Oskars Kalpaks museum marks 90 years with music and photographs

Oskars Kalpaks Museum and memorial site Airītes is marking its 90th anniversary with a musical account of the museum’s creation performed by the National Guard brass band of Latvia’s National Armed Forces, LSM reported.

An open-air photography exhibition, titled “90 Years of the Colonel O. Kalpaks Museum,” will also be on display at the museum throughout September. It shows how the museum was established in the 1930s, and everyone is invited to attend the anniversary celebrations.

The exhibition includes photographs from the museum’s collection, including images showing the construction of its farm buildings in the summer of 1935 and the completed barn a year later. Another photograph, taken in 1940, shows the water pump in the museum courtyard.

“This will help people understand how much this place has changed,” said Mārtiņš Ludis Meija, the museum’s social education project manager. The museum building has been restored to look as it did after its opening in 1936, while the farm building was restored last year.

Other features have changed over time. The water pump has been replaced, only the foundations of the sauna remain, and the foundations of the museum’s barn were restored because the building itself could no longer be renovated. These changes are also reflected in the exhibition.

Meija said the Oskars Kalpaks Museum was not originally built solely as a museum but as a functioning farm, with livestock and other necessities of rural life. The complex was designed by Artūrs Galindoms, a colonel and soldier in the Separate, or student, Company. He designed the buildings as a substantial log structure incorporating Latvian national architectural elements.

One of the photographs showing the construction process was added to the museum’s collection only recently.