“Put on Your Thinking Cap! The Hundred Faces of the University of Tartu” is a photo exhibition dedicated to the centenary of Estonia’s national university. Birgit Püve, one of Estonia’s best-known portrait photographers, has photographed a hundred outstanding university researchers and faculty members with objects that best characterise their relationship with the university or their area of specialisation.
Mariann Raisma, director of the University of Tartu Museum, who’s also behind the idea for the exhibition, said that the project was initiated to record the images of the people who shape the spirit of today’s university for posterity in the form of an art project. “We wanted to portray people from various fields with an artefact, thereby underlining the university’s historical continuity and the connection the person portrayed has with research and science.” Most of the selected objects come from the University of Tartu Museum, but the personal possessions of the subjects have also been used.
The people portrayed at the exhibition include professors emeriti, today’s top scholars, as well as young talented researchers from the university’s four faculties. The difficult decision of who to photograph for the exhibition was made by the faculties themselves. Four rectors of the University of Tartu as well as Tullio Ilomets, who has been instrumental in raising appreciation for the heritage of the University of Tartu, and others who have shaped the image of the university were photographed for the exhibition.
Exhibition team
Photographer: Birgit Püve
Idea: Mariann Raisma
Project managers: Karoliina Kalda, Mariann Raisma, Mairo Rääsk
Graphic designer: Maarja Roosi