Zībārte said that “Zuzeum”, founded in 2017, is an investment of art collectors and patrons Dina and Jānis Zuzāni in the art infrastructure of Latvia and the entire Baltic Sea region. The aim of its foundation is to popularize Latvian art in an international context. The new premises and exhibition halls will make the ever-growing collection of Zuzans accessible to the general public.
The “Zuzeum” building, which was built as a cork factory in 1910 according to the project of architect and engineer Edmund von Trompovskis, is a contemporary of the works represented in the Zuzāni collection and several generations of artists, Zībārte emphasized. It already functioned when the first modernists worked in Riga and art schools were founded.
Not far from the building is the former Kārlis Zāle workshop and the renovated wooden building of the Riga Secondary School of Design and Art. “Zuzeum” is located between the historical center of Riga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the future Rail Baltica railway line, which will connect Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Warsaw with Europe, said the art center’s exhibition manager.
After the transformation that took place in the first half of 2020, “Zuzeum” invites everyone interested to experience art in two exhibition halls with an area of 1,100 square meters, a sculpture garden, a cafe and a roof terrace. The exhibition program of the Art Center will be complemented by excursions, lectures, meditation, cinema and “DJ” evenings.
Zībārte emphasized that more than twenty jobs have been created at the art center for art professionals and young people. Zuzeum employees speak Latvian, Russian, English, German, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Punjabi, Dutch and Danish.
The representative of the Art Center pointed out that with more than twenty thousand works of art of different genres, the Zuzāni collection is the largest private Latvian art collection in the world. At its core are the art of the late 19th century and the classical modernism of the first half of the 20th century, the art of the 1950s and 1980s during the Soviet era, as well as the works of contemporary Latvian artists.
