Tallinn’s Free Museum Sunday and EKKM 20
Text Timo Raussi Photo EKKM
The free-entry Sunday at Tallinn City Museum branches will exceptionally take place at the end of the week, on 12 April, following the Easter holidays. The last free-entry days of the spring season are also 3 May and 7 June, and after the summer break the event will continue on the first Sunday of every month starting from September.
The city museum’s normally paid branches include the Kalamaja Museum, the Kiek in de Kök Fortifications Museum with its underground bastion passages, and in Kadriorg the Miiamilla Children’s Museum, and the Peter the Great House Museum. In the Old Town, free entry this Sunday is available to the Museum of People (focusing on local communities and ethnic minorities) on Pikk Street, the Museum of Urban Life on Vene Street, and the Photography Museum located in the alley behind the Town Hall.
To avoid queues and overcrowding indoors, visitors must register in advance by obtaining a free ticket for each visitor – including children – from the city museum’s website. Tickets are released about a month in advance, and some museums may already be fully booked. It is also worth noting that the Moomin exhibition currently on display in the Kiek in de Kök tower until the end of September is not included in the free-entry programme due to the narrow staircases, and the space will therefore be closed on that day.
Free Museum Sundays have been organised in Tallinn since spring 2022. A useful overview of the temporary exhibitions currently on display in each museum can be found here.
EKKM is now “EXXM”—20 years old
In addition to the City Museum, six other museums in Tallinn have joined the free Museum Sunday initiative. One of the most interesting among them is the Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Eesti Kaasaegse Kunsti Muuseum or EKKM, which operates only during the summer in an unheated industrial building next to Linnahall and the Kultuurikatel event centre.
The exhibition space was established 20 years ago in a slightly punk-inspired spirit within a decaying building, and its identity includes a certain sense of perpetual incompleteness. While spontaneous art initiatives are often short-lived, EKKM has over two decades secured a firm place in Tallinn’s public urban space, and in Estonia’s art scene.
The anniversary season opens from 11 April to 5 July with the Köler Prize finalists’ exhibition, which is free to the public. The €15,000 prize, sponsored by EKKM and the Estonian indie video game studio ZA/UM, will be contested by five Estonian contemporary artists: Anna Mari Liivrand, Darja Popolitova, Hanna Samoson, Keiu Maasik, and Taavi Suisalu—each presenting a new work in the EKKM exhibition hall. An international jury will select the winner, and the public will also have the opportunity to vote for their favourite for a €5000 audience award. The Köler Prize gala will take place on 12 June. More information is available on EKKM’s Facebook page in Estonian and English.
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