Mapping the Content of the Collection of the Future Latvian Contemporary Art Museum. Problems of the Future Theoretical Evaluation

Since 2005 the international expert committee (including scholars Dr. Sirje Helme, Dr. Raminta Jurenaitė and others) works to create the collection of the future Latvian contemporary art museum. The extensive body of work has been collected both for the State of Latvia and ABLV bank. The focus of the collection is art of the Baltic Sea region since the 1960s. The museum building has achieved the status of reality, since by June 2016 the results of the international architectural competition are announced. The donors of the project are Latvian state, ABLV Charitable Foundation and Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation.
The art works from the future museum have been on display several times in other premises, but the 10 years work of the committee of experts has not been theoretically evaluated.
The given paper will focus on the principles of the selection of art works and the problems of future art historians working upon iconography and philosophical background of many artworks.
The history of the Baltic contemporary art since 1960s is still a fragmented field. The very notion of “contemporary” is under discussion in the local art scenes. One of the fields the paper will cover reflects the recently created terminology, including the concept of socpostmodernism. Another aspect will try to define the difference between the Western and Baltic art in the 1960s, 70s and 80s as reflected in the collection of the future museum.

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