Hiroshige, Gio Temple in Snow, Geishas Greeting each other in Snowfall before the Temple Gate, undated, woodblock print, 23.8cm x 36.9cm (paper) Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Editorial: Underpinning Exhibitions with International Research

December 1, 2023December 1, 2023 Kirsi Eskelinen

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

30 November, 2023

This issue of FNG Research concentrates on the research behind the two recently opened exhibitions, ‘Peder Balke – The Spell of the Arctic’, at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum and ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’, at the Ateneum Art Museum. The first is a monographic exhibition of the Norwegian painter Peder Balke (1804–87), which is presented to a Finnish audience for the first time. An important exhibition had taken place at the National Gallery in London in 2014, but the Norwegian painter of the Romantic era still remains less well-known internationally. Balke was fascinated by Arctic landscapes. Following his trip to the North Cape in the 1830s, he repeatedly depicted his visions of the north for the rest of his life. Balke was open-minded and experimental in his painting technique. His late output becomes almost abstract. Gill Crabbe interviews the co-curator of the exhibition Dr philos. Knut Ljøgodt, who is Director of the Nordic Institute of Art, about the concept and the aim of the show. The exhibition at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum is a collaboration with the Institute.

In October the Ateneum Art Museum opened the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’. In her article ‘Echoes of Impressionism in Finland’, Dr Marja Sakari, the museum’s Director, writes about one of the starting points for the ’Colour & Light’ exhibition: why the effects of Impressionism were not seen in Finnish art until the first two decades of the 20th century. Her article concentrates on the French and Belgian art exhibition that was organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The senior advisor to the exhibition is Professor Anthea Callen, who is interviewed in this issue by Gill Crabbe. Prof Callen discusses her role in contributing to the project, including her research into the Impressionist and Neoimpressionist works that Finnish artists were exposed to, and brings her particular expertise in the material culture of western European artists of the period.

The Ateneum Art Museum is actively promoting research work on its collections in conjunction with its upcoming exhibitions. At the moment there are several joint research projects being undertaken with international partners at the Finnish National Gallery. In the spring of this year the Ateneum organised a seminar as a part of an international research project called Gothic Modern, which aims to share and exchange ideas for a scientific publication in connection with the exhibition taking place on this theme in the autumn of 2024. Gill Crabbe met Dr Ralph Gleis, one of the participants of the seminar in Helsinki. Dr Gleis has been Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin for several years, and was recently appointed Director of the Albertina in Vienna, a post he is taking up in 2025. The interview with Dr Gleis gives a good grounding in the four-year research project and its goals.

Another international research project, which is underway at the Finnish National Gallery concerns ‘Pioneering Women Artists’. Its first conference ‘Crossing Borders: Transnational Networks of Pioneering Women Artists’ was held in September at the Ateneum Art Museum. The project will culminate in a scholarly publication and an exhibition in Helsinki at the Ateneum, which will also travel to the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast, in 2025.

Meanwhile, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum is preparing a major exhibition in Helsinki on the great Venetian Renaissance Master Jacopo Bassano. Scheduled for September 2024, this monographic show presents Bassano’s work for the first time in Europe outside Italy. The exhibition includes several less well-known paintings and rare drawings executed in coloured chalks. The curators of the exhibition are Dr Kirsi Eskelinen and Dr Claudia Caramanna, both of whom are Bassano scholars.

Finally, I would like to draw your attention to our annual call for research interns for 2024. Applications will be taken until 31 December 2023, and the two interns selected will be announced on 15 January 2024. Details of how to apply are in this issue.

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Featured image: Hiroshige, Gio Temple in Snow, Geishas Greeting each other in Snowfall before the Temple Gate, undated, woodblock print, 23.8cm x 36.9cm (paper)
Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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Alfred William Finch, An August Night, 1898, oil on canvas, 35cm x 45.5cm Gift from Arvid Sourander, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

Lighting up Colour

December 1, 2023December 1, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

For the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’, now showing at the Ateneum Art Museum, the curators invited renowned authority on Impressionism Professor Anthea Callen to be senior advisor on the project. Gill Crabbe asks her about what she brought to the role

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It is a bold museum that chooses to stage an exhibition that places celebrated works from history’s most popular art movement alongside those by artists who, albeit stars in their home country, might be considered obscure or even unknown internationally. But in mounting the exhibition ‘Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism’ the Finnish National Gallery’s Ateneum Art Museum has created an opportunity for an important conversation between the Western European proponents of Impressionism and Neoimpressionism and the Finnish artists of the early 20th century. Significantly, it is a conversation that revolves around the effects of transnationalism, as well as the hybrid fusions of style and technique that can result from international influences.

