On 28 August University of Tartu Library and University of Tartu Museum celebrate the Day of Morgernstern

Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen. Karl Morgernstern. Oil painting, 1809. University of Tartu Library
On Friday the University of Tartu Library and the University of Tartu Museum celebrate the 250th birthday of Johann Karl Simon Morgernstern, the founder or the art museum and library of the University of Tartu, the professor of rhetoric, classical philology, aesthetics and history of literature and art.
In the morning the restored monument of Karl Morgernstern will be opened in Toomemägi, also excursions will be organised to the placed related with the great man. At 2:15 p.m. a ceremony in the memory of Morgernstern will take place at Raadi cemetery.
“Karl Morgernstern is an important person for Tartu and the University of Tartu. He is a Tartu Classicist, because everything what he did, had an influence on Tartu and the University of Tartu: he founded the university library and art museum to lead Tartu to a university town that values cultural traditions,“ described the director of the University of Tartu Library Krista Aru. „He lived fifty years in Tartu, but his community was the cultural public of the whole Europe. Morgernstern was one of the first populizers of science and humanistic lifestyle. Not to mention that he valued an educated person as well as a beautiful nature and clean living environment.“ 
The restored monument that was erected to commemorate Karl Morgernstern in Toomemägi in the year 1851 by the University of Tartu will be re-opened on Friday at 11.15. Mayor of Tartu Urmas Klaas, director of the University of Tartu Museum Mariann Raisma and the director of the University of Tartu Library Krista Aru will speak about the importance of Karl Morgernstern to Tartu. Also, the poems written by Morgernstern and abstracts from the gift act of his plot to the university will be read out. The conservator of the University of Tartu Museum Maria Väinsar speaks about the restauration of the monument.
A quarter past midday free tours to the University of Tartu Museum and Art Museum will take place. The first one introduces the new permanent exhibition in the university museum in the Cathedral, the former location of the university library. The other one takes people to the art museum in the main building, to an exhibition “The enchanting art of stone cutting. Morgenstern 250”, which shows the life and heritage of the great man. The tour guides are the doctoral student and museum guide Ken Ird and the director of research of the museum Jaanika Anderson.
At 2.15 p.m. a memorial service at Raadi cemetery will take place. Speeches will be held by the rector of the University of Tartu Toomas Asser, Mayor of Tartu Urmas Klaas and the professor emeritus of the University of Tartu, classical philologist Anne Lill. Senior research fellow of the UT Library research centre, classical philologist and translator Janika Päll reads the abstract from the inauguration speech of Karl Morgenstern. 
The Day of Morgenstern will be organised by the University of Tartu Library and the University of Tartu Museum. All events are free and everyone is welcome to participate.
Additional information:
Krista Aru, University of Tartu Library, 554 0107, krista.aru@ut.ee
Mariann Raisma, University of Tartu Museum, 522 1702, mariann.raisma@ut.ee