KADRIORG PALACE
Baltic Biedermeier
19.09.2009 – 29.08.2010
The exhibition introduces the heyday of Baltic German art and culture, and examines the manifestations and meanings of the local culture in the first half of the 19th century, on the basis of Estonian and Latvian art collections. As is sometimes said, art created in the era of Biedermeier, which was mainly connected with the German language space, was classicism adjusted to the world-view of the bourgeoisie. In this view of the world, the central ideas were the family, intimacy, matter-of-factness, and withdrawal from the social world into the domestic sphere, which is typical of times between tumultuous events. Due to the corporative social order and closedness of society at the time, these traits were particularly amplified in the nobility culture of the Baltic provinces, where personal relationships extended more widely than the immediate family and the whole Baltic German public life had a familial character.
MIKKEL MUSEUM
Treasures of Lost Times. Egyptian, Greek and Near-East Antiquities in the Museums and Private Collections of Estonia
7.02.–31.12.2009
The exhibition is a trip to a time thousands of years ago, when Egypt was ruled by pharaohs, the Sumerians wrote their texts on clay tablets and the Greeks painted delightful vases. There are no photos or films of high culture dating back thousands of years that would make understanding the people of the time and their thought less difficult. Our image of ancient Egypt and the Sumerian civilization has developed piece by piece in the course of time, accompanied by heated discussions, numerous discoveries and mistakes. Each new discovery of a text carved in stone in hieroglyphs or on a slate tablet in cuneiform helps us to come nearer to an understanding of the past, but at the same time we cannot forget that this is nothing but a mosaic, with many missing pieces. This is an inevitable and insurmountable problem. The exhibition consists, virtually, of pieces of high cultures from the past, whereas each piece also carries significant importance as a fragment.
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