The Estonian Maritime Museum's jubilee exhibition ""BEGINNING. Estonian Maritime Museum 1935–1940"  is dedicated to the museum's 90th anniversary operation.

"The discovery of historically valuable items during an inventory at the Port Factory warehouses and the desire to safeguard materials related to seafaring motivated the founding of the museum. This jubilee exhibition takes visitors on an immersive journey back to the museum's early years and highlights the importance of preserving maritime history as part of Estonia's identity as a maritime nation," said Urmas Dresen, head of the Estonian Maritime Museum and one of the exhibition's curators. 

In 1935, an adapted warehouse in the Tallinn harbor became home to the museum's first exhibition, showcasing ship models, paintings, photographs, and numerous maritime-related artifacts.

"Since much of what was exhibited back then has survived to this day, we can present the museum's early activities in the lively harbor environment in a very authentic manner," Dresen explained.

Gems from museum's collection 

"The exhibition includes a ship model handcrafted by the museum's first director, Madis Mei, as well as a unique model made from the bones of a marine animal – something rare in the Estonian museum scenery," Dresen added. 

Visitors will also be able to see the flag of a sailing boat that sank near Ristna, Hiiumaa, in 1932, and a diving suit from 1935 featured in the exhibition's signature visual. "The diver was one of the museum's very first exhibits and usually greets visitors in our permanent exhibition at Fat Margaret," Dresen said. 

Multi-sensory experience

According to a press release, contemporary solutions are used in the new exhibition to recreate the atmosphere of the museum's birth as faithfully as possible. "In the first room, for example, we've used a special lighting design that allows visitors to experience a black-and-white, era-inspired space with a miniature model of the original museum building in the background," explained Dresen. 

The founding of the Estonian Maritime Museum coincided with a golden age of maritime museum creation across Europe. "At that time steam ships began to replace sailing ships prompting the need to document the preceding era. While the Estonian Maritime Museum was opened in 1935, the world's largest maritime museum, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, was established two years later," Dresen said.

The exhibition will be open to visitors from May 12, 2025, to January 11, 2026.

More information is available here.

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