Indeed ‘Colour & Light’ mixes a dazzling palette of artworks across every room in its show. Replacing a tired chronological approach with rooms themed according to subject matter – the garden, wintertime, rural life, the sea, the nude, urban life – one is exposed more directly to the impact of new techniques and shifts in material culture across time and space. Thus one finds Monet’s wintery scene Floating Ice on the Seine (1880) alongside Finnish painter Pekka Halonen’s brilliant sunlit snowscapes (Rock Covered in Ice and Snow, 1911); the plein-air rural scenes of Henri-Edmond Cross’s Pine (1907), effulgent in high summer, together with Magnus Enckell’s pine trees painted on his summer sojourn on an island in the Gulf of Finland in From Suursaari (1910) and Ellen Thesleff’s Landscape from Tuscany (1908), palette-knifed in rich hues of violet and viridian green. And further on, we see Paul Signac’s eye-popping Neoimpressionist coastal idyll Antibes (undated), alongside Verner Thomé’s blinding contrejour painting Bathing Boys (1910).

The exhibition and accompanying scholarly publication are the result of an ambitious research project initiated by the Ateneum and aided by Professor Emeritus Anthea Callen, a world expert on Impressionism and the material culture of the period, who was invited to join the project as senior advisor. Prof Callen had been approached by Ateneum Chief Curator Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff through their mutual connection to the Association for Art History, where her presentations on vitalism and plein-air painting had attracted the Finnish curator’s attention. Callen is author of nine books, several of which reflect her expertise in Impressionism and also in material culture – she has a PhD in 19th-century artists’ materials and techniques in 19th-century France, from London’s Courtauld Institute. This, in turn has afforded her a key role in several episodes of the popular British TV series Fake or Fortune. Significantly, she is also a trained artist, which brings additional interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding. ‘Training as an artist does bring a different vision,’ she says. ‘You’re trying to tune into the mind of the artist. As a practitioner you recognise the ideas and how they are executed are inseparable.’

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Featured image: Alfred William Finch, An August Night, 1898,
oil on canvas, 35cm x 45.5cm
Gift from Arvid Sourander, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

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Catalogue de l’Exposition d’Artistes Français et Belges, Helsingfors 1904. The catalogue for the exhibition of Franco-Belgian art organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The artworks and the prices are listed in the catalogue, e.g. Monet (nos. 40 and 41), Pissarro and Puvis de Chavannes. Finnish National Gallery Library Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Ainur Nasretdin

Echoes of Impressionism in Finland

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Marja Sakari

Marja Sakari, PhD, Director, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

Also published in Sointu Fritze and Lene Wahlsten (eds.), Colour & Light – The Legacy of Impressionism. Ateneum Publications Vol. 169. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, 2023, 51–65. Transl. Wif Stenger

Worst of all was a corner that contained landscape paintings, each smudgier than the last, because they all looked as if the artist had squeezed a lot of colour into the palette and then slapped it onto the canvas, repeating the operation until the painting was finished. It had a sickening effect on me, not figuratively but in a physical sense.^[1]

Letter from Helena Westermarck to her aunt Alexandra Blomqvist, 30 April 1880

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In the late 19th century, nearly all professional Finnish artists headed to Paris. There, in the world’s art capital, they confronted everything new that was developing in the visual arts – including Impressionism. However, in the 1800s, none of the Finnish artists joined this movement that radically changed the art world, nor did many other Nordic artists. One of the central starting points of the ‘Colour & Light’ exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum is the question of why the effects of Impressionism were not seen in Finnish art until the first two decades of the 20th century.

