Discussion “The City and Institutions”

Cultural institutions in the city function as places where art and culture are presented, while also creating spaces for encounter, shaping public discourse, building relationships with different urban communities, and participating in the social and cultural life of the city.

What role can a contemporary art institution play in the city today? How can its activities transform the city’s cultural, physical, social and political fabric? Where do the limits of an institution’s power and responsibility lie?

Public Programme curator Povilas Marozas will speak with two curators and institutional directors — Martí Manen and Valentinas Klimašauskas. The conversation will draw on their international curatorial and institutional experience developed in different cultural contexts.

Martí Manen led “Index — The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation” in Stockholm until 2026, while Valentinas Klimašauskas is Director of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius. Their experiences will offer a way of looking at the institution as an active participant in the city — one capable of initiating new relationships, rethinking the meaning of public space, and participating in shaping how and through what forms the city is lived.

The discussion will be held in English at the Urban Change Pavilion. Participation in the event is free.

Valentinas Klimašauskas is Director of the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, a curator and writer. Among the major international projects he has curated are “Superglue, or Inventing the Friend” (CAC, 2026), the 1st Klaipėda Biennial “Sunset Every Two Years” (2025), the Lithuanian National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art (with João Laia; artists Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė; Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2024), the contemporary art festival “Coast Contemporary” in the Lofoten Islands, Norway (2023), the 14th Baltic Triennial “The Endless Frontier” (with João Laia, CAC, Vilnius, 2021), a choreographic project by Alexandra Pirici at the Kaunas Ninth Fort monument to the victims of Nazism (2020), and the Latvian National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (with Inga Lāce; Daiga Grantina’s solo exhibition “Saules Suns”, 2019).

In 2024, Valentinas Klimašauskas published the English-language book Telebodies. Bleeding Subtitles for Postrobotic Scenes (“Mousse Publishing”, Milan). The book forms part of his Doctorate in Art dissertation defended at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Klimašauskas is also the author of the fiction books Daugiakampis (“Six Chairs Books”, Kaunas, 2018), Oh, my darling and other texts (“The Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt”, Vilnius, 2018) and Alfavilnius (“Kitos knygos”, Vilnius, 2008). His texts have been published in “A Prior Magazine”, “As a Journal”, “Beyond”, “Cura”, “Dot Dot Dot”, “Flash Institut”, “Flash Art”, “Kim Docs”, “Kunsthernes Hus”, “Good Times & Nocturnal News”, “Šiaurės Atėnai”, “ŠMC interviu”, “Metropolis M”, “Mousse”, “Nero”, “Paletten”, “Spike” and elsewhere.

Martí Manen (Barcelona, 1976) works across independent and institutional curatorial practice. In 2015, he curated the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and in 2019 he curated “Momentum10”, the biennial in Moss, Norway. He has curated exhibitions at the Natural History Museum in Mexico City, “Aara” in Bangkok, “Tabakalera” in San Sebastián, “Konsthall C” in Stockholm, CA2M in Madrid and “Fabra i Coats” in Barcelona.

During the 1990s, Martí Manen spent five years organising exhibitions in his room in a student apartment in Barcelona. From 2018 to 2026, he directed “Index — The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation” in Stockholm. He also leads the advanced curatorial studies programme “CuratorLab” at Konstfack University in Stockholm.

Martí Manen has published several books, including Salir de la exposición (Leaving the Exhibition, “Consonni”), Contarlo todo sin saber cómo (Telling Everything Without Knowing How, CA2M) and When Lines Are Time (Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona).

Povilas Marozas is a researcher and architect working with landscape, public and art spaces, based in Vilnius. Having studied architecture and architectural history in Lithuania and the United Kingdom, he is currently pursuing an artistic research doctorate at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. He began his professional practice in London in 2012, working in public-space and urban landscape architecture. After returning to Vilnius in 2019, he founded his own practice, “Studio Space/Time”. Alongside his design practice, Povilas Marozas also teaches in the Department of Interior Design at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Urban Change Pavilion Public Programme

Over the past decade, Panevėžys has undergone significant changes in its architecture, public spaces and cultural infrastructure. The Urban Change Pavilion talk series invites a critical reflection on these transformations and asks how urban change can involve local initiatives, respond to social and cultural challenges, and address a rapidly changing ecological environment.

Pavilion Architecture
IXL Studio (authors: Petras Išora, Ona Lozuraitytė; architects: Gabrielius Dovydėnas, Dovydas Alčauskis)

Graphic Work
Nerijus Rimkus

Public Programme Curator
Povilas Marozas

Project Manager
Vilius Vaitiekūnas

Communication Coordinator:
Šeila Žilinskaitė

Public Programme Coordinator
Urtė Pirugytė

Image used in the promotion of the Public Programme:
sesupe.com

Project financed by
Lithuanian Council for Culture, Panevėžys City Municipality