Since September 2023, the 7th bastion casemate of the Daugavpils Fortress is officially available in its new function – as an open-storage chamber for contemporary ceramics from the Rothko museum collection.

The Rothko Museum’s open-storage facility displays a significant part of a vast contemporary ceramics collection steadily and purposefully acquired for no less than a decade. Its origins date back to 2013 when the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre held its first International Ceramic Laboratory Symposium, which became an annual tradition. From then on, the collection has been expanding yearly with the latest symposium output. Other acquisition sources are the Latvia Ceramics Biennale with its Martinsons Award and an eponymous international juried exhibition instituted in 2016, as well as some other juried exhibitions and a few targeted purchases. Professional curators have been attracting domestically and internationally renowned ceramic artists and achieving their representation in the Rothko Museum collection. At this point, the museum’s Contemporary Ceramics Collection has grown to more than 500 artworks, which makes it Latvia’s largest and most valuable repository of contemporary ceramic art.

The new open-storage chamber displays over a hundred artworks by artists from 40 countries. The open-access solution enables the public to explore the diversity of ceramic art and appreciate the artists’ creativity and professionalism in dealing with different earthen materials (from clay and chamotte to stoneware and porcelain) and multiple firing techniques.

The open-storage chamber is available daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. From 1 November to 1 April visitors can access the space in the museum’s opening hours.