Collect. Preserve. Disclose. The Museum Detective

It is no coincidence that the title of the exhibition “Collect. Preserve. Disclose” resembles the slogan of the police. In it, we present the collection of the Vilnius Museum, in which exhibits often serve as clues to reconstruct the stories of residents of Vilnius and of the city itself. A cigarette case tells the story of the postwar relocation of the city’s Polish residents, while a vinegar bottle tells the story of Vilniaus degtinė, one of the oldest companies in the city, which still operates in the same place today.

The museum’s researchers often play a role as detectives. They look for clues in details, they question witnesses, they find connections between objects, events and people, and they recover forgotten stories. In this exhibition you will find 36 such cases, both solved and unsolved.

We take you behind the scenes and show you how the museum works. How do the exhibits come to us? What do the museum staff actually do? What lurks behind the door with the “No Entry” sign? What does the key role of museums “to collect, preserve, conserve, restore, research and popularise” look like in reality?

The museum’s collection includes items and stories relating to Vilnius: objects, images, documents and interviews. Having started with entirely empty storerooms, in three years we have collected more than 2,000 “clues” to life in Vilnius. Most of the exhibits were given to us as gifts.