Art Museum of Estonia

Art Museum of Estonia continues to deliver exciting and captivating art projects throughout the year. Apart from the usual opening times and ticket fares the museums are also offering free visits and have introduced one Euro day.

This May 18 and June 1 the art museums offer free entry to all visitors.

On January 16, April 17, September 4 and December 18 it is one Euro day in all art museums, meaning that visitors can enjoy all of the museums exhibitions for just one Euro.

On Wednesdays Kumu Art Museum is open until 8pm.

18.01.–21.04.2013

5th floor, Gallery of Contemporary Art

The exhibition includes the multifaceted work of Raoul Kurvitz (b. 1961): videos, performances, paintings, installations and much more from the late 1980s to the present day. Kurvitz works in various media, and the range of topics that interest him is wide: from philosophy to pop culture. The exhibition brings Kurvitz’s most noteworthy works to viewers, works that today the defining works of Estonian contemporary art. 

25.01.–28.04.2013

3rd floor, B-wing

A survey of the work of the Estonian modernist sculptor, painter and ceramicist Jaan Koort (1883–1935), who worked in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. 

08.02.–18.05.2013

4th floor, B-wing

Anime defines Japanese pop culture. The exhibition includes original drawings from Japan’s most important anime artists and directors. These works, produced between 1987 and 2009, are being displayed for the first time as individual works of art, separate from their role in the production process of film-making. 

Come In. Interior Design as a Medium of Contemporary Art in Germany 

22.02.–02.06.2013

The Great Hall

The exhibition examines interior design elements and everyday objects as fundamental items in our surrounding environment. The viewer is shown a selection of German contemporary art that looks like design, but operates on the border between design and art. 

10.05.–08.09.2013

3rd floor B-wing, 5th floor, and Inner Courtyard 

This international exhibition examines gardens and parks as places with nature designs by humans, and their functioning in culture and contemporary society. 

14.06.–06.10.2013 

4th floor, B-wing

This exhibition, compiled by the Moderna Museet in Malmö, which is comprised of almost 100 photos, provides a survey of the still lives, portraits and fashion photos of Irving Penn (1917–2009), a late 20th-century American photographer. 

28.06.–03.11.2013

The Great Hall

The international exhibition is an attempt to take a look at European art since 1945, without the usual ideological demarcation lines of the Cold War. Twelve chapters will examine the different ways in which artists have dealt with Enlightenment ideals; universal human rights, freedom, equality and democracy. 

20.09.2013 until 2014

3rd floor, B-wing

At this exhibition, which searches for the intersection between Estonian art and photography, one can admire the movement of motifs, parallels in composition, reality and the different forms of imitating reality, as well as the intertwining of the pictorial language and technical tools of two fields of activity focused on the recording of reality. 

27.09.2013 until 2014

5th floor, Gallery of Contemporary Art

From the experiments in sound culture of the first Estonian sound movies to the collaboration between Estonian composer Sven Grünberg and artist Kaarel Kurismaa, and the development of the current local sound art subculture. 

18.10.2013 – January 2014

4th floor, B-wing

The exhibition focuses on the first decade of Nikolai Kormashov’s (1929–2012) work, where we find a combination that seems impossible at first glance: the work motifs and industrial views familiar from the official art of the day combined with the sacred aesthetics of icon painting. 

22.11.2013–20.04.2014

The Great Hall

Lepo Mikko, who graduated from the Pallas Art School in 1939, was a dedicated modernist, for whom a powerful creative stimulus was provided by the spiritual liberation and changing atmosphere during the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s.

Repin. A Russian Master’s Life and Work in Finland 

09.02.–18.08.2013

The collaborative exhibition of the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki and the Kadriorg Art Museum of the works of Ilya Repin (1844–1930), a great name in Russian Realist art, brings viewers the artist’s sensitive portraiture and reveals the creative background of the famous compositions. 

In the exhibition, which introduces the period of his life spent in Finland, Repin, who is known primarily as a Realist, is revealed as an elegant Impressionist portraitist and society painter, whose works depict outstanding figures from both Russian and Finnish history. 

When an Artist Met Kleio. Historical Scenes from the 19th Century 

07.09.2013–09.03.2014

The first art event to bring together the historical illustrations created and collected in Estonia during the 19th century. Kleio, the artist and history muse, speaks at the exhibition. A dialogue is born, based on fantasy and then on science, monumental or intimate, passionate or contemplative. 

Historical events and places, one’s own and others, weapons and costumes, heroes and paragons come to life in the pictures. Albert, the Bishop of Riga meets Kaupo, the leader of the Livonians; the chronicler Henry of Livonia meets Plettenberg, the Grand Master of the Order; King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette; Generals Alexander the Great and Alexander Nevsky, Napoleon and Kutuzov, as well as many others. 

Mikkel Museum 

08.12.2012–05.05.2013

Alur Reinans’s silver collection is among the most prominent in Estonia, containing about one hundred works of silver produced in the Estonian territory between the 16th and 19th centuries.

18.05.–13.10.2013

The Stern family owns Estonia’s only world-class collection featuring animals in art. The exhibition introducing the collection features animals and birds, from a lion to a bullfinch. 

02.11.2013 – March 2014

The exhibition focuses on the Estonian-language Bible: the root text of Estonian books, literature and artistic culture. Along with its spiritual and cultural semantic field, the exhibition reveals the aesthetic world of the publication’s typography and binding art. 

The exhibition features one of the most comprehensive private collections of Estonian-language religious literature, including rare examples of the first and second editions of the Estonian-language Bible. 

02.11.2012–02.06.2013

The exhibition examines how the meaning of death, man’s fate after death and remembering the dead were reflected in medieval art and the art of the early modern age. In addition to artworks, archaeological and cultural-historical items help to cast light on the topic.

10.11.2012–17.03.2013

Drawing has been one of the main techniques in the work of Mare Vint (b. 1942) since the mid-1960s. In her highly individual manner, Vint presents landscapes, parks and buildings, enlivened by selected details: a woman, a bird, a tree leaf etc.

23.03.–02.06.2013

The exhibition introduces one of the most interesting and nuanced facets of traditional Japanese art: ink wash painting, with its various trends and possibilities of expression. The exhibition, which was compiled especially for the Adamson-Eric Museum, was prepared in cooperation with the International Sumi-e Association. Several Japanese artists who belong to the association are represented in the exhibition. 

07.06.–01.09.2013

The work of Juhan Muks, Adamson-Eric’s contemporary, is characterised by in-depth colour exploration, and has preserved its freshness until the present day. This exhibition, which has a retrospective bent, includes his finest works from the Art Museum of Estonia, Tartu Art Museum and Viljandi Museum, as well as from private collections. 

Juhan Muks was an Estonian artist who became an original creator, by advancing his art education in the art schools of Tallinn, Tartu and Riga, as well as in free academies in Paris. 

06.09.–24.11.2013

The exhibition is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Estonia Theatre building and is a part of a larger series of cultural and other events. The exhibition and its accompanying programme were prepared in cooperation with the Estonian National Opera, the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum, and the Estonia Society. On display are works of art and form an introduction to the people who have been associated with the Estonia Theatre for the last century. 

04.12.2013 – March 2014

For the first time, the story of the legendary artist couple Mari Adamson (1908–2000) and Adamson-Eric (1902–1968) will be examined at a joint exhibition. The exhibition focuses on the mutually supporting dialogue between two strong creative individuals in their work and life.