Category: History
May 1st – Spring Day, International Workers’ Day
May 6th – 90th birth anniversary of Estonian literary scholar Ülo Tonts
May 9th – Mother’s Day, Saint Nicholas’ day, Europe day. Jubilee: actor and director Toomas Suuman 70.
May 15th – Tallinn’s Day. 100th birth anniversary of director Vello Rummo
May 18th – International Museum Day
May 21st – Jubilee: writer Ira Lember 95
May 24th – Saint Urban’s Day
All month
The largest spring-time movement event, Tallink Maijooks, which was supposed to take place on 22 May at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds unfortunately cannot happen this year in a normal format.
Everyone who has already signed up and want to keep the spring-time tradition alive can support the organisers by participating in the Tallink Maijooks virtual race that takes place 1-31 May.
Where: online/ participant’s choice
When: whenever
Ticket: 10 – 20 €
May 3rd until May 30th
Estonian Artists’ Association’s Spring Exhibition 2021
The long-awaited Spring Exhibition 2021 of the Estonian Artists’ Association is returning to its roots: approached from different angles, artworks completed in 2020/2021 will be exhibited at three exhibition venues of Tallinn Art Hall. The main exhibition of works selected by the jury will be displayed at Tallinn Art Hall, while two curated satellite exhibitions will be on view nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery.
Where: Vabaduse väljak 8 and Harju 13
When: Until May 23rd and May 30th
Ticket: Free admission or 4-12 €
From May 3rd
An exhibition of Bruno Linneberg, an Estonian navy and intelligence officer in Seaplane Harbour
Bruno Aleksander Linneberg joined the Navy during the Estonian War of Independence. Being only 19 years old but growing into one of the most gifted and bright officers in Estonian naval forces granted with both the gift and a curse to live in a historically complicated era.
The personal exhibition “UMUK UDŽD OTB. An exhibition of Bruno Linneberg, an Estonian navy and intelligence Officer” in the Seaplane Harbour, based on research by the Estonian Maritime Museum. The exhibition explores the life and choices of an extraordinary Estonian man during the most hectic decades of the 20th century that shaped Estonia’s destiny and the entire world. Through the career of Bruno Linneberg, we get to know the story of the Estonian Navy between the two world wars and witness the destruction of an extraordinary life’s work.
Where: Vesilennuki 6
When: From May 3rd onward
Tickets: Ticket information
May 4th until May 16th
A rescripted visit to EKKM’s collections
The opening project of the 2021 season, A rescripted visit to EKKM’s collections turns the exhibition space into a series of art storage spaces and invites visitors to take part in guided tours, conducted by the production platform RESKRIPT (Maarin Mürk and Henri Hütt). Invited by EKKM, Reskript has taken stock of EKKM’s collections, retrieved from garages and storage and gathered folklore related to the artworks and what has been left behind. This research has resulted in restructuring of EKKM’s collections, establishing of several new collections and developing suggestions for new future-oriented collecting principles.
Tours are held in Estonian, the video work and publication will be translated into English.
Tour schedule and booking: https://fienta.com/et/s/reskript-ekkm
Where: Põhja pst. 35 / Rumbi 3, Tallinn, 10415
When: May 4th until May 16th
May 13th
Opening of the exhibition Janis Rozentāls: The Dance of Life
From folk life scenes to Symbolistic visions, in an exhibition of the most popular and versatile Latvian artist of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Janis Rozentāls (1866–1916), the spirit of the era merges with his own “dance of life”. The first ever Janis Rozentāls’ exhibition in Estonia has been organised in cooperation with the Latvian National Museum of Art and marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of the artist.
Kumu Art Museum has the honour to open the exhibition Janis Rozentāls: The Dance of Life, organised in cooperation with Latvian National Museum of Art. For this summer, the exhibition brings to Tallinn the greatest masterpieces of the beloved Latvian artist and one of the symbols of Latvian culture – Janis Rozentāls (1866-1916).
The exhibition is opened by Sirje Helme, CEO of the Art Museum of Estonia, Sirje Helme; H.E. Mr Raimonds Jansons, the Ambassador of Latvia to Estonia; Māra Lāce, the Director of Latvian National Museum of Art; Kadi Polli, the Director of Kumu Art Museum, and the curator of the exhibition, Aija Brasliņa. Music is played by the ensemble Una Corda.
Where: online on Facebook live
When: May 13th at 6 p.m.
From May 13th
The Contemporary Performance Festival CPPM Manifestal
On May 13th, the new contemporary performance festival CPPM Manifestal will be launched, celebrating the development of our two-year MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) students at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Looking back at their 99-hour production “Where Do We Go From Here”, which received widespread international attention last September, there is certainly reason to expect exciting experiences, a surprising creative approach and bubbling innovation from them. All these 13 new productions presented at the festival result from their artistic research projects undertaken to complete their master studies.
Where: Different locations
When: From My 13th until June 17th
Tickets: Ticket information
May 15th
Traditionally, Tallinn Day is celebrated on May 15, this year the events take place on May 10-16.
The tradition of celebrating Tallinn Day was founded in 2002. This marks the granting of the Lübeck Law to Tallinn in 1248, which associated Tallinn with the Hanseatic League, a confederation of trading cities around the Baltic Sea.
The purpose of celebrating Tallinn Day is to value the history of the hometown and being a Tallinner, and also to introduce the history and present of the city.
Where: many places in Tallinn
When: May 15th all day
Exhibition Isolation dialogues
PHOTOGRAPHER’S HOLD ISOLATION DIALOGUES IN PICTURES
More than 120 Estonian photographers are participating in Isolation Dialogues – a large-scale project of the Tallinn Museum of Photography.
