COURAGE

connecting collections

The Museum of the River Daugava (then the Dole History Museum) was established in order to preserve archaeological and historical items from areas that were to be flooded after the construction of the Riga HPP. The staff of the museum saw their mission as being custodians of the local identity, which was under pressure from the indifferent, at best, and often negligent and hostile environment created by the influx of thousands of construction workers from other Soviet republics, which caused substantial changes to the composition of residents of Salaspils and its environs. In 1979, the museum decided to organise the River Daugava Festival. The idea of the festival was to show how the biggest river in Latvia was portrayed in Latvian folklore. Folklore in any explicitly non-Soviet form was looked on with suspicion by the authorities of the Latvian SSR as a potential source of ‘bourgeois nationalism’, and the situation in Latvia differed in this respect from the situations in Estonia and Lithuania, where the ideologues were more lenient. The event was a great success, due to the involvement of many creative and competent personalities. Nevertheless, the director of the museum was afterwards reprimanded by the authorities. The exact reason for their discontent was never explained, there is only speculation in this regard. It could also be explained in part by the fact that the former political prisoner and poet Knuts Skujenieks wrote the script for the event and participated in the festival. Also, the participation of Skandinieki, an authentic folk group, as well as the repertoire of choirs, was considered to be inappropriate. Among the audience were young people from the Latvian diaspora. Although they participated with the approval of the authorities, the authorities probably believed that the festival was not Soviet enough. Despite the reprimand, the museum continued to be a centre for cultural activity, and with the start of perestroika, it became actively involved in the pro-independence movement. Items in the collection show how the festival was prepared and implemented, as well as its political aftermath.

The first work day of the Noor-Tartu (Young-Tartu) student movement took place on 21 October 1979 in the Old St John’s Cemetery in Tartu. This event can be considered the starting point of the movement. This and two other work days soon afterwards were important in giving the movement an aim and meaning. The initiators of these work days turned out to be the most important and inspiring members of the movement.

The founders of Artpool organized two Artpool’s Art Tours, one in 1979 and one in 1982, with the aim of meeting first some of their Italian and then some of their Western European network correspondents, including Romano Peli, Vittore Baroni, Adriano Spatola, Cavellini, Rod Summers, Julien Blaine, and Ben Vautier. They returned with a bunch of new connections, publications, and plans.

The first tour in 1979 resulted in the organization of the successful Cavellini exhibition (APS no. 5), which was held in the Young Artists’ Club, and the joint performance Hommage à Vera Muhina, which was held on Heroes’ Square, Budapest.

Work was underway on another exhibition entitled Package from Italy (Pacco dall’Italia), but the exhibition was banned before it could be held. The plan was to show visual and sound poetry works collected during Artpool’s first art tour.

The most valuable piece of the entire collections is probably Kata Bethlen’s mortar. The original owner, Countess Kata Bethlen de Bethlen, also known as Katherine Bethlen (1700-1759), was a writer and a patron of arts. She supported the Transylvanian Hungarian Reformed parishes and schools. Talented students were sent on her own expense abroad for further learning. She bequeathed her precious library to the reformed college of Aiud. She was buried in Făgăraș in the Reformed Church. 

The acquisition of this item has a very interesting story and represent an event in the development of this collection because it stirred the interest in similar objects. In fact, following this acquisition, the countess started to collect mortars as well. These mortars and their pestles represented objects of everyday life from the past, used for crushing ingredients in the processes of cooking or medicine preparation. They had lost their practical use in the meantime due to the advancement in food and pharmaceutical industries, so they turned into decorative art objects. The acquisition of Kata Bethlen’s mortar by her descendant Anikó Bethlen represented, on the one hand, an act which corresponded to the philosophy of collecting as understood by the latter, i.e., the preservation of all these small but significant traditional items, which were about to disappear due to the communist modernisation. On the other hand, this acquisition represented an act of safeguarding the heritage of the Bethlen noble family of Transylvania, which had once played crucial historical, cultural and social roles in this multicultural region. 

Turning to the story of the acquisition, Anikó Bethlen remembers that “in an autumn night in 1979, four local Gypsies temporarily working in Făgăraș visited me with the purpose of selling a mortar. They encouraged me to buy it because as they said it ’belonged to someone wealthy, and I have to buy it.’ The huge mortar bore the inscription ‘Gr. Bethlen Kata 1758.’ I knew that she died in 1759, so it was cast a year before her death. They did not know that I am also a Bethlen. They asked 4000 lei for it, but I had only 900 lei, and had gathered it for the summer. I told them that the mortar is a little bit cracked and worth only 900 lei. They thought a bit about what to answer, then sold it me at that price.”