Mikkel Museum

The eye of a private collector

The Mikkel Museum gives art history a personal scale. Its collection grew from the choices of Johannes Mikkel, who gathered paintings, prints, porcelain and ceramics rather than restricting himself to one artist or period.

It is a good choice if you enjoy objects that have passed through private rooms and accumulated stories along the way.

The museum’s temporary programme continues that interest in collecting. Exhibitions bring other private holdings into public view, making the collector’s decisions part of what is being examined alongside the objects themselves.

Look closely at porcelain

European and Chinese ceramics form the centre of the permanent display. Compare the shape of a vessel with its painted decoration: a curved body, narrow neck or projecting handle changes how an image can be arranged.

A design that appears flat from the front may continue around an object in ways that only become apparent as you move.

The renewed Chinese and other Asian porcelain display gives these objects their own setting. Look at differences in surface, colour and the relationship between ornament and blank space.

The appeal is not only in deciding which piece seems most precious, but in seeing how different makers solved the problem of joining an image to a useful form.

Paintings with different kinds of drama

The museum’s documented collection examples include Jean François de Troy’s Finding Moses and a Supper at Emmaus by an unidentified Dutch Caravaggist. The subjects bring different forms of recognition into a picture: a child discovered and a familiar person suddenly understood in another way.

When these works are on view, compare how attention is directed. Follow the light, the hands and the direction in which figures look before reading the full story.

These are collection examples rather than a guarantee that every painting will be displayed on the day of your visit.

A collection that once filled an apartment

The installation Visit to a Collector recalls the three-room Tallinn apartment where Mikkel lived with his collection. It changes the way the museum’s abundance can be understood: objects now separated for study once formed a dense private environment.

The museum building has its own domestic history on a very different scale. It was the kitchen building of Kadriorg Palace, rebuilt and altered over generations.

Marks in the present limestone floor record the positions of former fireplaces. Look for those traces as a reminder of the cooking, washing and other work that supported the palace across the road.

The two settings make a useful pair. Kadriorg shows art in ceremonial rooms; Mikkel makes room for a collector’s personal attachments inside a former service building.