Installation view from the exhibition 'Night' at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum. From left: Kauko Lehtinen’s Face in a Can of Tinned Octopus, c.1943–72, metal can and pencil, 4.5cm x 10cm, Finnish National Gallery Collection / Ateneum Art Museum; and just seen on right, a detail from Mikko Ängeslevä’s The Other Side, 2024, oil on canvas, 135cm x 120cm, Finnish National Gallery Collection / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, The Fund of Päivi and Paavo Lipponen Art Collection, People's Culture Foundation Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

Editorial: New Approaches to ­Research and Curatorial Practice

Kirsi Eskelinen

Dr Kirsi Eskelinen, Director, Sinebrychoff Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery

June 17, 2026

This issue of FNG Research is rich in approaches to research into visual arts and curatorial practices. For example the Sinebrychoff Art Museum recently opened its themed exhibition, ‘Night’ which explores the night and the world of dreams, illuminated by old European art and works from the 19th century to the present. Besides the artworks, poetry also has a powerful presence in the exhibition. Curator Kersti Tainio decided to commission contemporary poet Henriikka Tavi to write poems specific to the themes in each room instead of using traditional wall texts. Rather than explaining this special time of day to visitors, they are encouraged to feel and interpret the night. Instead of a set of distinct works, the exhibition is a total work of art, with its architecture – devised by designer Lauri Johansson – also playing a major role. Gill Crabbe discusses the collaborative process with Henriikka Tavi in her article ‘A Night to Remember’.

The archive collections of the Finnish National Gallery include various kinds of materials concerning artists and art works among others. Marja Sakari, Director Emerita of the Ateneum Art Museum, is currently working on a biography on Lauri Anttila (1938–2022). She discusses the diaries of Anttila as source material in her article ‘Diaries as a Primary Source for Understanding Lauri Anttila’s World’.  Anttila was a pioneer of conceptual and environmental art in Finland. He was also teaching from 1970s onwards at the School of Design and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and as a teacher he had a great influence in the Finnish art field. Anttila kept diaries throughout his professional life, the oldest dating back to the end of the 1960s and the latest to 2019. To sift through the material is demanding and time consuming, since there are 13 folders with around 10 diaries in each. Sakari considers the diaries representative and illuminating, revealing Anttilas’s thinking and his artistic work processes.

Mari Tossavainen in her peer-reviewed article ‘From Plaster and Marble to Lost-wax Bronze: The Materiality of Sculpture from the Helsinki Exhibition of 1876 to Early 20th-century Finland’ deals with materiality, a subject, which has been a scantily researched topic until now. Her starting point is archival research to situate sculptural materials within a broader historical context. She examines the use and the choice of sculptural materials within the context of Finnish exhibition history. She presents three case studies in her article. The first focuses on the inaugural Finnish art and industry exhibition in 1876, which was one of the earliest exhibitions to include a sculpture section. The second case study examines some examples of the materials used by the first women sculptors in the Finnish annual exhibitions of the late 19th century. The majority of sculptors were men during that period. The third case study deals with the craft and cire perdue (lost wax) bronze casting technique. There was a global revival of lost-wax casting in the late 19th century. The technique had continued in Italy since antiquity, but it was forgotten in many European countries. The sculptures were a rarity in the exhibitions and often the catalogue entries did not specify the materials, which is a particular challenge for the research.

Saara Hacklin in her article ‘Thoughts on Disintegrating Artwork – Artistic Research, Museum Work, and the Categories of Art’, discusses the difficulties that are inherent in museum practices concerning contemporary art and the challenges concerning its changing forms. In museum practice the classification of art works in the collection management system is part of the basic procedures, but due to the multiplicity and border-crossing nature of contemporary art, it can be complex. However, classification is of fundamental importance, because it enables future researchers and curators to locate the art. Hacklin gives as examples participatory art, how to identify artworks that require participation from the audience or art that is not object-related as multipart, multimedia installations, words and happenings and bio art, made by non-human actors.

