©STUDIO LIBESKIND
A 4,000-piece collection of contemporary Lithuanian art will find a permanent home in a Daniel Libeskind–designed museum, due to open in the country’s capital, Vilnius, in early 2019, The Art Newspaper reports. The museum—a first of its kind for Lithuania—will occupy a 33,400-square-foot site, situated between the city’s medieval quarter and a new public piazza.
“This collection is about the cultural legacy of the country,” said Viktoras Butkus, the former director of the biotechnology company Fermentas. Butkus, along with his wife, Danguole Butkien, provided both the collection and financial backing for the museum through their nonprofit Modern Art Center, which the pair founded in 2009.
Designed as both a literal and symbolic “gateway” connecting the old sections of the city with the new, the museum will contain a number of pieces from Lithuania’s Soviet era, previously unexhibited by other major Lithuanian museums. Along with the collection, the museum will also house a cafe, a bookshop, educational facilities, and an auditorium. Construction on the museum, which will cost about €5 million (or about $5.37 million) to build, is slated to begin in 2017.