Start of the University of Tartu Museum goes back to the year when was established the second^[1] museum in Estonia – University of Tartu Art museum in 1803. Today has museum exhibition spaces in three buildings. All of these are important buildings for the University of Tartu as the part of historical campus and symbols of higher education and science in the city of Tartu. Three houses and many themes based on the university, science of Estonian people make the museum a complex organism within a large organization of university.

The paper examines the management of the University museum in the changing world brought in part by Covid-19 with, including the decline of the visitors and uncertainty about the next day. In addition, there are other challenges and innovative opportunities that should be used for museum`s own benefit: demographic factors such as aging population, and needs of society, digitalisation and innovative perspectives on understanding the world, interdisciplinarity and different layers of education. Expectations for the museum have grown significantly (see discussions around the ICOM definition). Could there be a danger that the essence of the museum being dissolved in all of this? Or is it a new type of museum, the nature of which is also suitable for a university museum?

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^[1] The first museum was the University of Tartu Natural History Museum.