti region and in the north-western mountainous region Svaneti will all open their doors for the night-time celebrations.

National Museum Week has been held in Georgia since 2009. This year's celebration also coincided with International Museum Day, marked on May 18.