Book “Thinking Pictures”

The Thinking Pictures. Conceptual Art from Moscow and the Baltics book is intended to both reflect and expand the exhibition of the same name at the Kumu Art Museum.

The objective of the exhibition, which has been organised in collaboration with the Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA), is to establish a dialogue between the critical art practices that developed in Moscow and in the Baltics in the 1970s and 1980s, and to expand the understanding of the relationship of the conceptual art of the late Soviet period with the visual and material environment of the time.

The starting point for the exhibition and book is the Norton and Nancy Dodge Art Collection at the Zimmerli Art Museum, which is one of the largest collections of art created in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s. It is known, among other things, for its excellent collection of Moscow Conceptualism, but it also contains a wealth of lesser-known, or forgotten, material, including works by Baltic artists. The selection has been supplemented by works from Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian museums and private collections.