Today, we devoted the morning to visiting the Tolerance Center, one of the three elements of the Vilna Goan State Jewish Museum. It’s only part of the larger VVGŽM, which also includes the memorial park we toured on Day 2 and a Holocaust exhibition. We decided to focus on the art, rather than the horror. After all, we came to discover Jewish life on either side of the Shoah, not more about the Shoah itself.
The largest, and by far most wonderful, exhibit at the Tolerance Center—which is really mostly an art museum—is a permanent exhibit of the works of Samuel Bak. I’m sure many of you know his work; I’m embarrassed to say that until yesterday, I didn’t.
There was also a large, and lovely exhibit of the works of Arik Brauer, an Austrian artist of whom Dominik is particularly fond. (Apparently, he is at least as well known—and perhaps better known—in Austria as a musician.) I particularly loved his Pesach series, exemplified here by a painting of the four sons.
Finally, there was an exhibit of artifacts from pre-war Vilnius, which were beautiful and moving. I’ve tried to only include a representative picture from each art show, and a few pictures from the artifact wing, because of course museums earn their keep by selling programs and getting visitors. Please don’t be fooled, then, into thinking these are small or unimpressive collections. They aren’t. We spent the better part of the day exploring them, and could have stayed longer.
If you find yourself in Vilnius, this is a must-see. And if you don’t, consider watching this brief piece from the NOVA series on Samuel Bak’s life and work. A piece of it was shown as part of the exhibit, and it gives such life and context to his work.
Tomorrow is a slow day, to rest up for a very long day as we take a trip to Linkuva and—we hope—the estate where my twice great grandmother (and maybe yours, too, with more or fewer “greats” attached) Sheva Baila ran the dairy while her husband, Joseph, taught in the Jewish school in town. We will probably do a bit of a self-guided tour of the larger ghetto, since we were rained out during our formal walking tour, and then do some more research ahead of what we hope is a trip to Kaunas on Monday, our last day here.
https://www.kunst-archive.net/en/wvz/samuel_bak/works/the_readers/type/all