We went to catch the missing piece of the Latvian portrait series exhibits which are ending in a week. This museum had the caricatures and cartoons portion of the larger exhibit spread over two other museums. Those portions were massive meals of art compared to the tiny taster bite of this museum. It was interesting to see but quite small.
First, I need to describe getting into the place. There's a good sign on the building at the address making it clear you go through a person gate set in a vehicle gate there. I didn't think to take that picture. Arriving at the inner courtyard there's another good sign telling you where to go. This place needs their good signs to direct you there.
We buzz the intercom next to the door like calling any other apartment. A woman answers and says something about the 5th floor. We're buzzed inside to a landing with a few doors, stairs, and an elevator. It's not feeling like a museum at this point and more like we've come over for a coffee with a friend.
Inside looks like any other city apartment with a very old elevator. It's the kind of elevator where you wonder if you might end up camping out in it for a few days if it breaks down. It lumbers and lurches up the building like it's been doing it for a hundred years. It's just damned tired of carrying our sorry asses up and down all day and you can feel it in it's heavy wooden interior.
We walk into the old apartment museum and in the hallway is the guest coat rack and the woman with her cash register. It is an apartment serving as a memorial museum for 2 classical modernism artists in Latvia’s art history. There was another couple there so it was cozy. Surprisingly, probably a dozen more people showed up during our time there. It started to feel like a little house party by the time we left. It was pretty well visited for the size of it.
I'll give you some blurbs from the website about the artists since it's an interesting little memorial made by their daughter.
Romans Suta (1896-1944) was an exceptionally creative and multifaceted figure — he not only painted, designed and illustrated books, created the visual appearance of theatre and film productions but also ran his own art studio, wrote essays on art for the press, founded and worked at the porcelain painting studio Baltars, as well as creating design projects for furniture and interiors.
Aleksandra Beļcova (1892-1981) was both a charming and elegant lady and a modern and emancipated woman of her time, and a professional artist. Her works of the 1920s and 30s – cubist landscapes, constructive still lifes, portraits and Baltars painted porcelain – are of high quality and originality.
The idea for the Romans Suta and Aleksandra Beļcova Museum was cherished and developed by their daughter, the ballet dancer, art historian and TV journalist Tatjana Suta (1923–2004). Throughout her life she painstakingly preserved and popularised her parents’ artistic legacy.
The memorial apartment is in a Neo-classicism style building built in 1911. The artists’ family lived here from 1935 sharing it with other residents during Soviet times. In 1987 Tatjana Suta regained possession of the whole apartment. She arrange in it a well thought out display of works by her parents and, while continuing to live in these surroundings, regularly showed the apartment to those interested.
At the end of 2006 the Latvian National Museum of Art received Tatjana Suta’s bequest. Over the next two years an inventory of the collection was carried out, work was done on restoration of artworks and furniture, the apartment was renovated and the permanent display prepared. The museum was opened to the public on 14 October 2008.
That's the temporary exhibit above with a few more hanging on the wall behind it and another wall. The caricatures and cartoons weren't so interesting to me as a non-Latvian. They had an English translation booklet for all of them, but it didn't help very much for my relating to their old politics.
2 of the better non-political caricatures I could find
This is the rest of the 3 room apartment/museum
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