Opening of the “One” Exhibition

On 7 October at 12.00 p.m., the opening of the “One” exhibition will take place at the Rainis and Aspazija House in Riga, 30 Baznīcas Street, and at 4.00 p.m. at the Ojārs Vācietis Museum in Riga, 19 Ojārs Vācietis Street. The exhibition explores the similarities and points of connection between two poets—Rainis and Ojārs Vācietis.

“If Rainis had managed to live even 100 of the 300 years he himself had envisioned, he and Ojārs Vācietis would probably have met. But Rainis died in 1929, while Ojārs Vācietis was born in 1933. They were great poets and complex personalities, capable of influencing both literature and their times,” says one of the exhibition’s creators, Solvita Lapiņa, a specialist at the Rainis and Aspazija House.

Created at the museums of both poets between Rainis’s 158th and Vācietis’s 90th birthdays, the “One” exhibition tells of both poets’ sense of loneliness, as well as their relationships with authority, challenges, and their life partners. At each museum, the exhibition addresses these themes through the story of just one personality: at the Rainis and Aspazija House, Rainis; at the Ojārs Vācietis Museum, Vācietis. However, only by visiting both parts of the exhibition can one understand how many similarities the two poets shared.

The memorial settings of both museums are complemented by objects that have rarely been exhibited until now, while Jēkabs Nīmanis’s soundscapes “present” the poetry of Rainis and Vācietis in performances by actors Jānis Kronis and Ivars Krasts.

The exhibition can be viewed from 7 October 2023 until spring 2024 at the Rainis and Aspazija House in Riga, 30 Baznīcas Street, and at the Ojārs Vācietis Museum in Riga, 19 Ojārs Vācietis Street.

Exhibition creators: specialists from the Rainis and Aspazija House and the Ojārs Vācietis Museum; artists: Liene Pavlovska, Artis Tauriņš; composer: Jēkabs Nīmanis.