After the Vilnius municipality commission called to announce a new competition for the monument to the interwar president Antanas Smetona, the Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys invites the municipality itself to express a clear position.
He emphasized to BNS that he has no reason to doubt the results of the competition.
"The Ministry has certainly not said that the project will not be implemented. The point is that we received a letter signed by the chairman of the Historical Memory Commission operating in the Vilnius City Council, which questions both the location and the artistic decision," S. Kairys told BNS on Friday.
"But looking at the position of the ministry, which we matured this week during the discussions in our team, everything is as it is: we can sign the contract, because the process has taken place, and the commission assembled to select the most suitable project has done its job, the decision is valid." On Monday, I will officially appeal to the Vilnius City Municipality that, with all due respect to the commission, but not from it, but from Vilnius city municipalities we have to get a clear position," the minister asserted.
Project "622522" won the tender announced by the former Government last October. Its authors Gediminas Antanas Sakalis, Kazys Venclovas, Indrė Rakauskaitė propose to place a sculpture depicting a book cover or postcard with a portrait of this interwar president in the space on Gediminas Avenue, next to the Government.
We missed the representatives of the municipality and Vilnius residents
Work was expected to begin this year.
However, the Historical Memory Commission of the Vilnius Municipal Council, led by council member Gediminas Jaunias, in a letter sent at the beginning of March, urged the Minister of Culture to hold a new competition.
According to the commission, the commission that selected the winning project did not include "representatives of the municipal administration and Vilnius residents", they were invited only at the initial stage of the competition, and only architects and sculptors selected the final works.
The commission calls for reconsideration of the "issues of the implementation of the project which, in the opinion of the majority of Vilnius residents and professionals, are inappropriate", that is, the artistic solutions, the budget.
"All members of society must be guaranteed the right to the quality of high-level artistic solutions. Therefore, we invite you to announce a new competition for the monument to A. Smetona", reads the appeal published by the news portal 15min.lt.
S. Kairys says that if the demands of the capital's politicians are met, then in the pursuit of any more modern solution to perpetuate history, "we will face the problem that no one will trust us anymore and artists will no longer participate in competitions".
For the work - over 200 thousand. euros
According to the authors' calculations, the monument should cost over 45 thousand. euros, and the entire implementation of the project - 233 thousand. euros.
The monument is planned to be erected in Vilnius near the building numbered 13 on Gediminas Avenue, on the other side of Vincos Kudirka Square. In this building, which stood in this place in 1918 and has not survived to this day, the Council of the State of Lithuania worked, its chairman was A. Smetona, and the first Cabinet of Ministers of the State of Lithuania, headed by Augustinas Voldemar and Mykolas Šleževičius, also functioned. The publication of the periodical informational publication "Temporary Government News" on the main laws and government orders of the independent Lithuania was also started here.
A. Smetona served as the President of Lithuania in 1919-1920 and 1926-1940. He died in 1944 in a house fire in the United States.
Lithuanians recognize the merits of A. Smetona for the restoration of Lithuania's statehood in the interwar period, the state's progress during that time, but his coming to power through a coup d'état and his departure from Lithuania in the face of the Soviet occupation are sometimes controversial.
President Gitanas Nauseda He named A. Smetona a symbol of Lithuanian statehood.
Author Ignas Jačauskas
