Museums International
28 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 284, November 2016
TATE
MODERN
14 S EP 2016 –
8 JAN 2017THE EY
EXHIBITION
Wifredo Lam Horse-headed Woman 1950
The Rudman Trust © SDO Wifredo Lam
Photo: Joaquín Cortés y Joaquín Lores, Museo
N a cio n a l Ce nt ro d e A r te Rein a S of ía, Ma d r idThe EY Tate
Arts PartnershipOPENINGS
Tartu. The Estonian National Museum
has reopened in a €75m building on
a former Soviet air base in Tartu, the
Baltic republic’s second-largest city. For
decades, the museum struggled to find
a permanent home in the turbulent
country, where visits from foreigners
were severely restricted until independ-
ence from Soviet rule in 1991.
The museum’s reopening on 29 Sep-
tember was overshadowed by a furore
over Reformation (2016), a work of mul-
timedia art by the Tartu-based artist
Timo Toots. The work contains the
image of a saint that some have inter-
preted as the Virgin Mary. Until recently,
visitors could press a button that would
shatter her image on a nearly life-size
screen. The museum has eliminated the
interactive component after protests
from local religious figures.
Archbishop Urmas Viilma, the leader
of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran
Church, the country’s largest religious
group, first registered his dismay in
a Facebook post after the opening. He
said the invitation “to kick the image of
the Virgin Mary” was particularly ofen-
sive to Estonians, for whom the saint is
Estonian National Museum
reopens to religious uproar
Interactive work in inaugural display condemned as an insult to the Virgin Mary
TOOTS: BERTA VOSMAN/ESTONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM; COURTESY OF THE ESTONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. CARLILE: © TATE, 2016. CASKET: © ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.BRUSKIN: VLADIMIR POTANIN FOUNDATIONACQUISITIONS
Tate, London
Joan Carlile’s Portrait of an Unknown Lady
The Tate has bought its earliest work by a female artist, Joan Carlile’s
Portrait of an Unknown Lady (1650-55), as part of a push to improve the
gender balance in its collection. Carlile is thought to have been the irst
woman in Britain to work as a professional portrait painter in oil. Although
only a few works have been attributed to her, research shows that she
specialised in small-scale, full-length portraits in landscape settings. The
dealer and art historian Bendor Grosvenor discovered the painting at a
regional auction house, Woolley & Wallis, in 2014. He paid £4,200 (ham-
mer price) for the work, which the Tate bought from him for £35,000. The
painting will go on display after conservation at Tate Britain in April 2017.Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and British Museum, London
Italian writing casket and drawings by John Flaxman
The London-based antiquities gallery Daniel Katz is the irst company to
donate works to UK museums in lieu of tax through Arts Council England’s
Cultural Gifts Scheme. A gilt bronze writing casket attributed to the work-
shop of the Italian sculptors Vincenzo and Gian Gerolamo Grandi (around
1540-50) will enter the permanent collection of the Ashmolean Museum,
where it has been on long-term loan since 2002. The second gift, an
album of 37 drawings by the British sculptor John Flaxman (around 1815),
illustrating the Greek poems of Hesiod, will go to the British Museum.
Aimee DawsonCentre Pompidou, Paris
20th-century Russian art donation
The Centre Pompidou has received a major
gift of more than 250 works of Russian and
Soviet art from the second half of the 20th
century. The collection includes dona-
tions from the foundation of the Russian
billionaire Vladimir Potanin, as well as from
private collectors, artists and their heirs.
The works are on show at the museum until
27 March as part of the Franco-Russian Year
of Cultural Tourism.TIMELINE: A MUSEUM
HOSTAGE TO ITS
COUNTRY’S HISTORY
1909 The Estonian National Museum is
founded in Tartu by a group of Estonian
intellectuals to preserve peasant and folk
culture.
1920 Estonia becomes a sovereign
state and is no longer part of the Russian
empire.
1922 The museum moves into Raadi
Manor, formerly owned by a noble Baltic-
German family.
1940 The Soviet Union occupies Estonia
and launches mass deportations to
Siberia.
1941 Nazi troops occupy Estonia until
Soviet forces drive them out in 1944.
Raadi Manor is badly damaged in the
ighting and becomes a Soviet air base.
The museum splits its collection across
multiple sites. Tartu closes to foreigners.
1991 The Soviet Union collapses and
Estonia regains independence.
2005 The museum launches a design
competition for its new building.
2016 The €75m new museum, funded by
a state-run property company, opens on
the site of its former home. S.K.
Reformation (2016), an installation by the Estonian artist Timo Toots, is causing a stirdeeply ingrained in folk culture. Mart
Helme, the leader of the Conservative
People’s Party of Estonia, warned in a
statement on the party’s website that
the country’s Russian minority would
take ofence.
A spokesman for the museum says
the installation has been misinter-
preted. It is not about the Virgin Mary,he says, but about the broader “barbar-
ity of the iconoclasts during Reforma-
tion times” and meant to convey the
moment when the Protestant Refor-
mation toppled Catholic tradition. He
adds that most visitors are not bothered
by the work because they understand
the museum is an educational, not
religious, institution. Recent polls haveranked Estonia as one of the least reli-
gious countries in the world.
Nevertheless, Tonis Lukas, the muse-
um’s director, decided to scale back the
work soon after the opening, which
appears to have satisfied his critics.
“The image fractures and then comes to
one entirety again automatically now,
without any human intervention,” the
spokesman says, adding that Lukas con-
tinues to meet with church authorities
to discuss how to “show the important,
though barbaric, events in our history”.An emotional journey
Emotions surrounding the reopening of
the museum are high in part because of
the country’s tumultuous history. During
the Soviet occupation that began in 1944,
thousands of Estonians were killed and
tens of thousands more were deported
to Siberia. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the
country’s president until earlier this year,
described the new building as “a debt of
gratitude to those who kept Estonia alive
in darker, more diicult times”.
The 34,000-sq.-m glass building,
designed by the Paris-based architecture
firm Dorell Ghotmeh Tane, soars above
the former Soviet airbase. “We have
transformed that space...into a place for
Estonians to write new stories,” says LinaGhotmeh, one of the project’s architects.
The permanent exhibitions also seek
to make “peace with the Soviet past”,
says Kristel Rattus, the museum’s chief
curator. Several military constructions
have been left undisturbed on the site,
and “life during the Soviet period is nat-
urally incorporated” into the displays.
Sophia KishkovskyA sculpture by Grisha Bruskin from the
series Birth of a Hero (1984-85)Carlile’s painting is the Tate’s earliest work by a womanA casket attributed to Vincenzo and Gian Gerolamo GrandiBEFORE AFTER