An international research project initiated by the Art Museum of Estonia will focus on Estonian art from the first half of the 20th century

With the aim of revitalising cross-disciplinary research on Estonian art of the first half of the 20th century and strengthening networks of researchers working in this field, the project brings together scholars from Estonia, Norway, Latvia, Denmark and other countries. The research project was initiated by the Art Museum of Estonia, with the Lillehammer Art Museum, the Estonian Academy of Arts and the University of Tartu as partners.

Linda Kaljundi (the Estonian Academy of Arts), Mart Kuldkepp (University College London) and Nils Ohlsen (the Lillehammer Art Museum) have formulated the themes of the three subgroups of the research networks that comparatively analyse the Baltic and Scandinavian contexts of the early 20th century: the making of national identity and the representation of Indigenous peoples in visual culture; political, cultural and intellectual history and relations between cultural practitioners; and the first private collections of national contemporary art as a missing link in art history.

In February and April, meetings, public lectures and debates will take place in different Estonian and Norwegian institutions. The opening event on 11 February at 18:00 at the Estonian Academy of Arts is a lecture by Charis Gullickson within the open lecture series Decolonisation of Nordic Museums, which will examine the extent to which the colonial past shapes the present through museum and curatorial practices.

On 27 February at 17:00 in the seminar room on the second floor of the Kumu Art Museum, there will be a discussion titled International Histories of National Self-Determination: Experience, Representation and Memory. The meeting will begin with a lecture by Seán Kissane, a curator of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), titled Common Threads: Art and the Fabric of Shared Histories in Nation-Building, which will explore the experience of IMMA’s major international exhibition and research project Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, which highlights the central role of art in the process of national self-determination. Seán Kissane, Ruth Hemstad (Researcher at the National Library of Norway, Associate Professor at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo), Eva Piirimäe (Professor of Political Theory at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu) and Mart Kuldkepp will then discuss the role that representations of processes of national self-determination have played in national memory, and where transnational connections and parallels can be found.

The research project will continue on 6 March at 12:00 with a seminar at the Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway titled Missing Link in Art History: The First Private Collectors of National Contemporary Art in the Nordic and Baltic Countries. The aim of the seminar is to examine collection practices and focus on the artistic, cultural, political and social motives of the new types of collectors.

The final event of the research project will take place on 18 March at the Kumu Art Museum.

All public events are free of charge and in English.