RSU Anatomy Museum Attracts Long Queues During Night of Museums

The traditional European Night of Museums took place on Saturday, 13 May. Although the warm weather lured many out of the city and other important events took place that night, there was still a significant amount of people who braved the hour-long queue that stretched along Citadeles iela to the Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) Anatomy Museum. visit

‘Even though we had to compete with both the Ice Hockey World Championship and the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, 2,453 visitors came through our doors that night! And they were all wonderful and eager to explore new things,’

says Head of the RSU Anatomy Museum Ieva Lībiete.

Visitors were able to view the permanent exhibition that is spread over two floors of the museum that consists of several thousand anatomical specimens accompanied by multimedia annotations. A series of three compositions based on the brain's bioelectrical activity, or EEG signals, were specially created for the Anatomy Museum by composer Jachin Edward Pousson for the Night of Museums.

Pousson is a researcher and doctoral student at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, where he has been developing Brain-Computer Music Interface (BCMI) systems. The pieces, which were presented to visitors throughout the event, were created by Pousson using EEG recordings of three other musicians – pianist Hailong Zhang, saxophonist Arvydas Kazlauskas, and electronic music artist Vadim Pitlan. They were obtained while performing free musical improvisation.

‘This night at our museum would not be possible without the help of 30 RSU student volunteers. We are grateful to the RSU Student Union for their help,’ added Ieva Lībiete.

European Night of Museums is an international museum event that has been held in many parts of Europe every spring since 2005. The Anatomy Museum, which opened two years ago, took part for the first time in 2022.