Last month, the LRE Foundation travelled to Riga, Latvia, for the kick-off of ArtMem – Art and Holocaust Memory, a new European cooperation project in which the Foundation is a consortium partner. The launch was held alongside the international conference “Art as Witness – Holocaust-Era Visual Art in Education and Remembrance”, organised and hosted by the Žanis Lipke Memorial from 21 to 23 October 2026.
Art as testimony
ArtMem focuses on artworks created during the Holocaust in ghettos, camps or under persecution. The project treats these drawings and paintings as testimonies, not as illustrations, as they carry personal experiences of loss, resistance, hope and survival. Furthermore, the project pays special attention to women artists and lesser-known artistic voices.
ArtMem aims to develop new ways of passing on Holocaust memory to young people. Throughout its timelines, secondary school students will research and interpret wartime artworks with the help of professional mentors. They will then create their own exhibition material showing what these works mean to them. In doing so, they will link the experiences of the past to present-day questions of prejudice, exclusion, human dignity and democratic values.
Three days in Riga
The conference brought together researchers, educators, museum professionals and cultural practitioners. Prof. Dr. Deniss Hanovs of the Art Academy of Latvia gave the keynote on Holocaust-era art as visual testimony. Holocaust scholar Ella Falldorf contributed her expertise on the ethics of displaying and interpreting such works. Speakers from the Mémorial de la gare de déportation de Bobigny and other institutions shared their experience of teaching the Holocaust through visual art. Discussions covered trauma-sensitive teaching, ethical interpretation, gender perspectives and age-appropriate engagement. These themes will shape the project’s student-led curation workshops and exhibitions.
Site visits rounded off the programme. Participants visited the Aleksandra Beļcova and Romans Suta Art Museum, the Salaspils concentration camp memorial and the Rumbula Forest massacre memorial near Riga.
A European partnership
ArtMem is co-funded by the European Union and developed by Pro Progressione, a Budapest based cultural hub with an international consortium including the LRE Foundation, Lidice Memorial, Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V., Székelyföldi Stúdió Egyesület and the Žanis Lipke Memorial. Together the partners cover six European countries.
For updates on the project, visit https://artmemproject.eu/
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
