BAUSKA MUSEUM

The Bauska Museum is located in the historical centre of Bauska city, in a building with more than 120 years of history. It preserves archaeological, historical, artistic and ethnographic evidence of the history of the Bauska region from the earliest times to the present day.

The museum's expositions and themed exhibitions reflect the history of Bauska in the 20th century, giving an idea of the cultural and historical environment of Zemgale region and the economic and cultural diversity of Bauska city.

The permanent toy exhibition of the Bauska Museum is the only one in Latvia that reveals the world of toys and dolls from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century.

In the museum's exhibition hall available to visit art and applied art exhibitions.

Bauska trough times and people in Bauska during the 20th century

The majority of the Bauska Museum collection consists of objects from various periods of the late 19th and 20th centuries, which reveal the social, political, economic and cultural life of the intelligentsia, craftsmen, merchants, etc. that formed Bauska society at that time.

The exhibition is designed as a historical walk through the streets of old Bauska and reflects the history of the town from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1970s-1980s.

Post-war photographs depict the changes that affected Bauska and its inhabitants in later years. A peek into the Chekist's office reveals that Bauska was a major concentration of the USSR state security forces in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as the area was home to a strong national resistance movement in the post-war years.

Jews in Bauska

Jewish people first started living near Bauska in the 18th century, however by the second half of the 19th century approximately two thirds of the population was made up by Jews – merchants and shopkeepers, skilled craftsmen, wise doctors, successful entrepreneurs, city councilors and others of various backgrounds.

Even after the First World War, during the mid-1920s, in a then independent country Jews were still a prominent part of the community in Bauska, alongside Latvians and Germans.

Nowadays there lives almost no evidence of this time, so the exhibition „Jews in Bauska” is a documentary story about the history of Bauska’s Jewish community, starting from the very beginning and up until its tragic destruction during the Nazi occupation in the summer of 1941. Images show the once ruined Jewish cemetery on Biržu street and the interior of the synagogue destroyed in the Second World War. The exposition tells stories of various residents of Bauska:  the authoritative Jewish Rabbi and religious thinker Abrahams Ichaks Kuks, who led prayers in the Bauska Synagogue; the founder of the local press and the publisher of the first newspaper „Bauskas Sludinājumi” Nahmans Jankelovičs and his family; the Feitelsoni family, who were successful clothing merchants; the wise Nisseloviči family and about many other habitants. Today their descendants live in many parts of the world and remember their ancestral town on the banks of three rivers.

The photography exhibition is complemented by the interior of a wealthy Jew’s apartment in Bauska from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. It displays objects related to Jewish everyday life and household items – furniture, dishes, Jewish books and religious items used during prayers.

Time to play

The World of Puppets and Toys at the Bauska Museum is designed to appeal to a children's audience, but it is no less interesting and enjoyable for adults too, because it is a story about the toys that our grandmothers and grandfathers, mums and dads, ourselves and our children played with, in their childhood.

The exhibition illustrates the development of toys from the late 19th century to the early 21st century. It brings together luxurious porcelain dolls, Art Deco fabric boudoir dolls, Soviet-era dolls and toys, as well as more recent Barbie dolls. All this is complemented by miniature furniture, household objects and interiors. Cars, planes, ships, constructors, war machines, weapons, plastic kits and much more shows the world of toys for boys, at different times.

This type and size of exhibition of historical dolls and toys is currently the only one in Latvian museums. Part of the toy collection in the Bauska Museum is recognized as valuable and in line with similar museum exhibitions in other European countries.

The Dolls and toys of world nations

The exhibition features souvenir dolls from Europe, America, Asia and Africa, with a total of 350 items from 53 countries.

The collection also includes dolls in traditional Latvian folk costumes made in Latvia at different times. The oldest item in the collection is a small crochet doll in Kurzeme folk costume made in the 1930s. A doll in Kurzeme folk costume with silver brooches and amber beads is an important item in the collection. It was exhibited at the Latvian exposition in the VDNH exhibition complex in Moscow in the 1950s. The costume and jewelry is the unique handwork of Latvian craftsmen. The doll itself was made in Russia in the 1950s to a design by the artist M. Kiseļova and is now a great rarity.

Fairytale house

The specially designed interior, with painted ceilings and period furniture, displays small, themed toy collections. The exhibits are arranged in real furniture, as they are usually displayed in private collections at home.

The exhibition features a collection of doll houses, plush bears and artists' dolls.

The Bauska Museum's collection of puppets includes works by Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, Czech and Russian puppeteers, as well as a collection of marionettes and decorative puppets by puppet artist Elvīra Kuzņecova.

The exhibition also includes a doll palace, where the objects used to furnish the interiors have been collected for more than 15 years, and some of the details and furniture are handmade. Each room is decorated in a different historical interior.