Art historical research in Lithuania: making local global and the other way around

ENThe aim of this article is to present the development and discuss current situation in the studies and research in the history of art in Lithuania in an attempt at identifying the discipline's place within the framework of the local and the global. To begin with, let me briefly introduce the formation of the Lithuanian branch of art history bearing in mind the local and the global perspectives. In the nineteenth century, the discovery of locally specific features in culture and arts was the global (or rather European, to be closer to the terms of that day) challenge to scholarly minds and national ambitions. Of course, academically established art history was rather vaguely hit by this quest for the locally particular, but at that point academic establishment was not relevant for the history of the Lithuanian art as this interest was maintained by self-educated amateurs. While many European nations embraced the ethnographic turn, the early historiography of art in Lithuania, or to observe political boundaries of the period, the North Western province of the Russian Empire, looked at the art and architecture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth then generally considered as arts of the ancient Polish state. This glance at professional arts aimed at noting that the territories of the partitioned Commonwealth were visually distinct from the rest of the Russian Empire. Hence, it was the desire to identify artistic heritage of the dissolved state that guided the interest into the arts of the past. The very first histories of architecture and painting followed the then usual organic model.They described various phases of art from the Middle Ages until the end of the eighteenth century.