New Exhibitions in Tallinn

Seaplane Harbour – The Vikings before the Vikings. Exhibition of the Ship Burials in Salme

15 years ago, a burial site of two Viking ships was discovered in Salme Village in Saaremaa. It quickly became clear that this discovery would make us take a fresh look at the Viking Age.

Salme is the world’s oldest known burial site of the Viking warriors. Until its discovery, it was unclear how seafaring warriors were buried. The exhibition features 150 original items that were given as grave offerings to Viking warriors in hopes that their lives would continue in Valhalla.

The exhibition is open from 16 February 2023 until 7 January 2024.

Tallinn Russian Museum – My Tallinn. Aleksandr Wladovsky

The exhibition presents works designed by architect and artist Aleksandr Wladowsky in Tallinn, both the objects we can still see in the cityscape as well as the projects which remained on paper. Wladowsky arrived in Estonia at the beginning of the 20th century, at first residing in Narva and later moving to Tallinn. Over several decades, many buildings were constructed according to his designs in various locations in Tallinn, from Nõmme and Kopli to Kadriorg.

The exhibition is open from 5 April 2023 to 10 March 2024.

Kalamaja Museum – Kalamaja wallpapers and what we can find underneath

In the fascinating exhibition exploring the way of life of Estonians, we can learn about the layers of wallpapers in the houses of early 20th century Kalamaja and Põhja-Tallinn as well as the items between the layers, which owners have discovered during renovation works and brought to the museum.

The exhibition is open from 12 April 2023 to May 2024.

The Balti Jaam Market (Kalamaja Museum) – The Taste of Kalamaja

The exhibition by Kalamaja Museum presents a collection of recipes from former and current residents of Kalamaja at the Balti Jaam Market. Many of the recipes are connected to childhood memories and grandmothers cooking in the kitchen, but some brand new Kalamaja recipes are introduced as well.

The exhibition will be open from 1 February 2023

Tallinn City Life Museum Everyday companions. Handbags from 1900–1950

Estonian History Museum – Why is Estonia not a kingdom?

Kiek in de Kök Fortification Museum Gate Tower – Endless Coffee Drinking

Museum of Estonian Architecture – Urban Stocks. Spolia returns

The title of the exhibition comes from the English term ‘urban mining’, which refers to extracting resources from city spaces as an alternative to extracting them from natural landscapes. The keyword is ‘spolia’ – an ancient reuse technique that mixes valuable decorative stones with utilitarian masonry. The exhibition looks at acquiring processes related to the circular use of construction materials.

The exhibition is open from 25 May 2023 to 30 July 2023.

The Museum of Photography – the main exhibition of the nature photo theme year “The Photo Library of the Magazine Eesti Loodus”

The exhibition provides an insight into the photo archive created by the editorial staff of long-running nature magazine Eesti Loodus. The exhibition displays classical nature photographs of animals, birds and plants, but also features images related to urban nature, a conceptual approach to nature and nature preservation as well as a historical perspective on Estonian nature.

This exhibition is open until 14 January 2023.

Fotografiska – Toomas Volkmann. pastful blast

The biggest solo exhibition of the internationally acknowledged Estonian photographer Toomas Volkmann tells the story of his nearly 30-year creative journey in more than 100 photos. The importance of the exhibition lies not only in the unravelling of Volkmann’s world, but also in the sensitive mapping of three decades, from the 1990s to the 2010s.

The exhibition is open from 28 September 2023 to 11 February 2024.

Fotografiska – Roger Ballen. World According to Roger Ballen

The exhibition features the works of Roger Ballen, an artist born in the US who has been working in Johannesburg and its surrounding areas since the 1970s. Initially, Ballen documented white South Africans in remote regions near the end of the Apartheid era, conveying their state of mind through stark black and white photography.

The exhibition is open from 14 October 2023 to 14 January 2024.

