Friday, 07-June-2024


After escaping the Kadriorg gardens, I finished my quest to find the Kumu art museum… and was immediately struck with just how beautiful of a building it was.

It’s so neat, seeing the architecture of various museums. Whether they’re an older building, purpose-built or refurbished decades (or centuries, sometimes) before, or if they’re a newly constructed modern building… it’s always so cool to see the setting that a gallery is in.

It’s almost part of the curation of the art itself, right? Whether you’re presenting is as a modern building or a historic construction? I’m sure art historians and curators have written papers and discussed this exact thought in far more detail than a non-academic like me could… but I’ll still appreciate it and enjoy the thought experiment that comes with it.

For the Kumu Museum, it reminded me a lot of the Guggenheim – Not that it particularly looked like it, but the feel of the building. It was a modern building, with big glass windows and sweeping curves, with the inside built around a curved central hallway that was open to all three levels of the building.

One of my favorite parts was actually at the entrance to the exhibits, though – a timeline, giving context to the collections inside. I took quite a bit of time to sit and read, acclimatizing myself to when the art was from and what sort of events would be influencing the artists… I can’t remember having seen an overview like this before, and it was really appreciated!

The art itself was, as one would expect, beautiful.

There were amazing landscapes, not quite as stunning as those in Norway but still beautiful, and some hauntingly beautiful portraits alongside. There was a huge gallery room of portraits that was mainly just creepy (though I adored the inclusion of one random bird-headed dude), along with a lot of mythological paintings of Kalevipoeg (the hero of the Estonian national epic)… another thing I really enjoyed seeing.

There was also a whole selection of Soviet-inspired work which was really enlightening to see, and gave me a bit more insight into what life must have been like on this side of the Cold War.

After perusing, I was about to head out… when I realized that it was absolutely pouring rain outside.

I… hadn’t brought a rain jacket.


So I hung out. I stepped into the museum cafe, had a cup of coffee alongside a sandwich… and drooled over the chocolates on display. Then bought some of the chocolates that had been on display, and ate them. They were delicious.