Research Projects

Estonian Academy of Arts is the only research institution directly engaged in scientific research in the field of heritage protection and conservation. The Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation focuses their research on material cultural heritage – historic buildings and built environments, artefacts and artificial environments, incl. artworks. The research focuses on heritage creation and the sociology of conservation, the sustainability of historic environments as well as the studies of materials and technology.
Among the most significant research directions is technical art history – an interdisciplinary field of heritage studies, applying contemporary scientific as well as information and communications technology to gather, process, archive, contextualise and visualise data. While various types of research in technical art history (chemistry, microscopy, wood analysis etc) are conducted in collaboration with other research institutions, in the applications of imaging technologies (3D modelling, IRR, RTI, creation of specialised databases/ research websites etc) Estonian Academy of Arts is the field’s leading competence centre.
Due to research activities and popularisation of research in the field, heritage protection and conservation has become an accepted and acknowledged field in our scientific community.
See the digital database of EKA’s Department of Cultural Heritage and Conservation.

How to Reframe Monuments (Estonian Ministry of Culture grant, 2024–2026)

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered debates about the Russian and Soviet heritage both globally and in Estonia. This has been accompanied by the toppling of monuments, as well as social conflicts and polarisation. The aim of ...

LIFE heritageHOME

The LIFE heritageHOME project focuses on the energy performance improvement of residential (single or multi-family buildings) listed buildings and of residential buildings located within the borders of national conservation areas. The ...

Port Cities: Values and Sustainable Development

The follow-up project of the research Tallinn Old Town: Sustainable Management and Presentation. The aim of the project is to ensure the ...

Guild Painters: Artistic Creation Between Innovation and Tradition in Baltic Provinces from 17th to 19th Century

The research project examines an area that has been little studied so far – the painters of guilds in the period of the 17th-19th centuries in Estonia. It is planned as a broad multidisciplinary approach that interweaves an art ...

Project WOODMEADOWLIFE

The Estonian-Latvian joint LIFE project (LIFE20 NAT/EE/000074) “Restoring and promoting a long-term sustainable management of Fennoscandian wooded meadows in Estonia and Latvia” focuses on the restoration of wooded meadows in ...

LIFE IP BuildEST

In view of Estonia's climate goals, the Estonian Academy of Arts participates in the international project Life IP BUILDEST (2021 - 2028), the task of which is to show direction and give impetus to the complete renovation of private houses built ...

Modernization of the Manor Portal mois.ee

The aim of the project is to modernize and develop the databases of Estonian manors, including mois.ee, into a multi-level digital platform for collecting, systematizing and managing information about the manor heritage. The creation of the ...

Bernt Notke: The Research and Conservation of the Retable of the Church of the Holy Spirit

The late medieval retable of the High Altar of the Church of the Holy Spirit, Tallinn, is an outstanding masterpiece of woodcarving and painting of international renown, completed in 1483 in the workshop of Bernt Notke, a prominent master of ...

Tallinn Old Town: Sustainable Management and Presentation

The aim of the research is to analyse the impact of increasing tourism on cultural heritage and to find solutions to promote Tallinn Old Town as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, while preserving its dignity and values. The main goal of the project ...

Compiling and Publishing of a Glossary of Architecture

The aim of the project is to compile and publish an illustrated comprehensive glossary of architectural terms to have a reliable source and manual for engineers, architects, art historians, conservators and others. The glossary would ...

Estonian Churches: Development, Improvement and Completion of the Construction History, Conservation and Research Database (phase 2)

The aim of creating the Estonian churches’ database was to provide an internet environment accessible to the scholars, conservators and the broader public and brings together all information on the ...

Development of the Discipline of Technical Art History for the Analysis of Cultural Heritage in Estonia

Technical art history is an interdisciplinary field of heritage studies combining methods from arts and sciences and uses contemporary information and communication technology (ICT) for acquiring, processing, archiving, contextualising and ...

Studies of the Estonian 20th-Century Built Environment

This project contains two main focuses: the study of the 20th-century construction history, construction materials and their preservation on the one hand, and the analysis of the heritage aspects in the planning policies ...

Christian Ackermann – the Arrogant and Talented Pheidias of Tallinn

Christian Ackermann was the most talented and scandalous wood carver of the baroque-era Estonia. By implementing the cutting edge investigation technologies of technical art history the project aims to identify the nature of ...

Mapping and Analysing Valuable 20th-Century Architecture (1870–1991) in Estonia

The 20th-century architectural heritage in Estonia is extremely diverse and it needs to be protected and recorded according to its typological diversity: starting from urban planning and landscaping to summer houses and micro ...

Inventory of 20th-Century Architecture

The vulnerability of the 20th-century architecture has been an undisguised problem since Estonia restored its independence. In 2007 the Ministry of Culture and the National Heritage Board initiated a programme “Mapping and analysing valuable ...