Viktorija Jonkutė

by Valentina Bachi

The third EuropeanaPhotography plenary meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, took place on 9 and 10 September 2013, organized by Viktorija Jonkute at the premises of the Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum and the Lithuanian Art Museum (LAM).  The meeting was the occasion for the partners to meet again and discuss the hot topics, in the light of progressing with the project towards its second year’s objectives.

Intermediate objective is to deliver to Europeana a huge number of metadata, in order to publish a first batch of images to witness the history of Europe and the art of photography in the period 1839-1939. The images are supposed to be on line and accessible to everyone by early 2014, and for this reason EuropeanaPhotography content providers are working closely to the technical deadlines to allow this result. In particular, the Vilnius meeting was also the place for another training about the use of the EuropeanaPhotography MINT tool and the integrated multilingual vocabulary.

The partners are followed up and supported by a special “metadata task force”, set up in July, that will help meeting and resolving any possible difficulty.

the metadata task force, A. Fresa, V. Bachi, N. Van Steen, S. Taes, N. Simou, during the meeting in Peccioli at Promoter’s premises

A major part of the meeting was dedicated to the communication strategy and the preparation of the final exhibition, which is going to have place in 2014: for this reason it is time to start thinking and planning its organization.

The exhibition will be a travelling event to show recent history, art and photographic techniques, thanks to masterpieces of photography from all over Europe, carefully selected to amaze the public.

More news are to come soon about this topic.

St. Peter and St. Paul church – internal

The plenary meeting was joined to other very interesting and important cultural events: a photographic exhibition and a international conference where some of the EuropeanaPhotography partners discussed valuable topics, as widely described by the project coordinator Fred Truyen in his blog.

Download the presentation “The creative re-use of digital cultural content” taken by Antonella Fresa

The Vilnius meeting was warmed by a summer sun and a kind welcome of the Lithuanian colleagues, who, beside their very nice hospitality, showed the very rich heritage belonging to Vilnius and to Lithuania. It is no surprise that UNESCO declared this city a World heritage.

Cathedral St. Stanislaus and St. Ladislaus

A bus tour allowed the participants to discover nice corners of the city, its two rivers, the newest modern quartier with high buildings and the wooden country houses so beautifully preserved, the elegant boulevards, the neoclassical city center, the KGB building with its sinister memories, the Uzupis Republic of artists – the fashion quartier, a self-proclaimed, unofficial republic inhabited by artists and dreaming bohemians.

Special stops allowed a visit to the magnificent church of St. Peter and Paul, the white pearl

“Miracle”

of the Baroque, and to the main Cathedral dedicated to St. Stanislaus and St. Ladislaus, where the recent history of 1989 about independence and renaissance of a whole country still permeates the atmosphere.. the belief and hope is that a miracle (stebuklas in Lithuanian) is going to happen soon.

Maybe will it involve the digital technologies and their applications, to unlock the potential of Europe’s cultural heritage?

EuropeanaPhotography was also presented on the national TV in a short reportage about the exhibition of old photographs (Lithuanian language, video here).

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