Placed on: 2007-11-05 08:35 Updated on: 2007-11-06 14:35
The Europe Park
2007-11-05 08:33
Europos parkas (The Europe Park) is an open-air contemporary art museum founded by the visionary sculptor Gintaras Karosas in 1991. It has become one of the most popular day-trip destinations for travellers visiting Vilnius, and now more than 60 000 people visit the museum every year. The park lies some 14 kilometres south from the geographical centre of Europe that was established by the French National Geographic Institute in 1989. One of the aims of the museum is to highlight the centre of Europe and to celebrate the diversity of Europe and the whole world by means of art.
The hilly terrain, green fields, little ponds and pine groves of the park make it a perfect location for display of various sculptures. At the moment the museum has more than 90 sculptures on display, the authors of the works come from Ireland, Armenia, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Egypt, Greece, India, Japan, the USA, Canada, Cyprus, Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, the Netherlands, Peru, France, Russia, Finland, Germany and other countries. The museum hosts works of worldwide famous contemporary artists, such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sol Le Witt, Dennis Oppenheim and others.
One of the most impressive sculptures in Europe Park is “LNK Infomedis” (the LNK Info-Tree) by the founder of the park Gintaras Karosas, it is recognized by the Guinness World Records Agency as the largest sculpture of this type in the world. Construction of the sculpture began in 1999 when the Lithuanian television channel LNK in cooperation with the Europe Park organized the campaign called Give Your Old TV Set to Europe. The campaign asked people to bring their old TV sets to the museum, and soon the organizers of the campaign found themselves wondering at the unexpectedly enthusiastic response to their call – people brought almost three thousand TV sets from all over the country during the campaign and they keep bringing TVs until now! The sculptor Gintaras Karosas created a tree-shaped labyrinth from all the old TV sets and placed a sculpture of Lenin in the middle of the maze. The idea of the sculpture is to show the pointlessness and absurdity of the Soviet ideology that was spread by the mass media during the Soviet occupation.
The museum is open daily from 10am till sunset. The entrance costs 21 litas for adults, students, pensioners and groups of visitors get various discounts. For those who would like to have a guided tour around the park, excursions are available in English, Russian and Lithuanian.
The hilly terrain, green fields, little ponds and pine groves of the park make it a perfect location for display of various sculptures. At the moment the museum has more than 90 sculptures on display, the authors of the works come from Ireland, Armenia, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Egypt, Greece, India, Japan, the USA, Canada, Cyprus, Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, the Netherlands, Peru, France, Russia, Finland, Germany and other countries. The museum hosts works of worldwide famous contemporary artists, such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sol Le Witt, Dennis Oppenheim and others.
One of the most impressive sculptures in Europe Park is “LNK Infomedis” (the LNK Info-Tree) by the founder of the park Gintaras Karosas, it is recognized by the Guinness World Records Agency as the largest sculpture of this type in the world. Construction of the sculpture began in 1999 when the Lithuanian television channel LNK in cooperation with the Europe Park organized the campaign called Give Your Old TV Set to Europe. The campaign asked people to bring their old TV sets to the museum, and soon the organizers of the campaign found themselves wondering at the unexpectedly enthusiastic response to their call – people brought almost three thousand TV sets from all over the country during the campaign and they keep bringing TVs until now! The sculptor Gintaras Karosas created a tree-shaped labyrinth from all the old TV sets and placed a sculpture of Lenin in the middle of the maze. The idea of the sculpture is to show the pointlessness and absurdity of the Soviet ideology that was spread by the mass media during the Soviet occupation.
The museum is open daily from 10am till sunset. The entrance costs 21 litas for adults, students, pensioners and groups of visitors get various discounts. For those who would like to have a guided tour around the park, excursions are available in English, Russian and Lithuanian.
