29 March 2023

National Library – event partner for the 19th Anniversary of NATO Membership

Lithuania will soon celebrate the 19th anniversary of its membership of NATO and the European Union, and the 20th anniversary in 2024. The first NATO Summit will be held in Vilnius on July 11 and 16. Joining NATO is one of the most important events in the history of Lithuania, as is evident by Russia’s war in Ukraine. These historic events will be commemorated not only by top-level political events, but also by exclusive events, exhibitions and creative and cultural industry projects.

One of the first events is the opening of the exhibition “Mighty when United” and the commemoration of the 19th anniversary of Lithuania’s NATO membership on March 29th (the day Lithuania became a NATO member in 2004) at the Bastion of the Vilnius Defensive Wall (organised by the National Museum of Lithuania and the Ministry of National Defence, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Library of Lithuania, and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania).

The aim of the exhibition is to encourage the public to take an interest in the country’s security and defence strategy, national defence and international cooperation in ensuring national security and the security of allied states, as well as to reflect on the times we live in, its challenges and threats, and the potential contribution of each individual to the common security of the alliance and their country.

For the exhibition, the National Library’s creative-cultural industries, together with partners (Vilnius Academy of Arts and “Tikras vaizdas” HoPro, a company of contemporary interactive technologies), created an art object – a visual image composition of NATO archival documents (1991-2004) which rotates in a rotary hologram, scattering the textual information into a composition and projects spatial images. Another art object is the interactive installation “NATO F-16 Fighter Air Policing Mission in the Baltic States”. A system of mechanical mirrors is used to project the image onto the wall, making the image more dynamic. The F-16 NATO fighter jets (Polish, Belgian, American) fly horizontally as a battle group in the bastion of the museum, the flight movement synchronised with the sound system.

Other events of the “Mighty when United” project:

22 April: Presentation of the NATO mission in the regions of the country (Kelmė).

6 May: Presentation of the NATO mission in the regions of the country (Prienai).

10 May: Opening of the American Reading Room at the National Library of Lithuania.

17 June: An event by the National Museum (Vilnius).

28 June: An event for the general public at the White Bridge (Vilnius).