Laima Vincė. When I was growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, our family made a yearly summer pilgrimage to the St. Anthony’s Guest House on the Franciscan monastery grounds. My mother recalls spending her summers here in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, we would hear Lithuanian spoken on …
Read More »How Art Transformed a City: MaLonNY 2022
Laima Vincė. Ten years ago, two couples met in Jamaica to spend their vacation together. New York-based Lithuanian-born artist Ray Bartkus and his wife, Ina, a fashion designer, flew from New York to Jamaica, while Algirdas Kumža, signatory of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Toma, and their two …
Read More »Al Jaffee – Reverse Immigrant
By Mary-Lou Weisman. LITHUANIAN HERITAGE March / April 2021 For more than half a century, writer and cartoonist Al Jaffee has been gleefully putting a premature end to the innocence of American youth in the pages of MAD, this country’s first popular satiric magazine. Suddenly, parents were hypocrites, teachers were …
Read More »Chicago’s Lithuanian Opera is Preserved for the Ages. Digital technology helps archive a major Lithuanian cultural achievement
Dr. Darius Kučinskas. To mark the upcoming centennial of Lithuanian opera, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library in Vilnius, in cooperation with the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, has initiated a project to digitize the videotapes of Chicago’s Lithuanian opera productions. Cameraman and photographer Aleksandras Plenys undertook the original videotaping from …
Read More »Viktoras Petravičius: Master of the Monoprint
By Izida Petravičiūtė von Braun In 1978, in the journal Lituanus, Professor Stasys Goštautas of Boston University, wrote about Petravičius and his art as follows: “Never since the delightful graphic art of the primitive and anonymous artists of the eighteenth century, has Lithuanian art exhibited such a pure and candid …
Read More »Lithuanian women stitch for refugees
Residents of Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas, have been busy stitching. Over 100 residents responded to an invitation by a local arts group Fluxus Labas! to participate in a global craft project called “25 Million Stitches.” Their artistically stitched panels will soon be traveling to California to take their place among …
Read More »Presenting Lithuanian Culture on the World Stage
The newly confirmed Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, visited Chicago, on September 14. He attended Chicago’s Lithuanian cultural centers – Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, Lithuanian Research Center, World Lithuanian Center, and spent an afternoon at the editorial offices of Draugas. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas holds a …
Read More »Witchcraft in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
By Miltiades Varvounis. Witch hysteria took hold in Europe during the mid-1400s, when many accused witches confessed, often under torture, to a variety of wicked behaviors. Within a century, witch hunts were common and most of the accused were executed by burning at the stake or hanging. The publication of …
Read More »Maryte Arlauskas Collard and Her Quilts
By Daiva Markelis. A nation’s cultural history is expressed through its folk art, and a particularly fascinating aspect of that art has to do with textiles. In the United States and Canada, the most popular textile art has arguably been quilting, encompassing an impressive artistic and geographical range that includes …
Read More »From New York with love: Californian wins auction for Lithuanian Palace
Virginija Petrauskienė. A California attorney, Donatas Januta, beat out competitors in New York’s high-end auction house, Sotheby’s, by successfully acquiring a unique piece of Lithuanian history. The item in question is an original portrait of Jonas Kazimieras Vaza, the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1609-1672). It is …
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