Art institutions in the late soviet period: Lithuanian artists' union and 'rebirth'

The article deals with the history of the Lithuanian Artists' Union from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. The Union was the only institution that guided artistic life during Soviet limes. Union membership was required of both official and somewhat non-conformist artists, if they wanted to exhibit publicly. The rigid institutional structure of the union only began to loosen during the period of national 'Rebirth'. As the political climate changed in the late eighties, a reborn Artists' Union served as a unified institution of local intelligentsia, and it was the first among local creative unions to announce independence from its roof organization, the Soviet Artists' Union. The union evolved in negotiated steps towards cultural freedom and 'proper' representation of the nation in art more with an attempt to establish autonomy than through any 'outside' opposition or alternative organization. Within few years, however, the Artists' Union lost its political influence, and its activities were disdained by its own members who preferred to affiliate themselves with less official organizations, such as artistic groups. As the Artists' Union failed to fulfil its economic as well as administrative functions, so that it became embroiled in institutional and juridical contradictions, this compromised its activities. The reputation of the Artists' Union declined, and it became subject to widespread criticism that revealed the conceptual conflicts arising in a new autonomous artistic field. The article thus further analyses why the force of the union's 'resurrection' so quickly diminished after political independence and how it turned into a tangle of contradictions as the firm intentions to create new national artistic organization were foiled