CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE, VILNIUS

About the organisation

The Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (CAC) presents a range of international and Lithuanian contemporary art exhibitions, organises conferences, lectures, Internet projects, film screenings and musical evenings. The CAC publishes catalogues and booklets for these events. It also maintains an INFO LAB, where the public can access books, journals, videos, CD/DVDs and the Internet.

The building was inaugurated in 1968 as the Art Exibition Palace, and was run as a branch of the Lithuanian Museum of Art until 1988. Since1992, the CAC has been an independent separate institution principally funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.

Nature of its activities

The CAC is the largest venue for contemporary art in the Baltic States total and one of the largest art institutions in Post-Soviet Europe: with exhibition space of 2400 square metres. The CAC is committed to developing a broad range of international and Lithuanian exhibition projects and also presents a wide range of public programs including lectures, seminars, performances, film and video screenings, and live new music events.

Since October 2004, the CAC has produced its own show for commercial Lithuanian television (see CAC/TV http://www.cac.lt/tv). In the experimental spirit of the CAC every episode is a pilot, and every program is the final episode, imagine:

An amorphous group of social misfits and cultural outcasts are handed the reigns of a fledgling television program. Not having any experience in making television, they decide to re-invent the medium. CAC/TV is a time-slot for imagining alternate realities.

Presentation and exhibition policy

The Contemporary Art Centre organises approximately five/six large-scale exhibition projects per annum (including retrospectives, surveys, and international group shows) in conjunction with up to 15 smaller projects. The CAC is well known internationally as the home of the Baltic Triennial of International Art one of the major contemporary festival exhibitions in Northern Europe; 2005 is a Triennial year.

In the last five years the CAC has presented retrospectives and solo exhibitions of work by some of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as: Georg Baselitz, Tonny Cragg, Max Ernst, Nam June Paik, George Maciunas, Man Ray, Bridget Riley, and Andy Warhol. The CAC has also commissioned special projects by young generation internationally recognized artists, such as: Emmanuelle Antille, Knut Åsdam, Pierre Bismuth, A K Dolven, Elke Krystufek, Katarzyna Kozyra, Jonathan Monk, and Joao Penalva.

Selected major international art projects include: Slow Rushes: Takes on the documentary sensibility in moving images from around Asia and the Pacific, 2004; Dutch Bureau: Contemporary Art Projects from The Netherlands, 2004; 24/7: Vilnius/New York (visa para), 2003; Nothing: Exploring the Invisible in the Contemporary Art, 2001; Desiring Eye (Retrospective of Photography from the Modern Museum in Stockholm Collection, 2000); Can You Hear Me? (2nd Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art, 2000); Cool Places (7th Triennial of Baltic Contemporary Art, 1999); 80/90 Mirrors of Our Time (Selections from the International Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, 1999); Twilight (international new media art exhibition, 1998); Dimension 0 (International festival of performance art, 1997); Funny versus Bizarre (Contemporary art from the Nordic and Baltic countries, 1997); Aurora 6 (Triennial of young artists from the Nordic countries, 1995).

For more information about CAC, Vilnius visit http://www.cac.lt