As someone who grew up in Vilnius, Lithuania, I was able to experience the shift in museum attention as it happened. Since the restauration of independence in 1990, Lithuanian museums have been trying to change and catch up with the western museum culture. In only 25 years they have successfully moved from ideological, bureaucracy driven institutions to social and educational spaces that resemble very closely the ‘new museums’ described in the text. Not every museum has adapted - in smaller towns you can still find places that are just rooms with things to look at. But such museums are usually empty or, in the best case, full of students that came here for a school trip. In the age of Internet, if you’re only interested in looking at things you can usually find everything you’re interested in online. Museums will have to offer something more - an experience, not just a view.

The first museum visit I remember was to the Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas. As a typical six-year-old boy, I liked warfare and guns. But guns - and other artifacts - are all I can remember from that visit: a set of medieval armor, a WW1 rifle and a model warship. I enjoyed seeing them but it wasn’t much different from just just looking at their pictures in some history book. I also visited the same museum just before I left Lithuania, in 2013. It was a totally different experience - there were still cool looking guns, but they were all presented in context. There were expositions about warrior cultures around the world throughout the history, pre-historic warfare, and Lithuanian inter-war diplomacy. I still enjoyed seeing the guns. But I also loved the stories they told.