The exhibition ‘We Who Remain – Sámi Art in Focus’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma is a collaborative project with the Sámi Siida Museum in Inari, and a version of the show will be shown at Siida later this year. The independent curator Petra Laiti, Sámi rights advocate and essayist, has chosen works by more than 20 artists from the Sápmi region covering Finland, Sweden and Norway, bringing together contemporary art, as well as works dating back to the 1970s. The exhibition is an important event as it is the first major exhibition to present Sámi Art in Helsinki. Contemporary Sámi art and duodji, traditional Sámi crafts, are arousing increasing interest internationally. Earlier this year Oulu Art Museum showed a major exhibition of Sámi art and duodji ‘Eanangiella – Voice of the Land’ as part of the Oulu 2026 cultural programme and cultural climate change. Gill Crabbe gives an overview of the Helsinki show and discusses with curator Petra Laiti about her collaboration with Kiasma in her article ‘Sámi Art Speaks Out at Kiasma’.

In her article ‘Light Weight, A Baroque Way of Curating – Edith Karlson’s Sculptures in Exhibition’, curator Piia Oksanen concentrates on opening up the curatorial process and concepts behind Karlson’s exhibition ‘Dawn till Dawn’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. Edith Karlson is a Tallinn-based sculptor, who has exhibited widely internationally and represented Estonia at the Venice Biennale 2024. She uses a wide range of materials in her sculptures including clay, concrete and silicone and often leaves the surfaces unfinished and rough. Her works are figurative, including both animals and human-like figures, sometimes monumental in scale. A key concept for Oksanen’s curatorial approach is a contemporary take on baroque. She elaborates among other things on the thoughts of cultural theorist Mieke Bal and on the interpretation of art historian Rudolf Wittkower of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

Also Anna Luhtala gives an overview of the contributions at the Finnish Art Society’s 180th Anniversary Symposium ‘Constructed Nationality: Transitions and Forces of Change in Visual Arts’, which was held in April at the Ateneum Art Museum. The symposium day featured numerous presentations including two keynote speeches. The first keynote was presented by Susanna Pettersson, CEO of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, on ‘The Finnish Art Society and the Need to Construct Narratives’. The second was given by art historian, artist and curator Svitlana Biedarieva. She presented her recently published book Ambicoloniality and War, which introduces the concept of ambicoloniality.

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Featured image: Installation view from the exhibition ‘Night’ at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum. From left: Kauko Lehtinen’s Face in a Can of Tinned Octopus, c.1943–72, metal can and pencil, 4.5cm x 10cm, Finnish National Gallery Collection / Ateneum Art Museum; and just seen on right, a detail from Mikko Ängeslevä’s The Other Side, 2024, oil on canvas, 135cm x 120cm, Finnish National Gallery Collection / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, The Fund of Päivi and Paavo Lipponen Art Collection, People’s Culture Foundation
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

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Emil Wikström, Mother and Child, 1900, marble, 87cm x 53cm x 40cm Finnish National Gallery Collection / Ateneum Art Museum, Antell Collections Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Matti Janas

From Plaster and Marble to Lost-wax Bronze: The Materiality of Sculpture from the Helsinki Exhibition of 1876 to Early 20th-century Finland

Mari Tossavainen

Mari Tossavainen, PhD, visiting scholar, University of Helsinki

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This article examines sculptors’ material practices and major shifts in sculptural materials in Finland from the late 19th to the early 20th century, with particular attention to marble, plaster, and the lost-wax (cire perdue) method.[1] It contributes to ongoing discussions on sculptural materials and methods. Although materiality has long been central to the fields of conservation and restoration, a material perspective on sculpture has been largely neglected in studies of Finnish 19th- and early 20th-century sculpture.[2]

Research has traditionally focused on artist biographies and the analysis of public monuments.[3] In art-historical narratives, some sculptors have remained more prominent due to their involvement in public sculpture projects, even though monumental commissions were beyond the reach of many sculptors. Instead, sculptures had a public life through exhibitions, although opportunities for sculptors to exhibit their work in 19th-century Finland were limited, and large-scale solo exhibitions were rare. The important arenas of annual exhibitions for artists were the exhibitions organised by the Finnish Art Society and the Artists’ Association of Finland. The Finnish Art Society’s first exhibition was organised in Helsinki as early as 1847 and the exhibitions of the Artists’ Association of Finland were started in 1891.[4] The first large-scale solo exhibition of a living sculptor was held at the Ateneum in 1890, and Ville Vallgren’s (1855–1940) exhibition was regarded as a significant event in Finnish art history. [5]

Focusing on the period between 1876 and 1905, this article explores the use of materials in Finnish sculpture prior to the institutional consolidation of sculpture marked by the establishment of bronze foundries and the Association of Finnish Sculptors in the 1910s.[6] The article examines the use and the choice of sculptural materials within the context of the Finnish exhibition history, paying particular attention to the Finnish Art and Industry Exhibition of 1876 and the exhibitions organised by the Finnish Art Society and the Artists’ Association of Finland. The case studies have been selected to provide a brief overview of the materiality of sculpture in Finland during this period.

