The Museum's collection began in 1973, when the Vilnius Writers' Museum was founded. Almost all of the exhibits were given to the museum by Antanas Venclova's wife Eliza Venclovienė and son Tomas Venclova.
In accordance with the proposals of the Ministry of Culture and Education of the Republic of Lithuania, the Vilnius City Board of Culture ordered the Vilnius Writers' Museum to be dissolved in 1990, and the Venclova Memorial Museum to become an independent museum, belonging to the Vilnius City Department of Culture. By order of the Minister of Culture and Education, all the exhibits of the Venclova Foundation were taken over from the Vilnius Writers' Museum. In 1991, the Venclova Memorial Apartment-Museum was reorganised into the Venclova Memorial Cabinet, located in the Vilnius Lithuanian House of Culture, and, after the abolition of the Lithuanian House of Culture in 1996, in the Vilnius Ethnic Activity Centre. In the summer of 2004, the museum was renamed the "Venclova House-Museum". In June 2005, by a decision of the Vilnius City Council, the Venclovas House-Museum, together with the B. Grincevičiūtė Memorial Apartment-Museum "Beatričės namai", the V. Krėve-Mickevičius Memorial Museum and the V. Mykolaitis-Putinas Memorial Apartment-Museum, were merged into the Directorate of Vilnius Memorial Museums.
Currently, the collections of the Venclovas House contain almost 15 thousand exhibits. The collection consists of the Antanas Venclova Foundation, the Tomas Venclova Foundation and the Račkauskas Family Foundation, which was the most recently started.
Since 1996 there has been an exhibition (prepared according to the project of D. Skrebienė) - an authentically furnished study of the writer Antanas Venclova, which contains all the furniture and most of the personal belongings and works of art that were there during the writer's lifetime, and an authentic environment.
The poet, writer and public figure A. Venclova is controversially regarded in our society: in 1940 he went to Moscow to "bring Stalin's sun", in 1949 he took part in the competition for the text of the national anthem of the Lithuanian Soviet republic and won it. However, he did not join the Communist Party until 1953, after Stalin's death, and in the interwar period he identified himself as an SSer. While holding high positions in the Soviet government, he was never indifferent to the preservation and legitimate appreciation of Lithuanian culture. As Minister of Education in 1940, he provided funds for the restoration of Trakai Castle, and later took part in commissions for the establishment of the Museum of Domestic Life, the K. He also contributed to the formation of public opinion about M. K. Čiurlionis, giving him his rightful place in the history of our culture. A. Venclova is a member of the editorial committees of the series of books "Lituanistinė biblioteka" ("Lithuanian Studies Library") and "Lithuanian Folk Art", which are very important for the preservation of our nation's cultural heritage (he wrote: "there is nothing more foolish than to drag the literature of the past to our days by the hair, and to look for suspicious allusions in it"), and he has worked a lot for the publication of the series. The writer was in contact with V. Mykolaitis-Putin and took care of A. Vienuolis. In her memoirs, I. Simonaitytė writes "he made me a writer" (referring to the editing work of A. Venclova's book "The Fate of Aukštieji Šimoniai"). She worked with the painter S. Krasauskas, the sculptor J. Mikėnas, the Icelandic writer Haldor Laksnes (Nobel Prize winner in 1955), the writer Tomas Manu and other Lithuanian and foreign artists. His apartment was visited by M. Sluckis, J. Avyžius, K. Korsakas, J. Baltušis, P. Cvirka, B. Sruoga, K. Boruta and others,
The cultural environment of the Venclovas House was influenced not only by the controversial work of A. His father Merkelis Račkauskas, a professor of philology at Kaunas University and later at Vilnius University, an erudite translator and scholar of ancient languages, ancient literature, and an expert in ancient languages, and Merkelis Račkauskas, and his father's brother Karolis Vairas-Račkauskas, a writer and translator.
The Venclovas' son
Tomas Venclova, who is currently a poet, translator, literary critic and publicist, professor-emeritus at Yale University (USA), grew up in this apartment. He is a laureate of the National Culture and Art Prize in 2000, "Paribio Man" in 2001 (the name is given by the "Paribio" Foundation in Seine), a laureate of the St. Christopher's Sculpture for Merit in the Field of Art in 2002, and an honorary doctor from seven universities. His childhood was shaped not only by his father's rich library, his father's broad approach to literature, and the cultural environment of his home, but also by his interaction with his grandfather M. Račkauskas. At present, over 20 books by T. Venclova have been published by various publishing houses around the world in Lithuanian, and nearly 30 books in other languages.
Another important aspect of the history of our nation is the political activities of T. Venclova. When the Lithuanian Helsinki Group was founded in the autumn of 1976, T. Venclova was a founder and member of the organisation, together with the Jesuit priest Karolis Garuckas, the physicist Eitan Finkelstein, the poet and former political prisoner Ona Lukauskaite-Poškienė and the former political prisoner Viktoras Petkus.
The Venclovas' apartment was visited by a large number of friends of T. Venclova. In 1960-61, some of the activities of the secret cultural study group took place here, with the participation of the director (now a Muscovite) K. Ginkas, L. Gutauskas, and the professor of physics R. Katilius. The apartment was visited by Dr. J. Tumel, one of the most famous Russian researchers of the "Silver Age", the literary scholar N. Kotreliov, the poet Nobel Prize winner J. Brodsky and many others.
The museum is currently focusing on the younger generation of its visitors. There are a number of Tomas Venclova's books published in Lithuania and abroad, and archival material is being collected on the members of the Venclova family: M. Račkauskas, K. Venclova, his political and literary activities, his relations with J. Brodsky, Č.
Cultural evenings are organised for the Vilnius public. The Museum cooperates with the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, other institutes, Lithuanian higher and secondary schools.
