Year 2018 raised the number of visitors

About 32 000 people visited the Estonian Road museum in 2018, which are 16 % more than past year.

A new exposition building was built in 2018. It will open the doors for visitors in July 2019. Exposition consists of 3 parts – the car culture in Estonia, traffic safety education and road machines. An area for conferences and different cultural events will also be available.

The Estonian Road museum took part in a joint research and cooperation project “DIY Estonia” of the Estonian National museum. Paavo Kroon, the curator, consulted and framed the content for the part dedicated to the car era of 1990s.

Museum researcher Andres Seene completed two exhibitions. “Like a Headless Chicken” unfolded the history of traffic safety campaigns beginning from 1930s. The exhibition travelled after its closing in the road museum to Narva castle and later to the Road Administration.

After the restoration and installation of a steel bridge detail found by divers in the river Emajõgi  a temporary exhibition dedicated to the bridges in Jõesuu and permanent exhibition of Estonian steel bridges were opened.

In 2018 the collection got 728 new pieces. At the end of the year there were 43389 different objects, photos or archival documents. 35977 of them belong to basic collection.

Archives, speeches and articles written by Aadu Lass, the legendary road engineer, were also systemized. The main part of new items received as donations.

The restorer Üllar Meho restored motorbike Jawa from the beginning of 1970s and a horse-cart from 1930s. Restauration of M-403 and road marking machine will end in 2019.

The most important and crowded event was Night of Museums with record-breaking 1400 visitors. Varbuse has been a place for summer performances. The followers could see „Mowgly“, performed by Must Kast and Miksteater produced the play „Refugees“.

189 educational programmes took place in 2018, 78 of them were traffic safety programmes. 5 new programmes for different age groups based on exhibition and collections were added.

In October Road museum took part in a main programme of children and youth museum festival Open Playgrounds. A guideline “Traveller´s 100 important things” was completed which gave some new possibilities for families to familiarize themselves with the inner exposition.