Finnish artists of the day, such as the influential Albert Edelfelt, did however recognise the impact of Impressionism. In a series of articles accompanying a major exhibition of French and Belgian art that opened at the Ateneum in early 1904, Edelfelt wrote that Impressionism had affected almost all painters in some way, although, in his view, the movement itself was already history: ‘Other movements have come and gone – such as so-called Symbolism, but what is certain is that the Impressionist painters have taken art forward by a considerable step and that all of us who use a brush have learnt a lot from them.’^[2] This exhibition of Franco-Belgian art, which took place 119 years ago, is one of the starting points for the ‘Colour & Light’ exhibition and the subject of my article. The 1904 exhibition was part of the process that led to the brightening of the palette of almost all Finnish artists in the 1910s.^[3]

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^[1] Helena Westermarck’s letter to Alexandra (Sanny) Blomqvist, 30 April 1880. Blomqvist collection. National Library of Finland, Helsinki. The original letter has been lost.

^[2] Albert Edelfelt. ‘Den fransk-belgiska utställningen i Ateneum’, Helsingfors-Posten, 30 January1904.

^[3] Earlier, a 1901 exhibition of French art at the Ateneum focused on naturalism and more traditional art. Although it featured the likes of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley, they were barely mentioned by the critics. The main attention was on artists who represented more traditional painting, e.g. Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Carolus-Durand, who are lesser-known today. See J.J. Tikkanen. ‘Franska konstutställningen i Ateneum’, Hufvudstadsbladet, 6 October 1901; ‘Kirjallisuutta ja taidetta: Ranskalaisten taiteilijain näyttely’, Uusi Suometar, 21 September 1901; ‘Kirjallisuutta ja taidetta: Ranskalainen taidenäyttely Helsinkiin’, Mikkelin Sanomat, 25 July 1901.

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Featured image: Catalogue de l’Exposition d’Artistes Français et Belges, Helsingfors 1904. The catalogue for the exhibition of Franco-Belgian art organised at the Ateneum in 1904. The artworks and the prices are listed in the catalogue, e.g. Monet (nos. 40 and 41), Pissarro and Puvis de Chavannes.
Finnish National Gallery Library
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Ainur Nasretdin

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Featured image: Peder Balke, North Cape, 1848, oil on canvas, 102cm x 140cm The Gundersen Collection, Oslo Photo: Morten Heden Aamot / The Gundersen Collection

Peder Balke’s Visions of the Far North

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

As the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki, presents the Norwegian painter of the Arctic Peder Balke for the first time to Finnish audiences, Gill Crabbe meets the show’s co-curator Knut Ljøgodt to discuss his collaboration with those involved in the exhibition

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When we think of the Arctic explorers of old we might imagine elaborate maps of the Ultima Thule adorned with images of writhing sea monsters, puff-cheeked deities of gale-force winds, or square-rigged ships foundering on rocks. The extreme climate in the Far North lends itself to sublime depictions of turbulent storms, dramatic mountainscapes and awe-inspiring glaciers carving out deep valleys. Yet while much of the region remains just as inhospitable as it was centuries ago, climate change is causing a different kind of overwhelm. As global warming accelerates and we are increasingly exposed to images such as monumental chunks of glacier plunging into the ocean, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum’s monographic exhibition of Peder Balke (1804–87), the first Norwegian artist to travel to the Arctic to paint its landscapes, is both timely and urgent.

‘Peder Balke – The Spell of the Arctic’ is the first exhibition of the Norwegian artist to be mounted in Finland. Balke himself was clearly spellbound, as his journey along the west coast of Norway to the North Cape in 1832 was to be a lifelong source of inspiration for his paintings. Scenes of the North Cape and the Vardsø fortress painted from 1845 up until the 1870s are on display in the show, as are soaring mountains (The Seven Sisters Mountain Range, c. 1845–50), topological wonders (Jostedalsbreen Glacier, 1840s) seascapes at night (Moonlight on the Coast of Steigen, 1842) and magical displays of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights over Coastal Landscape, 1870s). The perfect subject matter for a painter of the sublime, even for a Romantic visionary.

