Museums in Motion that has been made possible with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union brings together three prominent art museums in the North of Europe. Turku Art Museum, Malmö Art Museum and Kumu Art Museum will organize three separate exhibitions from their collections to be shown in respective museums. In addition to exhibition exchange, related publications and museum pedagogical programme, special effort will be put into specially targeted seminars and events. One main goal of the Museums in Motion is to strengthen the exchange of expertise and to create best practices between the professionals in the said organisations and beyond.
Museums in Motion provides unique opportunities for the three museums to operate in a way that would not otherwise be possible. The underlying idea is to pool resources and make the museums collections mobile and to make exhibitions without paying expensive exhibition fees. We aim to share know-how, human resources and expertise and in that way give examples to other museums and operators on how to do cost-effective and high quality co-operation. Besides the more effective ways of working, the project is also an excellent opportunity to learn from each other museums individual ways of problem solving.
Museums in motion exhibitions:
Kumu Art Museum 28 March - 8 June 2008
Turku Art Museum 8 May - 31 August 2008
Malmö Art Museum 11 Nov 2008 - 25 Jan 2009
Kumu Art Museum 10 Sep 1009 - 17 Jan 2010
Kumu Art Museum was opened in February 2006 as the new main building of Art Museum of Estonia that enables permanent displays of both classical and modern Estonian art and temporary exhibition from Estonia and abroad.
Kumu is the first contemporary art musem in Estonia which includes exhibition halls, an auditorium that offers diverse possibilities for performing arts and an education centre. Kumu Art Museum also houses the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia, a restoration department, archives, and the public library of the AME.
The Kumu Art Museum is based on the idea of multi-function. Undoubtedly, the main priority is a large exhibition programme but, besides that, several other functions, which are all connected to the exhibition programme, are also important.
The exhibitions programme has been divided into three time periods: from the beginning of the 18th century until 1944, when the Soviet armed forces occupied Estonia, and Estonia for a long time became one of the member states of the Soviet Union. The second time period covers art in occupied Estonia, exhibiting works from the garish Stalin time, as well as alternative art from the end of the 1950s, and examples of pop art and hyper-realism. The third time period, on the fifth floor, focuses on contemporary art. Unfortunately, Kumu lacks a permanent exhibition of contemporary Estonian art; it has been replaced by temporary exhibitions of both Estonian and international art. Additionally, the museum contains a large exhibition hall, where thematic and overview exhibitions of the history and the present day of Estonian and international art are exhibited.
The museum’s permanent exhibitions and displays serve as a basis for many discussions, seminars and conferences, for longer debates on cultural history, and for the connections and differences with international art.
The functions of the educational centre and the auditorium are closely linked with the Kumu exhibitions programme. Those participating in the art education programmes and projects of the educational centre can study under the guidance of professional artists and teachers, and they can use studios offering excellent opportunities. In addition, the Kumu art school operates in the rooms of the educational centre: lectures, courses, crafts classes, workshops in painting, drawing, graphics and ceramics are held in the studios and in the multimedia laboratory. The programmes of the educational centre and the art school are meant for everybody: children, teenagers and adults.
The purpose of the Kumu auditorium programmes is to connect figurative art with other fields of culture. The varied programme of the auditorium includes discussions about art science, conferences, seminars and project presentations; lectures introducing art and cultural history; a programme of culture documentary films, as well as full-length feature films about artists and the world of art; and concert programmes and modern dance performances.
During the first years of operation, both the function and the architecture of Kumu have received several international acknowledgements, of which the most notable is the 2008 European Museum of the Year Award, an award given by the European Museum Forum in acknowledgement of the Kumu Art Museum’s working principles and their execution.
The signature phrase of the Kumu Art Museum is “Kumu – museum of living art”. It originates from the idea that even though museums deal, first and foremost, with memory by keeping our culture, traditions, ideas and their developments alive, the museum is also a designer of the present day.
Founded in 1841, Malmö Art Museum is one of the leading art museums in Scandinavia. The museum building from 1937 is situated in the Malmöhus castle complex, one of the oldest remaining renaissance castle in Scandinavia. Malmö Art Museum is governed by the city of Malmö.
The Malmö Art Museum collection now contains about 32,000 works, covering the period from the 16th century to the present day. Most of Scandinavia's innovative and highly distinguished artists are represented at Malmö Art Museum. The museum hosts several important collections and historical donations, including the works of Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911) whose pictures still evoke challenging thoughts on the human mind. The Herman Gotthardt collection of Nordic modern 20th century art is a highly important contribution to the understanding of the early production of Scandinavian modern art. Also in the museums holdings is a unique collection of Russian fin-de-siècle paintings, acquired at the famous Baltic Exhibition in Malmö in 1914.
Today Malmo Art Museum purchases more artworks than any other museum in Sweden. In the course of the past fifteen years it has assembled the largest collection of Nordic contemporary art in Scandinavia, about 3,400 works. The Museum also has an extensive collection of furniture and handicraft, primarily from southern Sweden.
As well as offering a retrospective, the museums exhibitions reflect current developments on the contemporary art scene both from the Nordic countries and the international scene. The museum aims to give its visitor art that explore, define, comment and criticise both our history and our contemporary life. A visit to the museum should be an intellectual, aesthetic and emotional challenge, based on quality, insight and application that give a new perspective to the visitors life.
Educational activities at the museum include guided tours, school programs and seminars.
With an excellent collection of international stature, new recently restored facilities and a versatile exhibition program Turku Art Museum is a prominent operator on the museum field of Northern Europe. Funding for the construction of the Turku Art Museum the second building specially designed as an art museum in the then Grand Duchy of Finland was provided by two Turku businessmen, brothers Ernst and Magnus Dahlström in 1895. The museum was completed in 1904. The ground floor of the palace-like building initially housed an art school, following the example of the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. The rooms on the upper floor were used to display the collection of the Turku Art Society.
The museum building today belongs to the city of Turku and the museum is governed by the Turku Art Society which also owns the collections. The founding of the Turku Art Society in 1891 took place at a favourable time as Finnish culture and painting were then thriving. Today, the society has 400 members. The museum receives additional support from another society with 700 members the Friends of Turku Art Museum which aims to raise money to purchase new works and publish art books.
The Turku Art Museum collection now contains about 6,000 works, covering the period from the early 19th century to the present day. The museum also possesses a selection of Scandinavian, especially Swedish, art from the 18th century to the present day. The collection of graphic art and drawings also contain works by artists of the past two centuries from other countries.
Turku Art Museum aims to tempt and to serve different audiences by showing both contemporary, modern and classical art from Finland, Scandinavia and Baltic region. With pedagogical programs Turku Art Museum reaches different age groups from little children to elderly people. The museum is also a prominent publisher of quality art books.
