andede

For a moment, the architecture stopped being the subject. Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca

The Art of Attention I grew up less than 20 minutes from Frank Gehry’s buildings in Düsseldorf. For years, I drove past them without really seeing them. Makes me wonder: is familiarity a poor observer?

Architecture compressing grief into space A corridor of steel carrying 22,000 names and bronze bees toward the Baltic Sea. Tallinn’s Memorial to the Victims of Communism feels designed as a passage from oppression into breath.

KUMU Picks Sunday on Lake Peipsi (1975) by Estonian Artist Urmas Ploomipuu, seen at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. The main collection of @kumuartmuseum covers Estonian art from the 18th century onwards.

Layers from the Baltics — or: When history remains visible.

Soviet Modernism Palace of Concerts and Sports, Vilnius (built in 1971, closed in 2004). I liked the shape more than the feeling of standing there.

KUMU Picks Market (1983) by Estonian artist Rein Tamnik, seen at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. The main collection of @kumuartmuseum covers Estonian art from the 18th century onwards.

Užupis, the independent artistic republic Užupis is self-declared republic (since 1997) in Vilnius, Lithuania, where artists, intellectuals, and free thinkers shape the streets. With its own constitution and ever-evolving public art, it stands as a living manifesto of creative freedom. The Constitution contains 41 articles detailing the rights of citizens, pets, and the River Vilnelė; it has been translated into over 50 languages and is displayed on a wall.

MO Museum, Vilnius by Daniel Libeskind

Freedom Traveling through the Baltics reminded me: freedom—even the freedom to create—isn’t a given. You can sense the resilience here, and a deep gratitude for the freedom of expression—also in art.

Street Art in Kaunas, Lithuania's dynamic heart of culture and creativity, The Wise Old Man by Tadas Šimkus & Žygimantas Amelynas (The work is a tribute to George Maciunas, the Lithuanian-American founder of the Fluxus art movement) The Winter is Over by Tadas Šimkus Painter by Linas Kaziulionis Contemporary Ladies by Linas Kaziulionis

Die Welt steht Kopf. Georg Baselitz bleibt. RIP 🖤 (Photo of Georg Baselitz by Anton Corbijn, 2001. Via Instagram. © Anton Corbijn)

Latvian National Museum of Art - gallery glimpses -

Latvian National Museum of Art ... in Riga. Four works out of around 65,000: "Smokers" by Niklāvs Strunke, 1923 "Tea House" by Janis Plase, 1928 "Confiscation of the land of the nobility" (close-up) by Unknown, 1956 "My First TV" by Leomards Laganovskis, 1988

Freedom & Identity The Estonian National Museum in Tartu. Dedicated to Estonia’s history, culture, and ethnography, it rises from a former Soviet airfield, its runway-like form tracing a path from the past to today's independence. Soon after, a brief conversation in a café with a NATO soldier from Canada made freedom feel less abstract, and identity feel more fragile. The museum stayed with me differently after that — more deeply, with a sharper sense of how precious and vulnerable what it preserves really is. P.S. Designed by architects Lina Ghotmeh, Dan Dorell, and Tsuyoshi Tane (former DGT Architects).

My Baltic Quiet - Tallinn, Fotografiska First time in Estonia - first stop after landing, straight into Fotografiska Tallinn. Anton Corbijn on the walls - something | know in a place I don't know yet. I stayed longer than planned. Not only for the retrospective, but for how the museum - and Estonia - felt immediately: calm, yet attentive, quiet, yet present, nonconform, yet respectful, unforced, yet compelling, crisp, clear. Somehow, Corbijn makes sense here. (notes trom a roadtrip through the Baltics)