Like the landscape, Balke’s story had its own dramatic twists and turns. From humble beginnings, this son of landless peasants forged a career that took him to the Royal Drawing School in Christiana (now Oslo), to the Far North of Norway to paint, to Dresden to learn from his forebears in landscape painting, such as Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857), and later to Paris to receive commissions from the king of the French Louis-Philippe. Around 1850, when he was back home in Christiana, Balke’s career plummeted and he retreated from public exhibitions, turning instead to social reform, politics and building community. But he continued to paint for friends and acquaintances, and his newfound freedom from the public gaze and the art market saw his work shift from grand works of sublime character (North Cape, 1848), to small-scale iconic works that became increasingly abstracted expressions of a Romantic visionary (North Cape, 1860s–70s), still articulated through the subjects closest to his heart – his memories of his expedition to the Far North.

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Featured image: Peder Balke, North Cape, 1848, oil on canvas, 102cm x 140cm
The Gundersen Collection, Oslo
Photo: Morten Heden Aamot / The Gundersen Collection
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Featured image: Kunstkolonie Worpswede, Fritz Overbeck with his students in Worpswede, 1896. Photographer: Hermine Rothe Photo: Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung

Crossing Borders, Making Links

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

This autumn an international gathering of art historians, curators and researchers met in Helsinki to share their research into women artists from the long 19th century, as part of the Finnish National Gallery’s research project ‘Pioneering Women Artists’. Gill Crabbe reports from its ‘Crossing Borders’ conference

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The unfolding process of shedding light on women artists who have been hidden from history is one that continues. Since the feminist movement in the 1970s kickstarted research into this neglected area, progress has been gathering pace and is opening windows onto women artists’ lives and works, with new research and significant exhibitions such as Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie show in 2019 ‘Fighting for Visibility: Women artists in the Alte Nationalgalerie before 1919’, as well as the forthcoming monographic exhibition of Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in Spring 2024.

The Finnish National Gallery’s commitment to playing a part in this important work is demonstrated in its latest international research project ‘Pioneering Women Artists’, which held its first conference ‘Crossing Borders: Transnational Networks of Pioneering Women Artists’ in September at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. Focussing on the long 19th century and in particular, but not exclusively, the artistic centres in Germany of the period, museum curators, art historians and researchers from the Nordic region, the Baltic states, Germany, and Poland gathered to share their knowledge and research interests, to forge information networks and pave the way for collaborating on a research publication and future exhibition project. The two-day conference, organised by Ateneum Art Museum curators Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari, enjoyed some 14 presentations, which introduced many new names, new works, transnational connections and source materials, with information being eagerly shared among international colleagues and – a first for the FNG – online streaming allowing open access for those not attending in person; around 30 joined. As the conference progressed there was a sense of community developing among the participants, perhaps not so different from the international community that the women artists felt in the 19th century who were the subjects of their research.

The conference marked the initial phase of the project, bringing together research interests, which it is hoped will develop into a research publication, online articles and collaboration for an exhibition on the theme, in Helsinki at the Ateneum Art Museum, and in Düsseldorf at the Kunstpalast, scheduled for 2025. Given that Finland, being located on the eastern borders of Northern Europe and perhaps itself considered a peripheral nation on the European art-historical map, the theme of centres and peripheries is pertinent. By focussing on the Nordic and Baltic regions’ connections in the 19th century with centres of artistic excellence and learning in Germany, rather than Paris (a well-trodden art-historical path), the activities of women artists on the peripheries are given centre stage. Thus the conference heard from researchers from Poland, Romania and Latvia, resulting in an opening up of new information and fresh insights for those from the more well-known artistic hubs in Europe. With comparatively little written material published in languages other than their own, researchers from these countries were able to share through their conference presentations information that had not been encountered before by many beyond their borders. Thus the conference heard from the Netherlands-based Romanian art historian Oana Maria Ciontu, on the travels of Romanian and Transylvanian Saxon women artists, from Latvia’s Rundāle Palace Museum Dr Baiba Vanaga, on Baltic women artists in German artists’ colonies, and from the National Museum in Warsaw Dr Agnieszka Bagińska on the first Polish woman to travel to Munich to study painting. In this way the conference paves the way for further integration of a wider geographical area into European art history.

From the presentations as a whole, key themes emerged and overlapped. At the centre were the travels made by women artists in search of an art life, be that through art education, forging careers as artists, making connections with like-minded artists, finding community. Constellating around and merging with this theme were further themes such as new artists, career/life strategies, finances, social conditions, networking and source materials for research, and historiography.

