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Lithuanian culture minister promises that he will personally attend to reestablishment of Belarusian history and ethnography museum in Vilnius

Lithuanian Culture Minister Arunas Gelunas told reporters in Minsk on Tuesday that he would personally attend to the reestablishment of the Ivan Lutskevich (Luckievic) Belarusian History and Ethnography Museum in Vilnius, as quoted by BelaPAN.

“Since I’ve been in the position of minister for only three months, it’s hard for me to speak about the details, but we held talks with the prime minister and the finance minister about the establishment of a culture fund for support of national minorities,” Dr. Gelunas said.

As Belarusian Culture Minister Pavel Latushka added, the Lithuanian ministry has been asked to create at Belarus’ expense digital copies of the items of the Lutskevich museum that are kept in various Lithuanian cultural institutions.

The museum existed between 1921 and 1945. Most of its exhibits came from the private collection of prominent Belarusian ethnographer and archeologist Ivan Luckievic (1881-1919). The museum had five exhibition halls and a library of more than 14,000 titles. After the museum was closed in 1945, most of its items were transferred to museums in Lithuania and the others to museums in Belarus.