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[1]  Lost-wax casting (French, cire perdue) is a common method of making cast metal sculpture. Its simplest form is like this: ‘The original model is made in wax and is then encased in a clay mould known as the investment. This is heated up and the wax poured away leaving a hollow interior, the inside surface of which carries a negative impression of the original wax model. Molten alloy, such as bronze, is then poured into the mould and allowed to cool. The clay mould is broken and removed, leaving an alloy replica of the original wax model’. Michael Clarke, 2010, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Francesca G. Bewer, ‘Lost-Wax Casting’, in Sharon Hecker (ed.), Finding Lost Wax. The Disappearance and Recovery of an Ancient Casting Technique and the Experiments of Medardo Rosso, Studies in Art and Materiality Series 3. Leiden: Brill, 2021, 11–17.

[2]  Jyrki Siukonen, Ensimmäinen. Carl Eneas Sjöstrandin istuva Porthan. Tietolipas 281. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2023, chapter IV. https://doi.org/10.21435/tl.281; Mari Tossavainen, Kuvanveistotyö. Emil Wikström ja kuvanveiston rakenne 1890–1920. Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands natur och folk 190. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2012. https://doi.org/10.54572/ssc.1592; Mari Tossavainen, ’Veistosten valmistus Suomessa. Kuvanveistotaiteen tekniikan ja materiaalien historiaa 1890–1920’. Tekniikan Waiheita 33. No. 3, 2015, 39–52.
https://journal.fi/tekniikanwaiheita/article/view/82268 (accessed 1 June 2026).

[3]  The recent publications on Finnish women sculptors focus on their biographies: Liisa Lindgren, ‘Women on sculpture’s rocky road. Alina Forsman, Evelina Särkelä and Ida Meller’. FNG Research, No 2, 2025. https://fngresearch.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/fngr_2025-2_lindgren_article1.pdf (accessed 1 June 2026); Liisa Lindgren, ‘Pioneering Women in Finnish Sculpture’, in Linda Hinners (ed.), Nordic Women Sculptors at the Turn of the 20th Century. Formation, Visibility, Self-Creation. Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 2022, 70–89.

[4]  The Finnish Art Society´s exhibitions were organised twice a year. Tossavainen 2012, 329–39.

[5]  Tossavainen 2012, 338.

[6]  Tossavainen 2012.

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Featured image: Emil Wikström, Mother and Child, 1900, marble, 87cm x 53cm x 40cm
Finnish National Gallery Collection /Ateneum Art Museum, Antell Collections
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Matti Janas

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BERJAYA

A poem snakes around the artwork on a wall dedicated to nightmares. The exhibition architecture is designed by Lauri Johansson Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

A Night to Remember

Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

A themed exhibition at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki, on the subject of night, has taken an innovative approach in inviting a contemporary poet, Henriikka Tavi, to contribute. Gill Crabbe discusses the collaborative process with her

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The advent of digital art museums that create immersive experiences from the works of iconic historical masters, such as van Gogh, has had a mixed reception among museum professionals. These new media spaces with their fast-paced moving projections onto walls, ceilings and floors, entwined with intense sensory soundtracks, are a far cry from the unhurried contemplation encouraged in more traditional exhibition formats. So how does a museum like the Finnish National Gallery’s Sinebrychoff Art Museum, which showcases old masterworks and art from the Renaissance to the 19th century, create an immersive experience that is appropriate to its holdings, yet speaks to today’s museum visitor?

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Featured image: A poem snakes around the artworks on a wall dedicated to nightmares.
The exhibition architecture is designed by Lauri Johansson
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

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BERJAYA

Diaries as a Primary Source for Understanding Lauri Anttila’s World

Marja Sakari

Dr Marja Sakari, Director Emerita, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery

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Diary: ‘A form of autobiographical writing, a regularly kept record of the diarist’s activities and reflections. Written primarily for the writer’s use alone, the diary has a frankness that is unlike writing done for publication […].’[1]

Lauri Anttila (1938–2022), the Finnish pioneer of conceptual and environmental art, kept diaries throughout his professional life. The first date from the end of the 1960s and the last were written in 2022, just before he passed away. On many occasions he mentioned in his diaries that his aim was to publish part of them as an autobiography. With his wish in mind, I have used his diaries as source material for my own research to write a biography of the artist.

