Antanas Moncys house – museum
Antanas Mončys Art Museum A visit to the A. Mončys Art Museum will leave an impression not only on art lovers, but also on children. Why is that? As part of the artist’s will, visitors can touch the sculptures with their hands!
The building of the Antanas Mončys Museum was built at the beginning of the 20th century by Vladas Navickas, the son of Count Tiškevičius’s land manager.
Unlike most memorial museums, the Mončys House has no direct connection with the artist himself. Antanas Mončys (1921-1993) was a Lithuanian-born modernist sculptor who fled to the West during the World War II. Although Mončys never lived in Palanga, the sculptor grew up in nearby Kretinga and always admired the resort. The second floor of the museum displays the works that were donated to Lithuania after the artist’s death – over 200 sculptures, drawings, prints, collages, pipes and masks that were exhibited in the library of the former “Jūratė” sanatorium building. The Mončys House Museum was opened in 1999, and its reconstruction was supervised by architect Petras Lapė. In 2010, the building was granted the status of immovable cultural property of local significance. The adaptation of the building to the museum included the creation of exhibition spaces and the use of stylised fragments of the sculptor’s work on the outside: instead of the traditional Lithuanian horse decorations, the main façade features an element from an illustration of Lithuanian fairy tales by Oskaras Milašius, and the handrail of the staircase was given the shape of a whistle by the sculptor. The ground floor of the museum functions as an exhibition hall with a constantly changing exposition. The website is www.antanasmoncys.com. In 2016, the unique Palanga Fairy Tale Park was opened next to the A. Mončys Art Museum.