Exhibitions, activities to mark Georgia’s National Museum Week

A five-day program including exhibitions of artwork and talks on contemporary museum spaces will mark this year’s National Museum Week in Georgia starting tomorrow.

Hosted by venues of the Georgian National Museum (GNM) network, the week will also mark International Museum Day. The annual date is celebrated by tens of thousands of museums around the world on and around May 18.

Seven venues in Tbilisi and the eastern Georgian town of Sighnaghi will host nearly a dozen events of the Week, including a scientific conference on challenges facing modern museums and the annual report of the GNM’s activities.

The museum week will include a display of artwork on the Georgian alphabet at Karvasla. Photo: Georgian National Museum.

The program will open at the Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia with a talk related to the theme of this year’s International Museum Day, titled Museums and Contested Histories: Saying the Unspeakable in Museums.

Director of Georgia’s State Museum of Literature Lasha Bakradze will speak about stories and facts "left out” of Georgia’s ancient and contemporary history to underline the importance of its fresh review.

Later in the week, a display of artwork created after letters and design of the Georgian alphabet will open at the Ioseb Grishashvili Tbilisi History Museum, also known as Karvasla.

The exhibition will focus on exploring the nature of the alphabet system which, while based on adherence to rules, features the innate freedom of the language.

Later in the week, organisers at another GNM venue will exhibit works by Polish painter Zygmunt (Ziga) Waliszewski, who worked alongside avant-garde painters in Tbilisi in the early 20th century.

The event will mark the 120th birthday of Waliszewski, who studied art in the Georgian capital and was a member of futurist painters’ circles in Georgia as well as Russia. His work in illustration, caricature and poster art resulted in a rich creative legacy.

A program of educational activities will conclude the week at the Giorgi Chitaia Open Air Museum of Ethnography in Tbilisi. Photo: Georgian National Museum.

In another highlight of the week, cultural and social currents in contemporary Belarus will be presented in a group display of 13 artists at the Karvasla venue.

Titled Space of Diffusion, the event will explore questions on perception of, and reaction to reality while taking a look at the creative work of contemporary Belarusian artists.

In a nod to the year-long celebrations of 25 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Georgia, the National Museum Week will also host paintings by German artists residing and working in Georgia in the 19th and 20th century.

Exhibiting creations by painters including Max Karl Tilke, Irina Steinberg and Oskar Schmerling, the event will celebrate the creative legacy of German settlers in Georgia at the Sighnaghi Museum in Georgia’s east.

The GNM said all activities of the week would be open to the public with free admission, with some of the events continuing after the conclusion of the week on May 20.

In addition, all GNM museum venues across Georgia will feature free admission on May 18 to mark International Museum Day.

Established by the International Community of Museums in 1977, the global date sees participating museums host exhibitions, conferences, public talks and other activities.

The date is marked with events running from a single day to a week-long program, with over 30,000 venues in more than 120 countries hosting celebrations.

The GNM has marked the date with its own National Museum Week for the past decade. Last year’s week-long program saw the museum network invite visitors for night-time activities at its venues.