Opening times
Tuesday to Friday 10.00-18.00.
Saturday 10.00-16.00.
Additional services
Guided tours by arrangement.
Museum's collection
At the museum are in custody sculptor's
V. Grybas memorial surroundings, furniture, documentary materials, folk art collections, and sculptures.
Expositions
Memorial Exposition of Sculptor Vincas Grybas
Complex of buildings makes up the exposition, dwelling house, and workshops.
Items that existed in the museum are also displayed - photo materials, documents, furniture and the sculptor's collected folk art works and sculptures.
Water-colorist's L. Meskaityte Exposition of Miniatures
This exposition is changed annually.
Exhibitions
Arranged at the Museum are art photos, folk art photos, students' art studies, L. Meskaityte's miniature water-colors and other exhibits.
All temporary exhibits are set up in very large exhibit halls, where main exhibits are open.
Cultural, educational activity
Organizing excursions of art and history themes.
Creating a video "The Living Remember".
Active Art Studio at the Museum.
Educational programs put on into practice.
Other news about the Museum
The museum was founded in 1947 in the home where sculptor
Vincas Grybas (1890-1941) lived from 1929.
During 1965-1991 the Museum was a unit of National M. K.
Ciurlionis' Art Museum.
Museum's establisher - City of Jurbarkas Municipality.
Museum's director - Grdiminas Grybas.
Jurbarkas
Jurbarkas, town in western Lithuania, on the north bank of the Nemunas river, at the mouth of the Mituva river.
Historical sources mention for the first time in 1259 the castle of Georgenburg, built by the Teutonic Knights at the confluence of the Nemunas and Mituva. After it was destroyed the next year by the Lithuanians, it was rebuilt only in 1336 as Jurgenburg, whence the Lithuanian name Jurbarkas. This fortress possessed great strategic importance for the Teutonic Knights, as it provided a supporting base for their drive deeper into central Lithuania along the Nemunas river.
Lying close to an important water and land-route, which led from Vilnius through Kaunas to Tilze (Tilsit), Klaipeda and Konigsberg, Jurbarkas had ample opportunity for growth. Its commercial significance increased in the 16th century, when the forests on either side of the Nemunas began to be cut down and lumber and other forest material began to be floated to Konigsberg and Gdansk (Danzig). A second important commodity was grain.
In 1611 the town received the rights of Magdeburg and a coat of arms consisting of three white lilies on a red background. Commercial activity declined toward the end of the 19th century, when the water route via the Nemunas was partially replaced by a railroad.
In independent Lithuania (1918-1940) Jurbarkas was the township seat. The stone Holy Trinity Church, dominating the town with its two high steeples, was built between 1901-1907. The Jewish community had two synagogues, one of which, a wooden structure built in the 17th-18th centuries, was a rare architectural monument.
Under Soviet occupation after World War II the town was extended northward and made center of a district.
GRYBAS, Vincas (1890-1941), sculptor, born in Peleniai, county of Sakiai, on Oct. 3, 1890. He studied at the Warsaw Art School and took part in the illegal Lithuanian self-education circle. Drafted into the Russian army, he saw caught in the events of the Russian
Revolution he supported. After his return to Lithuania in 1918, he studied at the Kaunas Art School (1923-25) and went on to specialise at A. Bourdelle's Academy in Paris (1925-28). Perhaps his best achievements is the bronze monument of Simonas Daukantas in the town of Papile, a result of painstaking historical research, yet vibrantly alive in its sense of drama, psychological insight, convincing simplicity. He also created numerous busts, bas-reliefs, and medallions. His Parisian studies notwithstanding, Grybas remained largely untouched by modernism. His limitation, inherent in the realistic academic style, was partly balanced by his expressiveness and power. A sympathiser with the communist system, he was killed by the Germans after the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet war, on July 3, 1941, in Jurbarkas. His life is depicted in the novel Sunkus paminklai (Heavy Monuments), 1961, by Kazys Boruta.
Photos from the museum's
archive