In order to provide creative output during the quarantine period and record the sense of the weird situation we are in at the moment, the Museum of Photography invited photographers and photo artists to hold photographic dialogues between themselves. The project that will run until the end of the emergency situation (17 May) is a constantly updated wordless dialogic reflection of isolation available at dialoogid.fotomuuseum.ee/. Time and again, the viewers can come back to the Isolation Dialogues and see how the emotions in seclusion have developed.
Where: Online, from 21st of May in Jaani Seegi Gallery at Rävala 2/Väike-Pääsukese 5, Tallinn
“What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language.” — Miuccia Prada
The Estonian History Museum’s “Fashion Line: Estonian Ladies’ Fashion 1920–1940” captures a snapshot of local life in textiles. The small exhibit is organized not by color or style – the way a closet might be – instead, the thirty-two outfits are grouped by the places or times when they were worn (e.g. weddings, vacations, or a night at the theater). Many of the occasions are events that still fill our lives today.
To take full advantage of this exhibit get your reading glasses (or your knees) ready. The clothes hang on easy-to-see mannequins around the room and accessories are displayed in glass cases along the walls, but the descriptions displayed at ground level add a lot of context. For example:
– “Widows spent six months withdrawn from social interaction, and wore heavy black clothes. After a year, she was allowed to switch from black to grey.”
– “An old custom said you should put on your oldest and most worn clothes before Christmas so that you could replace them with new ones when the holiday came.”
– “The daily schedule in any resort city was simple: you tanned and you swam.”
– “The groom was responsible for a white bridal bouquet of seasonal flowers. In the 1930s, orange blossoms became more popular.”
While the clothes themselves tell a story on the surface, it was these little written details (provided in English, Russian, and Estonian) that really helped me envision the clothes coming to life in each category: funerals, holidays, parties & dances, spa resorts, university & cafes, confirmation, baptism, & weddings.
According to the organizers, this exhibit “offers a look into the life of an urban woman […] helping to understand the cultural processes of the time and showing how closely fashion ideas are tied with the values and spirituality of an era.” While I can’t say I have a deep understanding based solely on this exhibit, it did make me want to go out and find some old movies or novels that would incorporate these costumes into a full story of Estonian life.
I was probably most fascinated by the black-and-white video playing on a loop that is embedded in the wall near the entrance to the room. In these vintage film clips, you could see women of various shapes, sizes and ages actually wearing the clothes, enhanced by their expressions, their posture, and their interactions with the people around them. The chance to see the clothing up close was a nice way to spend roughly half an hour, but it was these little glimpses of the people who wore them that truly sparked my curiosity.
As an added bonus, the exhibit also includes family-friendly puzzles and art supplies in one corner of the room, so that younger (or older) visitors could entertain themselves as the fashion fans browsed the exhibit more slowly.
The exhibition remains open at the Estonian History Museum until May 12, 2019.
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The craftsmen’s guilds of Tallinn are a familiar topic for many of us thanks to the secondary education but the everyday life and material culture of these organizations are still poorly addressed. Aside from their creation, little attention has been paid to their working arrangements. The exhibition on the pendant shields of Tallinn craftsmen in the 17th-19th century at the Niguliste Museum introduces in many ways an unknown topic in the culture of Tallinn craftsmen. Both the theme and the structure of the exhibition provide an excitingly multidisciplinary overview of the field and the era, which has been regrettably often addressed through the aesthetic perspective only. The curators of the exhibition are Anu Mänd, Senior Researcher at the University of Tallinn, and Tarmo Saaret, Director of the Niguliste Museum.
If silver as a material is primarily associated with decorativeness and wealth, then Mänd and Saaret have shown that the pendant shields were mainly used as visual communication tools and therefore, in the modern sense, they are not only craft but also graphic design. The main goal of the shield was to express the master’s field of craft, name and the year of becoming a master. In addition, the shield also features an emblem of the town and the marking of the goldsmith who made the shield. Mostly, the decoration has focused on illustrating the profession. The simplest emblems are typically the craftsmen’s tools, but in some cases, the approach is more allegorical, for example, a savage on a shield of a tailor. But there are different approaches, for example, a name-based approach: in 1796, a tailor A. F. Vogel chose a bird, more precisely a geese, to decorate his shield.
A separate showcase also features a timeline that demonstrates the stylistic developments over the course of the three centuries. If the baroque shields still stand out for their complex and lush ornaments, then the examples of the second half of the 19th century are almost modernist. Instead of a decor, the main focus is on delivering information in a simple and easily understandable manner. In addition, various details refer to evolving globalism and the growing interest in history and foreign cultures – for example, there are pyramids and Celtic decors. The role of the text in delivering information is increasing, referring to the higher level of general education.
From the point of view of the cultural context, the exhibition also illustrates well the Estonian place in the German cultural space. We do not find references to the influences of the Swedish or the Russian empire on the shields; both names and styling are strongly German influenced. Of the more complex objects of the exhibition, the two welcoming goblets of three are brought from Germany. Cultural impact and trade relations are not always dependent on the current political situation, especially during the early modern period.
All in all, this is an excellent exhibition that looks at the topic of the pendant shields from multiple angles, from a cultural, aesthetic, as well as historical point of view. The exhibition does not only vary the stylistics of the displayed shields but also how they are made. Some of the works are slightly clumsy and almost naive, thus illustrating not only the best moments in the field but the diversity of the representatives of the various professions. A couple of words should also be said about the permanent exposition of the Niguliste Museum: the curators have cleverly referred to the exhibition of Sittow currently at Kumu Art Museum, adding eye-catching information cubes to the items that are related to Sittow. Those who have already visited the exhibition will find interesting additional information from Niguliste, for others, it will work as a promotion of the exhibition among other things.