Mitas apie Baublį: nuo rinkinio iki muziejaus

ENIn the early 19th century, the Samogitian nobleman Dionizas Poška, arranged a pavilion in the trunk of a gigantic cut oak, where he kept his collection of antiquities and used to spend much time himself interpreted in historiography as the foundation of the first museum in Lithuania. In the researches on Lithuanian culture, the problems of the foundation of museums have not been thoroughly analysed and such perceptions as "collection" and "museum" have not been clearly defined. Thus, is there any basis to consider the Poška Baublys to be the first museum in Lithuania? Poška's penchant for collecting things was looked upon by his contemporaries differently, and Baublys was called a museum only with the intention of mocking at the naive worshipping of antiquity. Poška called his antiquities kept in Baublys as a collection, though the word "museum" was also known to him. The attention to the past of the country, which had manifested itself since the 19th century, did not fail to reach collectors as well they began to collect antiquities connected with the history of the country. The circle of collectors also greatly grew in number. Poška was one of the many intellectuals of the period who were "greatly devoted to the investigations of antiquities".The absence of collecting traditions conditioned the chaotic and accidental character of the phenomenon which was practically determined by the ambition of every single collector. The collections, balancing at the boundary of temporariness, were just acquiring their contours and definiteness. The opposite to a private collection is a museum, where the structure of collections, the aims and directions of their accumulation are clearly defined and the public availability of collections is legalised. Such was the status of the Museum of Antiquities, which was established in Vilnius in 1855. Another essential difference between a museum and private collection - the perception of antique exhibits. If the antiquities collected by Poška only witnessed the honourable spirit of forefathers, such exhibits in the museum were looked upon from the scientist's point of view. The perception of a museum and a private collection as of two completely non-identical phenomena, leads to the conclusion that Baublys was not the first museum in Lithuania but only one of numerous private collections of the period. [From the publication p. 352-353]