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Featured image: Kunstkolonie Worpswede, Fritz Overbeck with his students in Worpswede, 1896. Photographer: Hermine Rothe
Photo: Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung
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Hugo Simberg, The Garden of Death, 1896, gouache and watercolour on paper, 15.8cm x 17.5cm Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

A Bridge between Worlds

December 1, 2023November 30, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

A seminar organised as part of the Finnish National Gallery’s international research project, Gothic Modern, saw museum directors, scholars and curators gather in Helsinki to exchange ideas for a scientific publication on the topic. Gill Crabbe met Dr Ralph Gleis, Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin and future Director General of the Albertina in Vienna, to find out why he was drawn to collaborate with Northern European museums and academics

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Dr Ralph Gleis is darting about the rooms and corners of the house museum we are exploring on the outskirts of Helsinki. He is here for a knowledge-sharing gathering for the Finnish National Gallery’s international research project on Gothic Modernism. As part of the programme the group is visiting the 1930s home of the art collectors Signe and Ane Gyllenberg specifically to see a work by Akseli Gallen-Kallela that is regarded as pivotal to the theme of Gothic Modernism, a term that over the four years of the research project is becoming an emerging genre. Scholars and museum professionals from the UK, Germany, Belgium, Norway and Finland have come together to explore new meanings and share their research with a view to producing a scientific publication on this topic. As we proceed through the elegant rooms of Villa Gyllenberg, replete with paintings by key Finnish painters from the 19th century, there is a mercurial quality to Dr Gleis’s curiosity as he homes in on the details that have caught his eye – a small painting of angels guarding a corpse in a field of ravens, sculptures of monk-like figures placed on window sills, Buddhist statues – then opens out his gaze to the view across the sea outside. After a while we enter the dedicated space that displays Gallen-Kallela’s extraordinary artwork Ad Astra (1907), with its androgenous female form rising through clouds, her red hair radiating fiery against the golden disc of the planet Jupiter. The curators and scholars respond and ask questions, turning over the Symbolist, mythical and esoteric themes that the painting prompts, themes which are present in the concept of the Gothic Modern project. After a while, Dr Gleis focuses on the carved gilded-wood doors attached to the frame that have been opened to reveal the canvas, and which act as a portal giving the artwork a hallowed status not unlike a Gothic altarpiece. He is intrigued by the tendrils represented in the openwork on the doors. These are no delicate filigrees but robust entwined stems. As the group move on, Vibeke Waallann Hansen, curator at the National Museum Oslo, hangs back and opens her cellphone to show Dr Gleis the decorative carvings of the medieval stave churches of Norway – noting perhaps a Gothic reference reimagined here by Gallen-Kallela in a modernist twist. It is informal moments like these that are invaluable when museum curators and scholars get together and share ideas and perspectives.

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Featured image: Hugo Simberg, The Garden of Death, 1896, gouache and watercolour on paper, 15.8cm x 17.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen
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Call for Research Interns 2024

December 1, 2023December 1, 2023 Admin

Finnish National Gallery
Call for Research Interns 2024

The Finnish National Gallery’s international research internship programme is intended for Masters-level students of art history or cultural history. We actively support research interns in their hands-on research work with our collections. An internship is a salaried position.

Through its research internship programme, the Finnish National Gallery supports students who are writing their Master’s theses on topics that draw on its collections and materials. Suitable research topics for the internships may also be related to future exhibitions at Finnish National Gallery museums.

The role of the Finnish National Gallery is to support the intern’s skills in practices related to collection research. Each intern is assigned a professional tutor at the Finnish National Gallery. The Finnish National Gallery is not responsible for the academic supervision of the intern’s Master’s thesis.

The duration of the internship is three months.
The intern is employed by the Finnish National Gallery.
The salary of a research intern matches that of a university trainee.

A prospective intern should state in their application the materials from the Finnish National Gallery collection that they have chosen to research, and should undertake to research them during the internship period. We would like the research material to form part of the intern’s Master’s thesis. During the internship period, the intern is required to write an English text based on the research they have conducted at the Finnish National Gallery and the materials researched. The text may be published as part of the FNG Research web magazine.

The research internship programme is one of the ways in which the Finnish National Gallery actively partners with academia, with the aim of upholding humanistic values and promoting an understanding of the world and culture by producing new, meaningful knowledge.

