Kaur Alttoa (born 14 September 1947, Tartu) is an Estonian art historian and cultural historian.
Alttoa graduated from Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in 1966. His class teacher was Liidia Tanimäe, a legendary physics teacher during the days of the Estonian SSR.[1][2] After graduating from secondary school, he attended the University of Tartu in the same year and graduated in 1972 with an art history degree, protecting his diploma paper "Vastseliina Fortress".[3][4]
In October 1980, Alttoa was a signatory of the Letter of 40 Intellectuals, a public letter in which forty prominent Estonian intellectuals defended the Estonian language and protested the Russification policies of the Kremlin in Estonia.[5] The signatories also expressed their unease against Republic-level government in harshly dealing with youth protests in Tallinn that were sparked a week earlier due to the banning of a public performance of the punk rock band Propeller.[5]
Alttoa has mainly studied the medieval architecture of Estonia, such as forts and sacral buildings. In 1995, while working at the university, he completed his master's thesis on medieval brick buildings in southern Estonia.[6][7] He has also led several archaeological excavations at Viljandi Castle, Hermann Castle, Vastseliina Castle, and elsewhere. Alttoa was a researcher at the Tartu Branch of Estonian Construction Municipalities from 1971 to 1990, and from 1975 to 1980, he was also the senior teacher of the Estonian SSR State Art Institute. He has also been the head of Anton Starkopf Museum in Tartu. Since 1977, he has been working at the University of Tartu. By the end of the 1980s, he became a lecturer in art history at the University of Tartu. From 2005 to 2007, he was the head of their Department of Art History. He was also one of the editors of the Castella Maris Baltici series publishing international bird surveys.[7][3]
From 1968 to 1972, Alttoa was a member of the Tartu-based art group Visarid as a theorist and translator. In 1980, he became a signatory to the Letter of 40 intellectuals.
He is the son of literary scholar Villem Alttoa [et] and school principal Aino Alttoa (née Liit).[8] His wife is conservator Eve Alttoa.
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