Terje Luure – Kumu’s Exhibition Architect
Our exhibition has just opened in Tallinn – the third and for now last station of 'The Desire for Freedom. Art in Europe since 1945'. Not only has the city (and country) changed, also the name is different: 'Critique and Crises. Art in Europe since 1945' is the new and at the same time old title. Why old?
'Critique and Crises' was the title originally intended for the exhibition and then changed to 'The Desire for Freedom' for the Berlin and Milan stations. Tallinn is now going back to the roots so to say and simply changed it back.
In Tallinn we would like to continue our Berlin tradition of introducing the staff behind the exhibition that put so much effort into it and is hardly ever seen by our visitors. We start the introductions with Terje Luure, the exhibition architect, colleague of Werner Schulte, our Berlin architect.
Terje has been with Kumu from its very beginning in 2007 (and as she put it: ‘Even before the beginning!’) and designed Kumu’s first exhibition. That is why she knows better than anyone ‘the possibilities of this museum…: the construction, the lighting, the people who work here.’
- Terje & Museum technicians installing art works
- Terje & Museum technicians installing art works
- View from above: First exhibition impression for visitors
- The exhibition architecture visualized for our visitors
But in what ways does the design differ from Berlin?
When visitors enter the exhibition hall in Tallinn, they first see the exhibition from above and then walk down a little hallway where they get to see the plan of the exhibition before entering (photos above): room 1 (The Court of Reason) is in the center and from there you walk through the other rooms 2 to 12 as if you were in a maze – zigzagging through the architecture.
In Berlin – if you remember – the course through the exhibition was a bit different with rooms on each side of a long path. The last room, however, ended in the first room again so that also here the idea of the circle was present.
- The architecture in Berlin
- The architecture in Berlin
Terje tells us how she came up with the design:
‘I started from Monika Flacke’s idea that the topics of the exhibition are an endless circle. When you walk around the whole exhibition, you don’t notice when you arrive in the beginning again. And it just happened that the sections started as they started here from the middle and then they meet again. With its colons in those places and the entrance as it is, the exhibition space itself played the game. And I just joined it.’
- Entrance to Exhibition hall
_______________________________
What else did she say?
That she is not originally from Tallinn, but a ‘country girl’ where she had been living for several years after becoming an interior architect and that she had to commute back and forth between Tallinn and her house in the countryside: ‘Can you imagine? No internet, no mobile phone, nothing. Just an old car and an old house. The first mobile phone I got to get in touch with the world was like a spaceship: huge. It had an antenna as tall as the roof, weighed three kilos and the cost was the same as my car. And that was my beginning.’
What does she think about the new title ‘Critique and Crises’?
‘First I was quite surprised: Why Critique and Crises? It sounds political, it has nothing to do with art and we thought that people don’t want to see this exhibition. But when you walk around and look at the objects then you know that ‘Critique and Crises’ is about art. But the first impression was ‘Oh, it is pure politics. I don’t want it, I don’t like it.’ But I am used to the title now. And together with ‘Art in Europe since 1945’ it also makes sense.’
- 0 Comment(s)
Sorry, you must be logged in to comment. Please login or register to comment.
DHM-Home | Deutsche Version | Contact | Imprint | EU Project Partners | Supporters | Facebook Twitter