In 2024 the Finnish National Gallery is prepared to receive two research interns.

Are you interested? If so, please send your application by e-mail to fngr@nationalgallery.fi.
Applications can be written in English, Finnish or Swedish.
The deadline for applications is 31 December 2023 and the appointments will be announced by 15 January 2024.
The interns are appointed by the FNG Research editorial board.

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For more information about the application process and programme, please click on the link below:

How to apply for the research internship programme at the Finnish National Gallery for masters-level art and cultural history students >>

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Installation view of the ‘Tom of Finland – Bold Journey’ exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2023 Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Editorial: Recognitions and Re-recognitions. The Homecoming of Finland’s Most Famous Artist

August 23, 2023August 22, 2023 Leevi Haapala

Leevi Haapala, PhD, Museum Director, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

22 August, 2023

Tom of Finland is renowned for his signature style and iconic drawings of modern, liberated gay men. In April 2023, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma / Finnish National Gallery opened its exhibition ‘Bold Journey’, along with an accompanying publication, highlighting the artist’s long artistic career and impact on 20th-century visual culture, particularly on iconic representations of hypermasculinity. Driven by pleasure – that of the artist, the figures in the drawings, and the audience – Tom of Finland’s imagination is embedded in shifting identities and role-play.

Nowadays, Tom of Finland, aka Touko Laaksonen (1920–91), justifiably carries the epithet of ‘Finland’s most internationally famous artist’. However, from the 1950s to the 1970s, he was known in Helsinki only as Touko Laaksonen, a talented graphic artist, working as an advertising executive at McCann Erickson, and a musician who had studied at the Sibelius Academy. It was only late in his life, while shuttling between Helsinki and Los Angeles, that he began appearing in public as the famed gay icon Tom of Finland and not until the early 1990s onwards that he started to gain recognition, both in Finland and elsewhere, explicitly as an artist rather than just a homoerotic illustrator. California’s balmy weather, the abundance of male models, and the Tom House leatherman community offered Tom a welcoming winter sanctuary, while in summer he returned to work in the peace, privacy and natural beauty of his homeland.

It was not until the very end of his career that Tom finally gained artistic recognition in his homeland. His memorial retrospective was held at Galerie Pelin in Helsinki in 1992. At the time, the Museum of Contemporary Art acquired two drawings from that show, which paved the way to Tom’s public acceptance, as did Ilppo Pohjola’s documentary film Daddy and the Muscle Academy the previous year. Little by little, Tom progressed from ‘gay artist’ to ‘artist’ until finally wider audiences were ready to call him their own.

Until the 1990s, the Finnish public had seen Tom’s drawings mostly only in comics exhibitions within the arts scene. In 1990, he received the Puupäähattu Award for Finnish Comics Artists, and later that year his drawings were featured in a comics exhibition organised by the Artists’ Association MUU. In its special ‘sex’ issue, the Finnish magazine Image (3/1990) published an extensive illustrated article, quoting an interview published earlier that year in Prätkäposti (Biker Mail). From October to December 1991, original illustrations from the Kake and Mike comic strips series were presented in Ruutujen aika. Suomen Sarjakuvaseuran kaksi vuosikymmentä (Frames: Two Decades of the Finnish Comics Society) at the Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki. Also that year, two of Tom’s drawings appeared as examples of Finnish underground comics in Koko hajanainen kuva. Suomalaisen taiteen 80-luku (The Whole Fragmentary Picture: Finnish Art in the Eighties), a 1991 book by Marja-Terttu Kivirinta and Leena-Maija Rossi, designed by Ilppo Pohjola.

