CAC is the largest venue for contemporary art in the Baltic States, with exhibition space of 2400 square meters. The building was inaugurated in 1968 as the Art Exhibition Palace, and was run as a branch of the Lithuanian Museum of Art until 1988. Since 1992, the CAC has been an independent institution, principally funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture. In the 1990s, the CAC was gifted a Fluxus Archive by the Silverman Collection (Detroit) in commemoration of Lithuanian Fluxus co-founder George Maciunas, which is kept on permanent display.

CAC is a non-collection based institution committed to developing a broad range of international and Lithuanian exhibition projects. It also presents a wide range of public programs including; lectures, seminars, performances, film and video screenings, and live new music events.

CAC has re-opened its permanent exposition of the George Maciunas Fluxus Cabinet, which for three years toured, as a part of the international exhibition Fluxus East: Fluxus Networks in Central Eastern Europe, to several museums in Europe. In 1997 the Cabinet was donated to CAC as a gift from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, the world’s largest collection of Fluxus works, and curated by the influential historian of Fluxus movement Jon Hendricks. The Cabinet consists of nearly 100 objects and presents work by many of the most important Fluxus artists, including; George Maciunas, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Shigeko Kubota, Ben Vautier, Mieko Shiomi, Henry Flynt, La Monte Young, Yoko Ono, and Ay-O. The collection of the Cabinet which includes the scores and visual documentation of Fluxus ‘events’, photos from seminal Fluxus festivals in Wuppertal, Nice and New York, Fluxus newspapers, and other editions, reveals the interdisciplinary nature of this influential artistic movement and its practices, which changed notions about visual arts in the 1960s.

CAC is well known internationally as the home of the Baltic Triennial of International Art, one of the major contemporary festival exhibitions in Northern Europe; in 2005 BMW (Black Market Worlds) the IX Baltic Triennial was positively reviewed by international specialist press. Also in 2009 the X Baltic Triennial: Urban Stories was the lynchpin contemporary art event in the national program of “Vilnius Ð European Capital of Culture”.

CAC also produces exhibitions abroad. In 2009 it presented a Frieze Project in London produced by Lithuanian artist Mindaugas Navakas, titled Break the Windows, Snatch the Crystals that garnered attention from the world press. Recently, it contributed to an off-site alternative and site-specific sculpture project in rural Latvia with the meta-exhibition SWAN SWALLOW BONFIRE ROSEMARY RECITAL, 2010; and also collaborated on a five city French-Lithuanian exchange project that ran for the second half of 2008. In 2001 and 2007 CAC was the commissioning institution of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with the artists Deimantas Narkevicius, and Gediminas & Nomeda Urbonas, respectively. CAC has also collaborated with institutions in the Czech Republic, Germany and Estonia to present the touring project FLUXUS East (2007–2008), and has been a partner institution, co-producer, and venue in the international exhibitions Holiday, 2007, On Mobility, 2006, Populism, 2005, and Who If Not We?, 2004–2005.

The Contemporary Art Centre organizes approximately five/six large-scale exhibition projects per annum (including retrospectives, surveys, and international group shows) in conjunction with up to 15 smaller projects.

CAC presents a wide ranging public program that incorporates seminars, lectures, panel discussions, film and video screenings and public workshops, organized in conjunction, and independently of the exhibition program.

Between 2005–2009, CAC presented CAC/CAFE TALKS, Vilnius premier international lecture event series. Cafe Talks offered a social forum for the discussion of topical international issues in culture, economics, and politics that impact upon the production, exhibition, and reception of contemporary art.

Since 2009, and the launch of the CAC Reading Room, CAC public discussion programs have become more frequent and embraced wider formats of debates, seminars, and teaching workshops. These include, “Three Uses of the Knife”, a program that brought a group of acclaimed writers, designers, and editors to Vilnius to train an emerging generation of students, journalists, and critics.

Since 2005, CAC has produced the magazine CAC INTERVIU, reaching its 15th issue at Christmas 2009. CAC INTERVIU is a bilingual (Lithuanian & English) interview based publication that, focused on the Baltic region with a view on topical international events that impact on art produced everywhere.

The two floors of the Contemporary Art Centre contain five exhibition halls with the total area of over 2000 square meters, an open-air courtyard and a conference hall on the first floor.

Ground Floor Hall, 184.6 m2; South Hall, First floor, 215.7 m2; Main Hall, First floor, 964.9 m2; North Hall, First floor, 296 m2; Courtyard, 213.7 m2; Conference Hall, 215.7 m2.