Museum of the Museum is an exhibition dedicated to the history of the Lenin Memorial Room, a museum that opened in Hakaniemi Square in 1976 and closed in 1995. Shortly before the October Revolution, Chief Kustaa Rovio of the Helsingfors police sheltered Lenin in this room for several weeks so that he could avoid prosecution by the provisional government. Here Lenin worked on his book State and Revolution and prepared for the uprising. Upon the museum’s closure in 1995, the apartment was sold to a private individual. For this research-based exhibition, Orlov has rented another apartment in the same building, where he recreated the museum for three weeks in October 2017 to coincide with the centennial of the revolution.

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All the objects exhibited were the very pieces used in the original display of Lenin ‘memorial room’ in 1976-1995. The chairs, the dresser, the bed, and the bookcase are ‘authentic fakes’ – exact copies of Rovio’s belongings, manufactured in Moscow in 1975-1976 and now owned by Lenin Museum (Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, Tampere). The writing desk, the wall telephone, the ink well, and the chandelier are likewise from the original ‘memorial room’, and are now in the collections of Helsinki City Museum.