Muziejus jai buvo šventovė

ENOn May 30 – June 23, 2012, Vilnius Picture Gallery of Lithuanian Art Museum held an exhibition “The Chronicler of Folk Art”, dedicated for Akvilė Mikėnaitė, the lecturer and museologist, who had dedicated all her life for folk art research and preservation. A. Mikėnaitė was born in 1912 in Skardupis steading, Aknīste volost on the border between Lithuania and Latvia. She was the youngest child in the family of Jokūbas and Teklė Mikėnai. She had two brothers and a sister. The eldest Jonas was a military officer, a test pilot and became a famous ceramicist after the war. The other brother – Juozas – became a famous sculptor, the sister Liuda – a simple and sincere village woman, who kept Mikėnai family hearth, cherished and managed their homeland, where the dispersed family used to gather from time to time. A. Mikėnaitė attended a Lithuanian primary school in Aknīste. In 1927–1931 she studied at a state Latvian gymnasium in Subate. Since 1932 she chose the speciality of World History and studied in Kaunas, the Faculty of Humanities of Vytautas Magnus University. She became fascinated with folk sculpture already in her studentship. This was her thesis topic and she continued to analyse it until the end of her days. After graduation in 1940 she stayed to work at the university and also taught at Vilnius Academy of Arts. In 1944 she started working as the head of the Folk-Art Department and dedicated more than fifty years to museology. She started with 149 folk art exhibits that she had found at the premises devastated by war and did everything, what the museum needed. Throughout 1948–1983 she led most of the expeditions organized by the museum and traversed the whole Lithuania. This was a great work with a clear purpose – to research, record and collect folk art: with the old way of life decaying, at least a piece of the old material culture had to be preserved. She prepared several expositions and big exhibitions.Her works reflect her versatile talent and vast knowledge: together with her colleagues she compiled several albums of the series “Lithuanian Folk Art”, wrote a biographical sketch about Marcė Katiliūtė (1963), prepared catalogues for museum collections “Sashes” (1967), “Lithuanian Folk Carvings” (1970), “Lithuanian Folk Iron Tops of Religious and Memorial Monuments” (1970), “Lithuanian Folk Furniture” (1992). The work of her life – the catalogue “Traditional 19th-early 20th Century Lithuanian Folk Sculpture” – remained as a manuscript, together with the catalogues “Late 19th Century Embroidered Ecclesiastical Flags” and “K. Šimonis Folk Art Drawings”. The exhibition that took place was dedicated to a humble person and her quiet work, not really noticeable externally. Akvilė Mikėnaitė loved her work and understood its high purpose. She used to work for hours, neither counting the time, nor sparing herself. She belonged to the generation of idealistic museologists, who regarded museums as sanctuaries.