Culture Minister Mindaugas Kvietkauskas is meeting with Vilnius Mayor Remigius Šimašius on Thursday to discuss the Lukiški Square memorial and concert hall issues.
According to the mayor's adviser Aleksandrs Zubriakovs, the meeting R. Šimašius seeks to get to know the new minister and hear his opinion on joint projects - the National Concert Hall on Mount Tauros, the Lukiški Square memorial - Laisvė kalva, as well as on other capital cultural projects in which the state participates.
Discussions regarding the arrangement of the representative state's Lukiškiau Square in Vilnius have been going on since the restoration of independence. The square was reconstructed last year, the competition for the memorial to freedom fighters announced more than a year ago was won by sculptor Andrias Labašauskas' project "Hill of Freedom", but its implementation got stuck due to the claims of the initiators of the competing "Vytis" sculpture in the courts, and objections from heritage conservationists.
BNS M. Kvietkauskas said that he hoped that the memorial would appear in the square and hoped that the models of the sculpture that would soon appear in the square would calm the skeptics. The model is planned to be built at the expense of the municipality in February.
The government and the Vilnius municipality have agreed that a modern concert hall should be built on the Taurus mountain in Vilnius, instead of the building of the House of Trade Unions, by 2023. It would tentatively cost about 50 million. euros. M. Kvietkauskas has named the project of the National Concert Hall among the most important works.
Author: Ignas Jačauskas