When Lauri Anttila’s family donated the archives of the late artist to the Finnish National Gallery, I was working as Director of the Ateneum Art Museum. I was really happy that the Finnish National Gallery received such a rich and substantial amount of material concerning Lauri Anttila’s amazingly vast career. Despite his strong impact on the field of Finnish art, there hasn’t been published any biographical survey of his thinking and artistic production. In addition to being an artist, he was also teaching from the 1970s onwards, at the School of Design and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. He also became the rector of the latter between 1988 and 1994 and professor there from 1989 to 2001, first as professor of general studies until 1995, and then at the new department he founded. This was the Department of Time and Space, which has established its position alongside the departments of painting, drawing and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki. Anttila was a thinker and philosopher, who showed the way for generations of young artists by teaching and giving lectures, and also through his writings[2]. His numerous exhibitions – group and solo – have been influential since 1971 when his first solo exhibition ‘Suomen luonto – Finlands natur’ (Nature of Finland) was exhibited at Galleria Katariina, a gallery for the Helsinki Artists’ Association.

After my retirement in January 2024, I had the time and opportunity to start sifting through the material to write a biography of Anttila and his career. My academic interest has been conceptual art and Lauri Anttila and his art was already familiar to me from my earlier writings. I was really inspired when I started to read the diaries, which give a more intimate and rich picture of the artist. The diaries reveal a romantic and poetic thinker whose observations deal with subjects ranging from the politics of the day to philosophical comments, from happenings in the art world to teaching, from childhood experiences to the observations within his journeys. Due to these broad subject areas and their literary richness, the diaries have become my primary source for the biography. The material needs to be contextualised and thematised, but here I want to give the reader some examples of the style and richness of topics in his various diary entries.

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[1]  Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/art/diary-literature (accessed 30 March 2026).

[2]  Kuvataiteilijamatrikkeli, Lauri Anttila, https://kuvataiteilijamatrikkeli.fi/wp-content/uploads/artist/artist_1710/cv-lauri-anttila-2017.pdf (accessed 13 April 2026).

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Featured image:Lauri Anttila, Aika – Tiden (Time), 2007, installation
Finnish National Gallery Collection / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen © Kuvasto

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Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, The Complaints Choir, performed at Kiasma for the ‘ARS 06’ exhibition in 2006 Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Summanen

Thoughts on Disintegrating Artwork – Artistic Research, Museum Work, and the Categories of Art

Saara Hacklin

Dr Saara Hacklin, Chief Curator, collections, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma / Finnish National Gallery

This article has been originally written for In line, online, off the grid – Linjassa, linjoilla, katveessa, edited by Mika Elo & Maiju Loukola, Uniarts Helsinki, 2025, 271–75. The bilingual publication is available online https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-353-489-6.

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The main class describes the artwork with its common noun, for instance painting, photography, object art. The artwork can only have one main class, which is chosen primarily from the word list in the guidelines.[1]

I am writing this article from (at least) two viewpoints. On the one hand, I am drawing from my experiences as an examiner of artistic research: I was part of the external examination board of the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, from 2016 until 2024, and in addition I have examined artistic doctoral research projects at other institutions. For several years I have also been a full-time curator of contemporary art and in particular working with the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma at the Finnish National Gallery.

My understanding of what it means to work at the museum of contemporary art is a paradox: Kiasma’s mission is to collect contemporary art that reflects our time as diversely as possible. Even though it is of utmost importance to aspire to create a collection that is diverse, this is clearly an impossible task – one is bound to fail. That impossibility is similar to the issue of artistic research being by nature contradictory.

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[1]  Helka Ketonen, Taideteosten luettelointiohje [Guidelines for cataloguing artworks]. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery, 2010, 72.

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Featured image: Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, The Complaints Choir, performed at Kiasma for the ‘ARS 06’ exhibition in 2006
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Summanen

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The chamber in the Panorama space in the north end of the exhibition, with reliefs from Karlson’s series ‘Hora Lupi’ Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

Light Weight, A Baroque Way of Curating – Edith Karlson’s Sculptures in Exhibition

Piia Oksanen

Piia Oksanen, MA, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma / Finnish National Gallery

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Weight

It is on point to begin this text about the exhibition ‘Edith Karlson: Dawn till Dawn’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma by focusing on materials, on the very concrete. Karlson works hands-on with a variety of materials. In her practice the materials retain their characteristics, they are still able to communicate their origins, even when sculpted and given form to convey other narratives. Karlson seems to stop working at the point where the material can still hold onto its essence. Clay, concrete, latex; mostly monochromatic, mainly bare, tactile.

By bringing the sculptures together, the exhibition celebrates both the weight of the material and the sculptures’ presence. The three Giants, with their sturdy, 4-metre bodies, are present, you might say omnipresent, in the exhibition. Hardly anywhere in the show is sculpture a sole protagonist, or a loner. The few exceptions prove the rule. To populate the exhibition space en masse, here, is purposeful. lt aims more to create a scene rather than to foreground repetition as an artistic method. It is like a choir where many voices make the sound more robust.

The exhibition in the fifth floor gallery in which Karlson’s works are shown, is rectangular in its overall form, an elongated, open space. The intention was to create various directional pulls to it, to guide the visitor to navigate in diverse directions and to follow several narratives within. The exhibition includes four separate chambers that give the works on the walls their own detached or enclosed spaces. This layout creates a force that pulls the visitor from the centre of the gallery space to the sides to find their way around the corners and into the chambers. The chambers stand slightly above the museum floor, which emphasises them as separate spheres, too. Furthermore, the placement of the groups of sculptures marks out distinct areas within the exhibition space. In Hora Lupi: The Giants and the Snake, the three massive figures form a circle, as does the trio of mermaids in Hora Lupi: Can’t See. The warriors in the series March: Army form a distinct entity of their own, one that is more unwavering in its forward motion. Elsewhere in the show, sculptures form assemblages and the diverse bodies of works relate to one another, mingling, supporting and reinforcing one another’s presence. The tall columns of Dawn till Dawn provide a protective area for Hora Lupi: Sad Women.

Originally, the chambers inside the exhibition space were referred to as chapels. The reference to a church in the spatial organisation is intentional. It did not contradict Karlson’s practice as the artist has exhibited her works in ecclesiastical spaces. The sacred is not a foreign concept to describe what Karlson seeks in her sculpted world.[1] Here, the reference is not so much to elevate the visitor’s spirit and to shift their orientation toward the otherworldly, away from the here and now, but to enable them to let go and to make an effort to cross a threshold into an unknown or forgotten territory. To enter the exhibition is to step into a world inhabited by herds of animals, crowds of people, and mythic beings, where another logic, another timeline prevails.

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[1]  In the Estonian pavilion for the Venice Bienniale 2024, the abandoned church of Santa Maria delle Penitenti was used as the exhibition space. Eero Epner, the dramaturge of that exhibition, writes that the space supported the idea of yearning towards the sacred. It was not about a narrative where the protagonists were in a conscious search for the sacred, instead they were guided by instincts and a lust for life. According to Epner, sacrality in Karlson’s sculptures is a pairing for brutality or the quotidian, or a sense evoked by the works; it is aspirational, a desire for ‘a place where, for some reason, everything vulgar turns poetic, dirt turns into a starry sky, everything physical into metaphysical, this is not in a ceremonious manner but a rude, soiled, and physical one.’ Eero Epner, Edith Karlson. Hora Lupi. Milan: Mousse Publishing; Tallinn: Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2024 (63–78), 63–65, 74, 78.

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Featured image: The chamber in the Panorama space in the north end of the exhibition, with reliefs from Karlson’s series ‘Hora Lupi’
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen

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Britta Marakatt-Labba, Beds, 2020, embroidery and appliqué, 38cm x 46cm KODE museums, Bergen Photo: Hans Olof Utsi

Sámi Art Speaks Out at Kiasma

Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

The exhibition of Sámi art ‘We Who Remain’, now open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, is timely politically, as well as artistically. Gill Crabbe gives an overview of the show and interviews the independent curator Petra Laiti about her collaboration with the museum

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A major exhibition of Sámi art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, brings together contemporary artworks by Sámi artists and works engaging with Sámi life across Sápmi, spanning Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The exhibition, ‘We Who Remain – Sámi Art in Focus’, which is jointly presented by Kiasma and the Sámi Museum Siida in Inari, is especially timely, following the recent report of Finland’s Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which includes recommendations to improve the status of the Sámi people and underlines Finland’s responsibility as a country founded on the homelands of two peoples.

With recent solo shows of Outi Pieski at Tate St Ives, and Máret Anne Sara’s prestigious Turbine Hall Commission at Tate Modern in London – both of whom have works in ‘We Who Remain’ – contemporary Sámi art and duodji (traditional Sámi crafts) are experiencing a renaissance and attracting increasing international interest.

The Helsinki iteration of the exhibition, curated by Sámi rights advocate and essayist Petra Laiti, features works by more than 20 artists dating back to the 1970s. The exhibition takes the visitor through four themed spaces – Land, People, Home, and Burden. The first room, Land, looks at geopolitical issues and includes poster works by Arvid Sveen (Sámi Liberation 1972–81), paintings by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (Untitled (Self-Portrait / Noaidi), 1991) and Tomas Colbengtson’s InBetween_Colonisation (2024), a sculptural installation of life-size historical images of Sámi individuals each printed onto a transparent piece of plastic that together float like apparitions at the centre of the room. One of these ghostlike figures also appears in the entrance lobby of Kiasma on a window that looks out onto the Marshall Mannerheim monument and the Parliament building beyond.

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Featured image: Britta Marakatt-Labba, Beds, 2020, embroidery and appliqué, 38cm x 46cm
KODE museums, Bergen
Photo: Hans Olof Utsi

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Students from the Finnish Art Society’s Drawing School in the painting studio at the Ateneum in 1899. Photographer Jakob Ljungqvist. Finnish National Gallery Collection, Väinö Hämäläinen Archive Photo: Finnish National Gallery

The Finnish Art Society’s 180th Anniversary Symposium ‘Constructed Nationality: Transitions and Forces of Change in Visual Arts’ – The History of the Finnish Art Field

aluhtala

Anna Luhtala, MA, Curator, Finnish National Gallery

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The Finnish Art Society’s 180th Anniversary Symposium was held on 22 April, 2026, at the Ateneum Art Museum. In the opening speech, Outi Raatikainen, the Society’s chairperson, described how the founding document of the Finnish Art Society was signed in 1846, and two years later, the art school was founded and a grants system and the Ducat Prize established to support Finnish artists. ‘The Finnish Art Society gathered artists, collectors, networkers, and influencers – all for the arts’, Raatikainen stated. Each year, the Finnish Art Society awards grants to artists, buys artworks to be donated to the members for the annual lottery event and guarantees access to art for the members by offering free entrance to its exhibitions. ‘In future’, Raatikainen said, ‘the society wants to do even more, and this year, a fundraising campaign will be launched and a gala event for donors is to be held in October.’

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Featured image: Students from the Finnish Art Society’s Drawing School in the painting studio at the Ateneum in 1899. Photographer Jakob Ljungqvist.
Finnish National Gallery Collection, Väinö Hämäläinen Archive

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Upper secondary school students were invited to a special preview of the ‘Eero Nelimarkka’ exhibition, which openedon 12 March at the Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Editorial: Redefining ‘the Artist’ through New Narratives

Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff

Dr Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Director, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery

25 March 2026

Finnish art is now more visible and present internationally than ever. Museums, such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, are acquiring Finnish art and Finnish art is present in many exhibitions in major museums around Europe and the US. This interest is growing. However, it also means that, as museum professionals and curators at the Finnish National Gallery, we are facing the fact that it is even more important that knowledge of Finnish history is expertly disseminated to our counterparts abroad, in addition to explaining the context the artists were and are working in. It also means a shift away from the emphasis on the solitary genius artist.

In this issue of FNG Research, there is a significant focus on ‘the artist’ and in several articles we highlight the many well-known names in Finnish art history, as well as new research and fresh approaches to these artists’ narratives. On the one hand we need to emphasise the context for our partners abroad and on the other to reconsider our own position. It is important to be together in dialogue with one another. This type of exchange will also help us to renew our own position on these artists.

The seminar on Finnish art historian Salme Sarajas-Korte brought together four generations of museum professionals and researchers in the Ateneum conference hall. Sharing knowledge about how exhibitions and museum work were undertaken in the 1950s and beyond gave us much new information. It also brought Sarajas-Korte’s life works to the fore and offered us a broader view on her as a major scholar and an important museum professional. There is a need to have a historiographic view on the museum’s past in order to gain an understanding of the position from which the narratives of artists were created.

More recent monographs are actively challenging the male-dominated, Western canon by focusing on women artists in a bid to counter exclusive narratives. The Finnish National Gallery has a long history of scholarly research on women artists. Moreover, new artist-based research will be made in the future by research interns on artists such as Anitra Lucander (1918–2000) and Sinikka Kurkinen (b. 1935). Collection-based research is vitally important.

We also need to study artists’ individual artworks in depth. In this issue of FNG Research the conservator Ilona Osara discusses the analysis and conservation of the fresco studies of Akseli Gallen-Kallela which were connected to an important historical moment in the 1900 Paris World Fair. Satu Oksanen, in her article, explains the process and thoughts behind the new Kiasma collection exhibition ‘A Dream in Four Colours’ (until 10 January, 2027). This latter exhibition is centered on a selection of works that seem to defy categorisation but nevertheless share a common vision. Bringing together artists’ works from the history of contemporary art in dialogue with the youngest generations is important.

We need to have interdisciplinary approaches in order to renew our perspectives. Rather than a purely biographical survey or an analysis of an artist’s work, artist monographs are incorporating perspectives from art historians, critics, philosophers, and in some cases artists themselves are contributing to texts based on a ‘curated conversation’. Hanne Selkokari’s article in this issue gives us a historiographical view on one of Finland’s most accomplished pioneering women painters Fanny Churberg, and reveals that the idea of giving her new narratives has a history of its own. We need to look again at the artists we think we know, and see how old narratives can restrain us. We might find ourselves surprised by how little we actually know. Also in this issue, Riitta Ojanperä’s article on the Ostrobothnian painter Eero Nelimarkka and Timo Huusko’s research essay on Tyko Sallinen’s painting are both renewing our perspectives on these well-known artists in Finnish art.

Contemporary monographs often position the artist as someone who challenges perceptions on themes like identity, memory and ecological urgency. The shift away from the prevailing view of the monographic ‘artist as genius’ with a linear, triumphant career is gathering momentum, and with good reason. Our diverse and multi-layered artist histories need new narratives to give a glimpse of their contribution to our histories.

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Featured image:

Upper secondary school students were invited to a special preview of the ‘Eero Nelimarkka’ exhibition, which opened on 12 March at the Ateneum Art Museum.
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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Consolidating the gouache layer with JunFunori using an aerosol generator Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

Conservation of Four Sketches, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, for the Frescoes at the Finnish Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair

Ilona Osara

Ilona Osara BA, Paper Conservator, Finnish National Gallery

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In 1898, three Finnish architects, Eliel Saarinen, Armas Lindgren and Herman Gesellius won the competition to design Finland’s pavilion at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. Since 1896, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931) had been creating paintings inspired by the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, each work contributing to the emerging Finnish national identity. He was commissioned to paint murals for the Finnish Pavilion’s Iris Room and to decorate the arches of the pavilion, giving him an opportunity to present his art to an international audience.[1]

The Finnish Pavilion at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair became a landmark project that showcased Finland as a modern and distinct nation. Featuring the finest Finnish art, design, and industry, it earned widespread acclaim.[2] Gallen-Kallela himself was awarded a gold medal by the World’s Fair for his contributions.[3] 

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[1] Fabienne Chevallier, ‘Axel Gallénin kansallinen tyyli ja alkukantaisen tavoittelu’, in Tuija Kuutti et al. (eds.), Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Eurooppalainen mestari. Helsinki: Helsingin taidemuseo, 2011 (24–33), 28; Kerttu Karvonen-Kannas, Finnish designin ensimmäinen suuri mestari, in Juha Ilvas et al. (eds.), Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Helsinki: Ateneumin taidemuseo / Turun taidemuseo, 1996 (104–11), 104–06.

[2] Aalto University, ‘The Finnish Pavilion at the 1900 World Fair’, https://sysrep.aalto.fi/paviljonki/history/ (accessed 13 Jan 2026).

[3] Chevallier 2011, 29.

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Featured image: Consolidating the gouache layer with JunFunori using an aerosol generator
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve

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