Adamson-Eric Museum – Urve Küttner. Crystallisations

The solo exhibition of the Estonian metal artist Urve Küttner displays the artist’s creative pursuits of more than five decades. As an artist experimenting with a broad range of techniques, Küttner’s works include innovative industrial design, filigree-like art jewellery, conceptual projects and installations of jewels as well as monumental paintings of different stages of rust on metal.

The exhibition is open from 8 September 2023 to 11 February 2024.

Kadriorg Art Museum – The Art of Adapting

The exhibition explores how we habitually perceive, interpret and value natural environments and co-species. The borders between humanity and the natural environment are shifted in the exhibition halls with the help of contemporary artists and works from the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia.

One of the goals of this exhibition is to provoke discussions on sustainable curating and a sustainable cultural industry (low costs and productivity, existing works of art, slow transport) that would lead us towards a more sustainable cultural sector.

The exhibition is open from 15 September 2023 to 3 February 2024.

Kumu Art Museum – Unframed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė

The exhibition focuses on the works of three Baltic women artists – Malle Leis (1940-2017), Maija Tabaka (1939) and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933–2007) – in the late Soviet era of the 1970s and 1980s. The education they received from art institutes in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius in the 1950s and 1960s was similar in terms of its ideological and aesthetic principles, but over time they all strayed from these principles by shifting and blurring the meanings of seemingly simple motifs and gestures.

The exhibition is open from 29 September 2023 to 25 February 2024.

Kumu Art Museum – Konrad Mägi in Close-up

The exhibition examines the works of the classic Estonian artist Konrad Mägi based on the results of technical studies. These studies allow viewers to detect what is invisible to the naked eye, such as baseline drawings, overpainting, changes made in the composition and colour correction. As a result, the audience can better understand the structure, technique and materials of each individual work and become more familiar with the artist’s style.

The exhibition is open from 19 October 2023 to 14 April 2024

Mikkel Museum – The Father of Caricature. Works by Daumier from R. Paul Firnhaber’s Collection

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was one of the greatest figures of 19th-century French art who created innovative paintings and sculptures, but made his living mainly as a caricaturist. Since his graphic works are mainly humorous, Daumier can be regarded as the father of caricature, a title justified by his role in making humorous pictures into socially and politically influential works of art.

His caricatures vividly reflect his views and his era. Daumier was a democrat and a republican, but his artistic freedom and the choice of subjects for his works were limited by strict censorship. For this reason, most of his caricatures are harmless, poking fun at overpopulation in Paris, human shortcomings, local cultural life and family relations.

The exhibition will be open from 4 November 2023 to 28 April 2024.

Kumu Art Museum – melanie bonajo. When the Body Says Yes

The solo exhibition of the Dutch artist melanie bonajo seeks to answer the question of whether intimacy still has a place in our increasingly commercialised and technological world. The central theme of the exhibition is touch, which can be understood both in its literal sense as well as in the sense that it signifies our relationship to each other and the world around us. For bonajo, touch can be a powerful remedy for the modern epidemic of loneliness.

melanie bonajo’s work When the Body Says Yes represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2022 and is now touring European museums.

The exhibition will be open from 10 November 2023 to 28 April 2024.

Kumu Art Museum – Borderless Universe in Their Minds: Italian Transavantgarde and Estonian Calm Expressionism

The exhibition focuses on the creative dialogue between the Transavantgarde. an artistic movement that emerged in Italy in the late 1970s, and the Estonian artists Raoul Kurvitz and Urmas Muru, the founders of the group Rühm T that formed in the mid-1980s. The Transavantgarde rejected conceptual art in favour of the genre of painting and its emotional sensitivity.

The exhibition will be open from 1 November 2023 to 19 May 2024.

Estonian Theatre and Music Museum – The Universe of Sleep. The Tower of Dreams

The exhibition looks for connections between dreams and creativity. A dreamer can play several roles in their own dreams – sometimes the main character, other times a mere observer. Do creative people have more unique dreams or are dreams themselves a source of creativity?

The exhibition is open from 24 May 2023 to 7 January 2024.