Draft:Kalamaja Museum

Kalamaja Museum

Kalamaja Museum, a branch of Tallinn City Museum, opened in 2021 in the historic Kalamaja district in Tallinn, Estonia. The museum operates at Kotzebue 16 in Northern Tallinn and focuses on the history, present, and future of the Kalamaja district.

The Kalamaja Museum hosts workshops, concerts, poetry evenings, family days, and performances. It was created with and for the community. A meeting place that invites everyone to contribute and participate, it encourages Kalamaja residents and visitors to explore the district's colorful past, vibrant present, and exciting future. The museum provides support to community members to help them realize their creative ideas.

In 2024, the Kalamaja Museum was awarded with the Silletto Prize at the European Museum of the Year Awards (EMYA) for its community involvement and engagement. See the museum video introduction made as part of EMYA. Additionally, an article by Kalamaja Museum's co-curator Laura Jamsja on the creation of the Kalamaja community museum was featured in the CAMOC Review 2023 Spring-Summer edition, published by ICOM's International Committee for City Museums Collections and Activities (CAMOC).

The Story of the Museum's Creation

The Kalamaja Museum is located in Tallinn's oldest suburb, Kalamaja (in translation: Fish House; Fish Hut), in a functionalist residence designed by architect Herbert Johanson (completed in 1934). It was the home of Hans Einberg, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tallinn University of Technology, and his family.

The establishment of the community museum began in early 2018 in preparation for the renovation of the existing Children's Museum. The idea emerged from the recognition that the Tallinn City Museum unveils different aspects of the city's history from various eras. Kalamaja’s colorful story dates back to the late medieval period. The close-knit community itself was interested in a museum that would open up the place’s past to locals and also introduce the story more broadly.

The museum's opening was preceded by surveys, community meetings, and the collection of memories, items, and photographs from current and former residents of Kalamaja. Children and youth were involved in public events to choose the museum's visual identity and logo among other informational events. The museum also has a good collaborative experience with the North Tallinn district government and architecture students from the nearby Estonian Academy of Arts, finding an accessible entrance option for people with special needs. The Tallinn City Museum earned the title of "Community Friend of the Year 2019" at the Estonian Museums' annual conference in Valga for its preparatory and community-involving process.

The museum opened on September 24, 2021, with a new permanent exhibition created with the community named “A Village in the City. Stories from Kalamaja.” The exhibition narrates the area’s life through six characteristic figures of Kalamaja: the Kalamaja man, Kalamaja woman, Kalamaja child, Kalamaja ancestor, Kalamaja artist, and Kalamaja animal. These figures from different times and eras tell stories from the Middle Ages to the present day. As visitors move through the museum, they also encounter stories of the local houses through the residents: they are greeted by the cellar, staircase, garage, living room… but exhibitions can also be found in the toilet. Young visitors can play in a dollhouse designed to replicate Tallinn type houses in the museum’s family area.

The museum also houses a gallery and a hall for temporary exhibitions, where locals and other interested parties can shape their ideas into exhibitions or introduce exciting collections.

Temporary exhibitions in the Kalamaja museum house include:

• “Kalamaja Ears” (12 hours on 20.09.2020)
• “Kalarand – The Third Coming of Everyone’s Shoreline” (26.11.2021 – 31.03.2024)
• “Three Drops of Blood” (31.05.2023 – 14.06.2023)
• "Magical Realism of Kopli" (26.04.2024 – 30.04.2026)
• “Murky Waters II” (28.09.2024 – 01.09.2025)

While the museum is large in content, it is small in space. Therefore, our exhibitions are often also seen on the local streets.

Outdoor Exhibitions

One of the goals of the Kalamaja Museum is to be visible in the urban space as well. In collaboration with Photo Month, the outdoor exhibition "Where No Sunbeam Shines" (October 3 – December 4, 2019) was created, focusing on photojournalist Hans Soosaar's series of photographs from the 1920s depicting living conditions in Kalamaja apartments. Being the first action of its kind, the exhibition brought a juxtaposition of past life to the streets of modern Kalamaja. Ten stands featuring Soosaar's photographs and the descriptions from their backs were placed in front of or near the same buildings whose inhabitants Soosaar had captured over 90 years ago, creating a unique urban gallery. The outdoor exhibition was realized in cooperation with local co-operative housing associations, which granted permission to install photo stands in front of their buildings. The exhibition is currently available online.

In 2019, children from Northern Tallinn were invited to send their creative works to the museum, on themes such as "My Favorite Place," "My Pet," "If There Was a Museum in Kalamaja, What Should Definitely Be There?," "What Could the Kalamaja Museum Mascot Look Like?," and "What Could Future Kalamaja Look Like?" The museum received over 160 drawings and sketches and 54 pieces of writing, including one city walk plan, one small sculpture, two oil paintings, and two models. To illustrate the bleak urban space of the Tallinn Baltic Station tunnel connecting the old town and Kalamaja, an exhibition of children's works sent to the Kalamaja Museum was displayed on the tunnel walls from October 16, 2019, to March 2, 2020. All originals were exhibited at the Kalamaja Library. At the Baltic Station Market, one could view the exhibition "Kalamaja Kids' Creations".

