Established in 2012, the Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies, and Education has provided opportunities for the development of over 300 artists from Lithuania and around the world over the course of its continuous operation. These include all the participants of Rupert’s residency and alternative education programmes. We invited even more international mentors and lecturers, as well as organised numerous guest artist visits, thanks to which new ideas, processes, and works of contemporary culture were presented to Lithuanian audiences. For more than 12 years, Rupert has served as a kind of global cultural embassy, becoming a gateway between the international creative field and the cultural life of Vilnius and Lithuania.
We believe that Lithuania needs spaces with imperative trust in creators which also ensure their access to issues of public importance. The space that Rupert provides is simply essential. Rupert is an ecosystem of creators, and a partner for the most unexpected ideas, connecting people and helping them realise works that push artists out of their comfort zone, and meet like-minded people who accompany them on their creative path, throughout their life.
On 27 July, the Lithuanian Council for Culture decided that, for the first time in its history, Rupert will no longer be on the 2025-2027 list of cultural organisations holding strategic importance.
As we have already communicated personally to the community of Rupert alumni and other creators, this decision was made despite the fact that the demand for Rupert’s programmes locally and internationally grew significantly in recent years. This is reflected in the volume of applications to our programmes, the growing attendance of Rupert’s public events, and the many projects carried out by our alumni in Lithuania and abroad.
We would like to publicly answer one of the key questions posed by the experts of strategic financing:
“How do the Centre’s activities, aimed at a niche audience of current and future art professionals, contribute to the cultivation of the Lithuanian cultural field?”
Is the Rupert Centre for Arts, Residencies and Education a niche organisation? Yes!
Yes, Rupert is a niche organisation, if this means that the centre attracts the most active, innovative, and creative artists from Lithuania and the world. Building and maintaining these relationships is a long, care- and labour-intensive process.
Alumni of Rupert’s programmes attest that the impact of this process has been long-lasting and substantial. According to Rupert Alternative Education Programme (AEP) alumna Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, “such places and conditions change lives.” Reflecting on the AEP, artist Algirdas Jakas shared that it “helped [him] a lot to integrate into the Lithuanian art scene after having just returned from studying abroad. At the same time, contacts with other members of alternative education, Rupert residents, and other participants in the art field were established, thanks to which new collaborations were formed and bold initiatives grew (e.g., the “Ubiškės 3” residency, organised by AEP alumna Ana Lipps, in which [he] was a participant, thanks to the AEP and the connections made in it).”
Other alumni of the Alternative Education Programme include artists representing Lithuania in international events and exhibitions, such as Robertas Narkus, Milda Dainovskytė and Laurynas Skeisgiela, Edvinas Grinkevičius, Viktorija Damerell, Ieva Sriebaliūtė, Vytautas Stakutis, Milda Januševičiūtė, Ona Juciūtė, Monika Janulevičiūtė and Antanas Lučiūnas, Augustas Serapinas, Vytenis Burokas, Audrius Pocius, Justinas Dūdėnas, Gediminas G. Akstinas, Viktorija Rybakova, Karolis Kaupinis, Eglė Razumaitė, Žygimantas Kudirka, Andrej Polukord, Gediminas Žygus, Vitalijus Strigunkovas, Vsevolod Kovalevskij and Anastasia Sosunova, and many others.
What would the Lithuanian cultural field be like if there were no spaces where creators from different fields could try out new experiments, and develop ideas, without fear to make mistakes? Rupert’s Alternative Education Programme is the only of its kind in the region. Every year, it offers dozens of artists (participants and guest tutors) the opportunity to engage in experimental, collective, and interdisciplinary learning processes, applying and questioning previously formal knowledge, while learning to think and create with an open mind.
According to the AEP alumna Anastasia Sosunova, „The Rupert team has shown support and trust in my artistic voice, created a very accepting and intellectually stimulating environment for my personal as well as professional growth – I think accepting me into the programme was quite a leap of faith at that time. Through Rupert, I was able to meet and collaborate with international artists, build long lasting friendships and artistic exchanges with various art professionals. During my AEP time during the year 2016, I connected with such artists and curators as Felix Kalmenson, Laure Prouvost, Maya Tounta, Adomas Narkevičius, Ellie Hunter, Valentinas Klimašauskas, Augustas Serapinas among many others – they became my mentors, collaborators and colleagues. Rupert has supported my art practice from the very early stages and encouraged experimentation, invited me to become part of numerous projects, events and initiatives which in turn helped me to build my artistic portfolio and made me feel not just part of the Rupert family and local Lithuanian art scene, but a part of the global contemporary art network. (…) It’s difficult to name experiences that weren’t in any way related to the contacts, projects and creative ideas which grew from working with Rupert: all the residents, guests and curious minds that came to Vilnius truly made me feel that Vilnius belongs to the whole world, and I, as an artist, belong to the world too.“
According to artist Julijonas Urbonas, the 2024 laureate of the Culture and Art Prize of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, “Rupert is one of the very few (if not the only) small Lithuanian art organisations that, with its limited resources, is able to curate, prepare, and activate projects of international scale and to embed young artists in a prestigious art context. If not for Rupert, Lithuania would still be waiting in a long queue for an artistic residency at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, where I was an artist-in-residence in 2016. If not for Rupert, I doubt I would have represented Lithuania at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2019. If not for Rupert, I would not know many artists, curators and thinkers from all over the world: a micro-community that has already become deeply embedded not only in art, but also in science, pop culture, and all other walks of life.”
Another essential mission of spaces like Rupert is to make sure that access is available to all creators, regardless of their socio-economic status and background. So far at Rupert, we have ensured this by offering all our programmes for free. In the coming year, we firmly aim to delve even deeper: to increase the opportunities for creators-in-residence to not only access our space, but also secure economic resources; to open artists and the Lithuanian public up to a wider range of cultural and geographic experiences and progressive ideas.
However difficult the decision of the Lithuanian Council for Culture has made it to continue to pursue these goals, we remain committed to the vision of a sustainable global ecosystem of creators with bold ideas.
Viktorija Šiaulytė, Director
and the Rupert team