Major public recognition followed in 1992, after the Finnish publishing house Otava published the extensive biography, written by F. Valentine Hooven III, Tom of Finland – Elämäkerta (Biography, translated into Finnish by Eeva-Liisa Jaakkola).^[1] In 2017, it was republished by another Finnish publishing house, Like, with a new foreword and subtitled Marginaalista maailmanmaineeseen (‘From the Margins to World Fame’).^[2] In the original biography, Tom is referred to only by his pseudonym, never by his real name. In a letter to his friend, written from Laakso hospital in 1991, Tom aired his thoughts on the flurry of fame that came to him in the twilight of his career:

That same scribbler Valentine Hooven was here for the second time around midsummer. He is writing my biography, which will be published in Finnish by OTAVA in the New Year. A video about me will be released around the same time. They also want to organise a ‘real art exhibition’ of my drawings in Helsinki – suddenly everyone is going wild about me. How times have changed! Or have they?
– Tom of Finland’s letter to his friend in Helsinki, 9 July 1991

Archival findings and cultivating our national artist’s legacy

One key resource for the Kiasma exhibition was an archive that was donated in 2001, with additional material added in 2005, to the Finnish National Gallery’s Archival Collections by one of Touko Laaksonen’s long-time friends, who wished to remain anonymous. The archive contains letters, cards, newspaper clippings, photos, videos, magazines, books and calendars. A curator of the Archival Collections, Veikko Pakkanen, reminded me in person about this specific archive before retiring. To our delight, the current exhibition’s curatorial team – myself, chief curator João Laia and project manager Patrik Nyberg – came across four original works of art among this large volume of material. The drawings are now in the process of being added to the art collection, so that there will be 13 Tom of Finland drawings held by the Finnish National Gallery. We are also still confirming the authenticity of two more photographic collages from this archive, to be authorised by the Tom of Finland Foundation.

This important change in the status of archival material is part of the recognition of Tom of Finland’s originals as one entity within the art collection. Already in the winter of 2022, five of the artist’s drawings, which for several years had been on long-term loan from the HIV Foundation Finland, were purchased and added to the National Gallery’s collections at Kiasma. It is of key importance that finally Tom of Finland’s artworks are recognised and respected and not seen as comics or categorised as archival documents; that they belong to the core contemporary art collection at the Finnish National Gallery, and that he is our national artist. In this way these works become more easily accessible to scholars, curators and to the multiple audiences of our online collections and our forthcoming exhibitions. This final change in his artistic legacy was also recognised in the recent Frieze art review about the exhibition and encapsulated in its title ‘Tom of Finland Hitches a Ride into the Mainstream’, by Harry Tafoya.^[3]

Scholarly queer re-recognitions

In this issue of FNG Research we republish one of the new articles in Bold Journey, which was published together with Parvs Publishing: ’Boys will be boys? – Some Notes on Tom of Finland’, written by adjunct curator at Tate and Contributing Editor for Frieze Alvin Li. In his article Li emphasises the notion of Tom of Finland’s legacy for new generations. Li was born in 1993, two years after Tom passed away, and tries to recall the moment when he most likely first encountered Tom of Finland’s drawings – which were in the form of digital reproductions on Tumblr. Tom’s imagery can be also criticised on the basis of the images’ ‘(over)performance of homomasculinity’ or their commercial merchandise potential. There has also been increasing recognition of the widening scope of sexualities since the early 1990s. Li summarises both the progress of feminist and queer scholarly work undertaken so far but also the potentiality of the bodily truth of gay desire in Tom of Finland’s drawings. Parallel realities among LGBTIQ+ communities and generations can find different ways and reasons to identify with his imagery or at least to recognise the value of his emancipatory impact and human rights work among minorities over the decades.

Alongside the Tom of Finland exhibition at Kiasma is a new collection display, ‘Dreamy’, guest-curated by Max Hannus, which focusses on queer perspectives on the Kiasma collections at the Finnish National Gallery. In their article ‘Entry to a Land that Is Not’, Hannus gives curatorial insights about the process of getting to know our collections from this point of view. For some years now, we have been keeping three-option statistics on the gender of artists. In their essay, Hannus likes to find a specific time category named as queer time as a key to understanding the thematics of the show and as a point of entry into the collections: “‘Dreamy’ is an exhibition where dreams, fantasies, nightmares, visions, and scenes are seen as signs of queerness existing in the world and of the potential for sharing, finding common ground. How has art documented queer time over time? And how can we, as viewers of art, find entry to something we couldn’t even dream of? Queer time opposes itself to the linear time of order. It is outside chronology, another reality and parallel to straight time.’