Since the summer of 2020, the streets of Kalamaja have hosted the outdoor exhibition "Kalamaja's Lost Fragments. Pictures from Family Albums." The display brings images from family albums to the streets of Kalamaja, offering a time travel experience back to neighborhood life of years past. Valuable image materials were sourced from former and current local residents who responded to the museum's call. Albums, often a precious possession carried through life's challenging journeys, are complemented by text segments based on interviews, giving a glimpse of life in one of Tallinn's largest suburbs 50, 60, 70, and 80 years ago. Photo stands are placed near or around the houses where the photos were originally taken.

The Kalamaja Museum's exhibition on Telliskivi Street, in cooperation with the North Tallinn district, opened a series of pop-up exhibitions on the streets of North Tallinn. The exhibition "Lender House – The First Urban Home for Estonians" (June 22 – June 28, 2020) featured nine photos depicting Kalamaja buildings from the collection of the Tallinn City Museum's Photo Museum, introducing the housing type named after Tallinn's first Estonian mayor, an engineer and entrepreneur. The exhibition could be explored in front of the Telliskivi Creative City on Telliskivi Street.

"Uka-Uka, I'm Free. Yard Games in Kalamaja" consists of instructional boards for yard games and fish-shaped hopscotch boxes. The display features games that were popular among local children in Kalamaja from the 1930s to the 1970s, and besides instructions, it includes people's memory stories of playing outdoors.

The recipe exhibition "Flavours of Kopli" (Spring–Autumn 2022) took place at the Kopli 93 Community Center. During the city's external project "ACCESS – Culture for All," new and old, fresh and familiar, exotic and homely Kopli recipes were collected. Residents submitted 62 recipes in one day, and these were the starting point for the exhibition. Recipes are also available on the City Museum's blog.

During the summer of 2022, the North Tallinn community house courtyard (Kari 13) hosted an exhibition "Working in Kalamaja. Breadwinning in the 1920s to the 1960s" as part of the Northern Tallinn pop-up photo exhibition series. The exhibition, initially displayed for only a week, was permanently moved to the Boheem café (Kopli 18). The theme of the exhibition is Kalamaja workers, and decades-old photos provide insights into various work environments and illustrate how jobs, workplace organization, and conditions have changed over time.

At the Baltic Station Market, the exhibition "What Does Kalamaja Taste Like?" (February 1 – April 1, 2023) was on display. It featured recipes from former and current Kalamaja residents near the outdoor market, which had been an essential part of the Kalamaja flavor during their time in the area. Many were tied to warm childhood memories and time spent in the kitchen with grandparents, but there were also brand-new Kalamaja recipes. Visitors had the opportunity to take recipes from apron pockets with nostalgic patterns at the exhibition, to prepare Kalamaja-flavored dishes at home.

The outdoor exhibition "From Screws to Pianos. The Story of Kalamaja's Industries" was set up in the street space in April 2023 and will be on display until the fall of 2024. The exhibition introduces 12 historical industrial enterprises in Kalamaja, most of which have now closed, and often their buildings have been demolished. Enthusiasts can learn where in Kalamaja there was a lemonade factory and a bicycle factory, where locomotives and trams were made, and where socks and cigarettes were produced. Old photos and advertisements help revive the factories that once provided work and bread to the local people.

Community Projects

As the museum was created with and for the community, local people have been consistently involved in creating exhibitions and projects, and the results of this collaboration are visible both inside the museum, on the streets, and online.

• "Kalamaja Ears" was originally a 12-hour sound installation in the museum's gallery space, consisting of plaster casts of the ears of Kalamaja residents and speakers emitting memories of the residents and sounds characteristic of the neighborhood. Now, the installation is available in the Estonian Wikipedia, and the plaster casts can be seen on the museum walls.
• Kalamaja Stories in the Vana-Kalamaja Street phone booth. During the street renovation, a historical phone booth was installed in front of the Kalma Sauna (Vana-Kalamaja 9a), housing an audio exhibition from mid-June 2024. Visitors can listen to ten different stories about Vana-Kalamaja Street and Kalamaja more broadly from the telephone.
• A mural on the front facade of Vabriku 7. As part of the Culture Night 2024 activities, a mosaic workshop was held at the Kalamaja Museum on August 30, where community members could create glass mosaic fish, which were later attached to a wall mural depicting buildings in the area.

• Kalamaja Museum home page
• Tallinn City Museum home page
• Tallinn City museum Blog
• Video about Kalamaja museum

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Categories:

• Museums in Tallinn
• Kalamaja
• Northern Tallinn