- Place
- Vilnius City Municipality
- Region
- Vilnius
- Type
- Lithuanian National Museum of Art branch with a donor room and changing exhibitions on historic and contemporary diaspora art
- Address
- 1 A. Goštauto Street, LT-01104 Vilnius
- Coordinates
- 54.69015, 25.27800
- Visit duration
- 1-2 hours; longer with a guided visit, workshop or several temporary exhibitions
- Best time
- early on a weekday or on Thursday evening, after checking the exhibition programme and lift status
LNMA Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art, LNDM Vytauto Kasiulio dailės muziejus, Kasiulis Museum
A branch of LNMA rather than the artist's former home
The official current identity is Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art. It operates at 1 A. Goštauto Street as a division of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art, so opening policy, concessions and some visitor services belong to the wider LNMA system. It is not a separate legal museum, even though it has its own director, staff, contacts and programme.
Vytautas Kasiulis never lived or worked in this building. He made most of his mature work in Paris, and the Vilnius institution carrying his name did not open until 2013. What is authentic here is the family's gift of artworks and archive, not a preserved studio or domestic interior.
The museum now reaches well beyond one artist. LNMA presents it as a centre for historic Lithuanian émigré art, contemporary diaspora practice and new research, while the donor room shows a selection from the family-given Kasiulis collection. A useful visit therefore starts by checking both that core display and the current temporary-exhibition list.
A Neoclassical house built for scholarship and public art
The museum occupies the former Vilnius Society of Friends of Science building, registered as regional-level heritage object 34868. Work began in 1910; the heritage record separates phases in 1910-1913 and 1928-1929, while LNMA dates final completion to 1929. The two-storey Neoclassical composition has a raised base, symmetrical elevations, four engaged half-columns and a triangular pediment.
LNMA attributes the design to engineers Henryk Wojnicki and Jan Trojan, while heritage documentation retains uncertainty over the attribution and Trojan's given name. Hilar Łęski, an estate owner from Baltoji Vokė, was the principal benefactor alongside other donors. The heritage assessment describes this as Lithuania's first building designed and erected specifically for the public display of fine art.
The Society of Friends of Science needed more than galleries. Its headquarters also contained a library, archive and museum, and hosted meetings, lectures and public events. The present exhibition use therefore continues an early cultural-centre function, although reconstruction has changed the rooms, equipment and visitor circulation.
Several political eras are legible in one building
The society remained here until war and occupation reorganised Vilnius's institutions. Official accounts use 1939 and 1941 for different stages of that ending, so the Second World War is a sounder boundary than one supposedly uncontested closure date.
A Soviet Revolution Museum occupied the premises from the late 1940s until 1980. LNMA gives 1949 as the starting year and VLE gives 1948. The building passed to the Lithuanian Art Museum in 1981, then hosted contemporary-art exhibitions and, from 1991, art storage.
A 2012 project reconstructed and modernised the heritage building for museum use. The Kasiulis-named branch opened in 2013. This sequence keeps three subjects distinct: the protected structure created in 1910-1929, the institutions that successively occupied it, and the visitor museum operating here now.
Kasiulis travelled from Simnas and Kaunas to Paris
Vytautas Kasiulis was born in Simnas in 1918. He entered Kaunas Art School in 1937, graduated from the Kaunas Institute of Applied Art in 1941 and taught there until 1944. After leaving Lithuania in 1944, he lived and taught in Freiburg before settling in Paris in 1948, where he exhibited and worked until his death in 1995.
His early pictures are generally darker, more realistic and psychologically observant. Later work developed a luminous decorative palette, agile line, improvisation and playfully stylised figures. Musicians, dancers, circus performers, cafés, Parisian streets, studios, landscapes and sacred subjects recur across his work.
Painting is only part of the record: he also made gouaches, pastels, watercolours, drawings and lithographs. One bright Paris street or group of musicians cannot stand for the full career. The donor-room selection helps trace several periods, but a collection catalogue and the objects hanging on a particular day are not the same thing.
The donor room is selective and temporary exhibitions change
Kasiulis's widow, Bronė Kasiulienė, and their son, Vytautas Victor Kasiulis, transferred a large body of art and a personal archive to Lithuania. The donor room installed in December 2022 displays selected works and archival material spanning a broad stretch of his post-war career. Selected is the essential word: the whole gift is not shown at once.
Other galleries examine historic diaspora art, lesser-known émigré artists, contemporary practice and new curatorial research. They are not merely an annex to a Kasiulis retrospective. Nor should LNMA's wider diaspora holdings be mistaken for material permanently housed or displayed in this one building.
On 19 July 2026, two temporary exhibitions were current: Nijolė Šivickas de Mockus, The Universe from a Spiral, through 7 February 2027, and Yuge Kurt and Egmontas Geras, I Am Plural, through 6 September 2026. These dates are a snapshot of the programme on the review day, not a promise of permanent content, so later visitors should check the LNMA listing again.
Current hours, admission and a temporary access restriction
On 19 July 2026, published hours were 10:00-18:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 11:00-20:00 on Thursday, and 10:00-17:00 on Saturday and Sunday. The museum closes on Monday and public holidays, closes one hour early on the eve of a public holiday, and admits its final visitors 30 minutes before closing.
The standard ticket was EUR 5 and the concession ticket EUR 2.50 on the same date. Everyone may visit LNMA permanent displays and exhibitions free of charge on the last Sunday of each month; additional concessions require proof of eligibility. Prices and conditions can change, so treat these as dated practical information rather than a permanent tariff.
LNMA normally describes the building as suitable for visitors with mobility impairments and parents with strollers, and its official photograph shows a ramp reaching the visitor door at the western end of the facade. However, an active notice on 19 July 2026 warned that the accessibility lift was temporarily out of order. Call +370 5 261 6764 to confirm a workable route before travelling; the pin marks the entrance, not guaranteed parking.
