Exhibition "The Right to a Library"

The exhibition marks the culminating year of the event cycle "500 Years of the Latvian Book." It invites reflection on libraries and reading as cornerstones of a democratic society. At once imaginative, intellectually reflective, and political, the exhibition is a must-see for anyone who loves books, and even more so for those who do not yet.

At its center is the Riga City Library (1524), the first public library in Riga, which came into being five centuries ago during the time of the iconoclastic riots, and whose collection was largely destroyed in World War II. The story of the Riga City Library is full of drama and vivid, surprising details. In the exhibition, it is used as an example to encourage thought and discussion about changes in society and thought processes today, emphasizing that the library as a model of the world reflects much broader patterns in both individual and collective efforts to organize, make sense of, and understand the world around us. Literacy, books, and libraries are important elements in shaping a vision of the future as well, and the exhibition uses the history of the library to ask once again: would we want the future to be in the hands of a non-reading and uncritically thinking society?