Naujienos

Presentation & Discussion

January 27, Friday, 6:30 PM at the Embassy of Lithuania in Washington, D.C.

RSVP to rsvp.us@urm.lt by January 25

According to local accounts, Vilnius was born of a dream in the mind of the native crowned head. On the record, it came into daylight on January 25^th, 1323, in a longhand missive composed by a foreign-tongued ghostwriter of the Lithuanian ruler --to be posted on the front doors of Europe.

Since then, Vilnius lives in the imagination of locals as a proof of clairvoyance: a great city built to voice and augment the name of Lithuania. But while it was brought to reality with European differences in mind, the same differences often pulled it apart. Hence, in the annals of the world, Vilnius is constantly invoked as an asterisk to narratives of war. 

Still, by being both central to, and on the edge of, European identity, Vilnius is a yesteryear place that keeps the spirit of renewal alive. For locals, Vilnius always presents the unfamiliar and distant, as if the city, in the words of a native Yiddish poet, opens “the thousand narrow doors into the universe.” Knowing Vilnius then is nothing short of dreaming up a world. 

In recognition of the 700 years anniversary of the founding of Vilnius, art historian, Laima Laučkaitė, and cultural geographer, Laimonas Briedis, travel both the city and the globe in exploration of the unique resonance of Vilnius. While Laučkaitė focuses on the artist cartography of the city from the point of view of its local guides, Briedis looks at the city through its external renditions. In tandem, the two speakers unravel Vilnius as place where a local universe bespeaks ecumenical past.