Exhibition

The stream of time

The stream of time

The National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus Main building

Exhibitions of this kind were held in the museum 11 years ago, but not annually unfortunately. The jubilee is ceremony, but, nevertheless, it makes it possible to get the works by half-remembered masters out of store-rooms, and also to present more famous artists’ art widely.

This way the permanent exhibition is completed and promoted. Once these art works were chosen as the best and worthy for the museum; at exhibitions and in art studios – with respect, love, sometimes in heated debates and discussions, and then they ended up in repository, outside the art life for many years. Obviously, the museum is unable to exhibit everything that is in its collections, because exhibition areas are always limited. However the display of art works being in store-rooms for the longest time seems to be a kind of restoration of justice. The art of artists is quite fully demonstrated in the museum’s collection, and this supports personal mini-exhibitions within the course of the whole exhibition. Sometimes the museum displays the artist’s only work, coming from exhibition to exhibition, but it is presented in different ways in various exhibition contexts.

The time frame of the exhibition is about 100 years, from the early 20th century to the turn of this one. As if archaeologists or geologists, we can find way into the time, watching features of various periods of history and art in the works of different eras, as in archaeological ‘cultural layers’ or soil profile. Each socio-political paradigm inevitably affects the modern culture in general and individual art in particular. At the same time, the art is a kind of parallel life, associated with one or another epoch, but often opposes it. Although, as a rule, the artist coordinates his art freely or unwittingly, based on the public tastes or ideological attitudes and demands, following them or opposing his art to them. After all, each man of art embodies his vision of the world, human and nature.