Karl Morgensterni aegsete ülikooli kunstimuuseumi kogude saatusest 19. sajandi keskpaiga muudatustes
Creators: name: Tiideberg, Kristiina
Publisher: name: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi
Year: 2021

description: One of the central figures of the new permanent exhibition The University of Our Lives at the University of Tartu Museum is the erstwhile director of the library, Professor Karl Morgenstern (1770–1852). Searching for museum pieces related to him brought up the question: what has become of the art museum collections from Morgenstern’s time? The University of Tartu/Dorpat Art Museum was founded at the university in 1803 as the first Estonian art museum. Its first director was Karl Morgenstern, a young energetic scholar from Germany, who held the position in 1803–1837. Founding the museum was supposed to help achieve his goals as a professor, and aid students’ aesthetical education. The museum supported practical art studies at the university as well. The art museum of that time is primarily praised for the diversity of its collections. By the end of Morgenstern’s term, there were over 14,000 items in the museum: 2,684 prints, 707 books / albums of engravings, 94 drawings, 48 paintings, 5,067 gem casts, 5,348 coins and medals, 95 original antiquities from Egypt, Greece etc., 63 ethnographic items and 22 plaster casts (sculptures). Upon reading what has been written about the history of the museum, and revising archive materials, it became apparent that a few claims made about the development of the collections in the mid-19th century must be clarified. While the fate of some collections (e.g., the painting collection evacuated to Voronezh) is well known, there are some collections the state of which the article will help to specify. 1. Mapping the collections has revealed that Morgenstern’s successors in the position of the art museum’s director valued his collections significantly less than what has been thought until now; directors Ludwig Mercklin and Ludwig Schwabe removed many plaster casts obtained during Morgenstern’s era from the collections, although this was the period when the museum focussed on collecting more antique plaster casts. Hence, this shows the following directors’ critical stand towards Morgenstern’s collections. 2. Although until now, ideological views related to the museum’s collection policy have been emphasised as the reason for giving away the art museum’s pieces, the motives could have been much more practical: lack of space and several location changes in 1858 and 1868. 3. The often-cited committee decisions from 1858 and the following processes do not have a linear cause-and-effect relation. 4. Finally, we are glad to announce that several formerly unknown heritage pieces from Morgenstern’s era have been quite well preserved outside the university, namely pieces from the ethnographic collection, most of which were items brought in by Adam Johann von Krusenstern from the Russian Empire’s first voyage around the world (1803–1806). Many of those are now part of the collection of the Estonian National Museum, where they significantly supplement the rest of Krusenstern’s materials that we know to have survived in Estonia.
description: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi, No. 49 (2021): Morgenstern ja tema aeg