Old Lady Still Homeless
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| Old Lady Still Homeless | |
| Maria-Kristiina Soomre | |
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The 82-year-old Art Museum of Estonia is facing a long-awaited rebirth into a normally functioning modern institution when the first ever purpose-built museum in Estonia opens (hopefully) in 2005 in Kadriorg Park, Tallinn. This will be the end of a long process, as the first attempts to build a home for the Art Museum date back to the 1930s; the museum was evicted from its first temporary venue - Kadriorg Palace - to make room for the King of Sweden who visited Estonia in the autumn of 1929.
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The most decisive setback for the museum was probably the scandalous rejection of Alvar Aalto's design (it later became a classical museum style for decades, at least in Finland), at the international architectural competition for the Art Museum in 1937, in favour of a much more traditional design by two local architects Edgar Kuusik and Erich Jacoby which was also never realised. For years Kadriorg Palace functioned as a 'permanent temporary' venue for the museum. Today, after thorough restoration work (1992-1999), only one department of the Art Museum - The Museum for Foreign Art - has moved back 'home'. The central museum can still be considered homeless. In 1994 another international architectural competition for the Art Museum was held; this time the winner was a Finn - Pekka Vapaavuori - and the design was quite 'safe' and traditional. However, scandal couldn't be avoided and the museum has still not been built. Estonians are pragmatic people: when talking about arts they usually think about money, and most often come to the conclusion that arts tend to be too expensive. The discussions on the matter of building the new museum got a fresh start when several businessmen and politicians opposed the cost of the project as well as the idea of a museum in general. A propaganda war began and years later the peace treaty still hasn't been signed. The main issues discussed, in addition to the cost of the new building, were the actual project and the future site of the museum. Suddenly there were numerous people who knew best what else to do with the (non-existent) money as well as what the museum should be like and how it should be run. |
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Most of the statements made in the press during the discussions had no theoretical value. The problem is that, due to a permanent lack of space, the Art Museum's current identity is rather vague. The institution actually consists of eight different branches, each of them having a different speciality and character (the 'homeless' Art Museum of Estonia itself in the Knighthood House, the Museum of Medieval Art in the Niguliste Church, the Museum for Foreign Art and the Mikkel Museum in Kadriorg, the Adamson-Eric and Kristjan Raud museums, the Applied Art Museum and the Exhibition Hall in Rottermann Salt Storage). As the public has no general image of what the Art Museum of Estonia should be, the actual function of the proposed building is still widely misread by the museum's critics.
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We Estonians like to consider ourselves a young and progressive nation - we look to the example of the Finns in search of the 'Estonian Nokia' and envy them for the Kiasma - their Museum of Contemporary Art. The world museum boom of the 1990s has proved that the new museums of modern and contemporary art (bearing in mind the Bilbao-phenomenon) have been effective money-makers and tourist-magnets for their creators. Exactly this kind of success story is also the dream of the Estonian businessman - the leading taxpayer. The problem is that in Kadriorg the National Gallery will be built, the kind of central and rather 'academic' museum that in most cases was already built in the 19th century. Although most of the art ever made in Estonia could be considered 'modern' as it is mainly a 20th century phenomenon, the museum seems to prefer a more 'classical' identity. The future museum will not be just another gallery space or supermarket with pictures on the walls, nor will it be just a centre for modern art. It will function as a major museum-machine with a modern infrastructure to serve all the museum's branches as well as the cultural life of Tallinn generally. It is now the challenge for the museum's PR team to prove that even if 'modern' and 'contemporary' are sexy, the Old Lady has other virtues which will lead it to find a place in people's hearts.
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| Estonian Art 1/02 (11) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2002 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 | |
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