Not an exhibition, but a government decision: on 20 August 1919, the new Latvian state founded the Art Academy of Latvia de iure. It did not officially open its doors until 12 October 1921, so this date brings no line of students at easels – rather, a paper carrying the Cabinet’s will that the state needed its own higher art school. The initiator and first rector was Vilhelms Purvītis, the landscape painter who turned an administrative decision into workshops, professors, and a new generation of artists.

In the summer of 1919, Latvia’s Provisional Government in Riga was still working amid war and the building of state institutions. The founding of the Art Academy shows that, alongside the army, diplomacy, and schools, the new republic deliberately built the infrastructure of professional culture as well.