Museum Night “A Book in the Night” at Kumu 17/05/2025 | 18:00

During Museum Night, the Kumu Art Museum will open its permanent exhibitions Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700‒1945, Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940‒1991) and The Future is in One Hour: Estonian Art in the 1990s. During the evening, Kumu will organise 30-minute short tours of the permanent exhibitions in multiple languages, creative workshops, independent activities and an orientation game in the Kumu courtyard. In addition, this year Kumu will organise an exciting programme in the last hours of the evening in collaboration with the Banned Books Museum.

Museum night programme

6‒11 pm Exploration Walk in the permanent exhibitions. The route is available physically as well as virtually through a QR-code at the Kumu ticket counter.
6‒11 pm Independent orientation game in the Kumu courtyard. Ask for the instructions at the Kumu ticket counter.
6‒9.30 pm Walk-in workshop for creating folding pocketbooks with an origami technique in the Kumu education centre
9 pm On censorship and banned books. The event is organised in collaboration with the Banned Books Museum and led by its director Joseph Dunnigan. During the two hours Joseph will speak about different forms of censorship around the world, using 3 examples as starting points, and invite audience members to contribute their perspectives and be part of the discussion. See below for exact timings:
9 pm Presentation and Q&A about banned books and censorship
9.30 pm A Summer in the Red Scarf, by Katerina Silvanova and Elena Malisova is a book prohibited from publication recently in Russia due to increasingly strict anti-LGBT+ laws.
10 pm Eesti Ühiskond, by Ed Laaman, a book about Estonian national identity written in 1933 by a major newspaper editor, who was involved in writing patriotic and nationalist content for Konstantin Päts. Laaman was later executed by the Soviets.
10.30 pm Manual of Standard Tibetan, by Sangda Dorje and Nicolas Tournadre. The Banned Books Museum also collects books about persecuted languages. This book is about Tibetan, which serves as a key example, but many more exist both close to and further from Estonia.

30-minute tours of the permanent exhibitions:

7 pm short tour of Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700‒1945 (in Estonian)
7.30 pm short tour of Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940‒1991) (in Russian)
8 pm short tour of Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700‒1945 (in English)
8.30 pm short tour of Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940‒1991) (in English)
9 pm short tour of Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700‒1945 (in Russian)
9.30 pm short tour of Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940‒1991) (in Estonian)

Gather for the tours near the info desk.
In the Kumu courtyard, the Kooker food truck will serve both sweet and salty pancakes.
The Kumu Reval Café will be open until late in the evening.

3rd floor
The permanent exhibition Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700‒1945 tells the story of Estonian art as it evolved through Estonia’s multi-ethnic history, growing into a heritage that blends Estonian, Baltic German and Russian traditions. The focus is on the role of art in society and in shaping the identities of diverse communities.

4th floor
The Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940‒1991) exhibition represents one possible approach to the Estonian art of the second half of the 20th century, when it was characterised mainly by conflicts with and adaptations to the new political order established after World War II. The way Soviet authorities understood the role of art and artists in society was radically different from the attitudes which shaped art in the pre-war Estonian Republic.
The exhibition The Future is in One Hour: Estonian Art in the 1990s departs from the rupture caused in Estonian society by the end of the Cold War and the regaining of independence. In Estonia, the 1990s were a transition era. The country had been freed from the Soviet Union (1991) and began to rebuild a liberal democratic society based on a market economy.

For questions and information: