On display will be more than 70 works by more than 40 artists from the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus. The time range of the presented works is the early 1900s – early 2010s.
Such projects can also be considered complementary to the museum’s permanent exhibition, consisting mostly of staple works by a number of well-known artists. But there were also other works and other artists, once perhaps notable, even famous, but now half-forgotten or completely unfamiliar to the viewer, although it does not make them any less significant. So, these exhibitions allow the right to see the light of day to works that sometimes remained invisible to the world in store-rooms for decades, deprived of the opportunity to engage in dialogue between the artist and the viewer.
Some artists are in tune with each other, despite the decades that separate them; while others, although they lived at the same time, are strikingly different, yet they all make up a kaleidoscopic picture of various worldviews and interpretations of reality.
Not all artists presented at the exhibition were born in Belarus, some only worked or are working there at one time or another, not all those born in Belarus worked in their homeland. But together they create a colourful panorama of Belarusian art.
Works of art created over the period of more than a hundred years help us understand the atmosphere of different eras; witness the evolution of artists’ and society’s tastes, and, thus, make a kind of a journey in time.
The exhibition “The River of Time” will be on display from 17 August to 21 October, 2024 in the museum’s main building (Lenin St., 20, gallery and foyer).
Exhibition curator: Valiantsina Vaitsehouskaya, leading researcher at the Department of Belarusian Art of the 20th–21st century of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus.