News archive

On May 6th, a photography exhibit documenting the current war in Ukraine was opened at VEMU (Estonian Museum Canada), where it will be available for viewing until the end of July. The exhibit could also be seen at Toronto’s City Hall from May 7th-13th and from the end of May through June at the Cotton Factory in Hamilton. The exhibit made it to Toronto thanks to the collaborative efforts of curator Kateryna Radchenko in Ukraine and Temur Khvingia from the Okapi Gallery in Tallinn, where it was opened on March 9th. Present at the opening of the exhibit at VEMU and Toronto’s City Hall were several leaders from Canadian Eastern European organizations, politicians, diplomats, and media representatives. The exhibition at City Hall was visited by over 50,000 individuals and people have already expressed interest in it on the west coast of Canada and Alberta.

HAMLETS was first produced in Latvia in 1936 to rave reviews, then co-opted by the Nazis in the early 1940s, and subsequently shuttered by the communists during the fifty-plus years of occupation. On September 17 at 7 pm, this major mainstage work by the Canadian/Latvian composer Jānis Kalniņš was screened for the first time in Canada at the Latvian Canadian Cultural Centre. The music was avantgarde at the time, with hints of jazz and Prokofiev; it deserves to be heard beyond the borders of Latvia. In January 2022, the LNOB staged a contemporary take on the same music. Gunta Dreifelde

VEMU (Estonian Museum Canada), located in Toronto, has announced a literary award in the name of the Canadian-Estonian writer Arved Viirlaid in honour of his 100th birthday. It will be handed out biennially on Viirlaid’s birthdate, April 11th, to an outstanding fictional written work that contains themes relating to Estonia and captures as well as conveys the essence of the country and its culture.

The Lithuanian Central State Archives received a shipment of valuable films from Chicago. The Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture has handed over to the Archives for digitization of the Motuza brothers’ films. Famous Lithuanian-American filmmakers, the pioneers of Lithuanian colour documentary filmmaking brothers Kazimieras and Mečys Motuza, captured life in pre-war Lithuania on 16 mm Kodak colour film: villages and towns, their architecture, monuments, festivals and people. According to the Lithuanian Central State Archives, all films will be scanned and made available to the patrons.

On March 23, an exhibition “Romain Gary: The Return to Vilnius” (French: Romain Gary: un retour à Vilnius) was opened at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.

The interviews and articles published in the book Laiko jungtys (Versus, 2021) cover a period of more than thirty years. The signs of time are fragmentary, perhaps incomplete, but many of the interviews have retained their authenticity and have become a document of a dynamic period. The collection of the interviews concerns the cultural field of the Lithuanian diaspora and the circumstances of its vitality.

The winter edition of the Baltic Heritage Network quarterly newsletter is now available. In these pages you will find information about our past and future events, new publications, and what is happening across the globe within the diaspora research and archive communities.

Followers of VEMU may have already noticed through social media and via other channels that our public image has been recently refreshed. In collaboration with Estonian design firm Velvet, we underwent an exciting rebranding process throughout 2021; this was an important stepping stone towards realizing VEMU’s new home. We are preparing for a stronger and rejuvenated fundraising campaign for this purpose and in order to do that, an in depth look at who we are, what we would like to achieve and how we want to appear to the world was necessary.

If there was a collection of documents that were surrounded by intrigue, the Gylys collection fits the bill. That is how a virtual exhibition „Long Journey Home: Great Discovery” by the Lithuanian Museum-Archives of Canada (LMAC) starts.

The Archive has served the Estonian community for 70 years by being the repository for the history of Estonian activity and achievement in Australia. It hosts visitors from all states of Australia and from overseas. The number of both local and overseas enquiries grows each year as descendants of the postwar immigrants research their family histories.