During the Covid-19 pandemic Kiasma was celebrating 30 years of collecting contemporary art for the Finnish National Gallery’s Collection and published a collection book entitled The Many Forms of Contemporary Art. For that book I researched Kiasma’s international collection and how it has been formed over the years. In my article, which we republish in this issue of FNG Research, I summarise the geographies, the developments in arts, and also different collections within the overall collection, as well as the link between the exhibition programme and the profile of the international art collection, which go hand in hand. I wrote that still the key question concerns how we understand our own time: ‘A collection of contemporary art lives with the changing world. Our national collection is being built in relation to the international art field around the world, yet from a given location. The planet has shrunk as a consequence of travel and the internet. The primary aim of the collection is not to fill an art-historical canon, but rather, to actively shape it and be prepared to tell stories of our own time.’

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[1] The book was published in English in 1993 by St Martin’s Press, New York, with a title Tom of Finland: His Life and Times.

[2] Translated into English from F. Valentine Hooven III’s original text Tom of Finland – Life and Work of a Gay Hero.

[3] See https://www.frieze.com/article/tom-of-finland-bold-journey-review-2023.

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Featured image: Installation view of the ‘Tom of Finland – Bold Journey’ exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2023
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

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Elina Brotherus, Nu montant un escalator, 2017, single-channel video, duration 3min 30sec Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery

A Journey along Kiasma’s International Collection

August 23, 2023August 22, 2023 Leevi Haapala

Leevi Haapala, PhD, Museum Director, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Also published in Saara Hacklin, Kati Kivinen and Satu Oksanen (eds.), The Many Forms of Contemporary Art. The Kiasma Collection Book. A Museum of Contemporary Art Publication 175/2022. Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, 2022, p. 51–59. Transl. Anna Rawlings

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Contemporary art cannot be considered without international exchange. For its part, such interaction renews both the content of art itself and the activity of the art field. The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma has, since its founding, focused on collecting both Finnish and international contemporary art. Art purchases reflect topical issues, they speak of the museum’s activity and values in a changing art world. The collection profile of Kiasma, as part of the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, is linked with recognition of contemporaneity. What comprises contemporaneity in today’s world? How do we recognise the factors, artists, and artworks that renew art and society? I will expand on these issues in the second part of my article, through some chosen artwork ensembles.

Summarising the history of the collection

In Kiasma, the collection is expanded in relation to the museum’s exhibition activity and programme: international solo exhibitions, the ARS exhibitions showcasing the international trends of contemporary art, as well as different thematic ensembles, of which collection exhibitions are a central part. Collection purchases reveal the international role of the museum. Pieces purchased from the museum’s own exhibitions have a research history, and they have become familiar to our audiences. Such pieces beloved by the audience include, for example, Christian Skeel and Morten Skriver’s scent vases, Babylon (1996), Jacob Dahlgren’s colourful ribbon piece The Wonderful World of Abstraction (2009), Ken Feingold’s interactive sculpture Head (1999–2000), whispering its strange secrets, as well as Wolfgang Laib’s Milkstone (1978–83).

The collection’s geographical area was sketched in widening circles: from Finland to the Nordic Countries, the Baltic States, Russia, as well as Europe and the United States. Later, the independence of the Baltic States, the strengthening of the contemporary art field, and the new agents in contemporary art in the area have helped enlarge the view. Today, the museum emphasises the interaction of local and global culture: art is purchased across national and geographical borders. Nevertheless, areas neighbouring Finland have remained as topics of interest. The 100th anniversary of the first independence of the Baltic States in 2018 encouraged us to update our relationship with the art of the Baltic area, and the collection has been complemented with pieces from a number of rising artists from our neighbouring areas.

Different continents have been emphasised at different times through collection purchases from temporary exhibitions: Latin American countries, such as Brazil or Chile, have been represented through the exhibitions of Cildo Meireles, Dias & Riedweg, Ernesto Neto, and Alfredo Jaar. The art of Sub-Saharan Africa was examined in the ARS11 exhibition. Art from Northeast and South-East Asia was purchased from the ‘Wind from the East’ and ‘Drawn in the Clouds’ exhibitions, from Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia, and artists such as Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Chiharu Shiota, and Melati Suryodarmo. These are complemented by installations acquired from the solo exhibitions of the Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, as well as Choi Jeong Hwa from South Korea. The ARS exhibitions have created an opportunity for producing commissioned pieces and making international purchases.

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Featured image: Elina Brotherus, Nu montant un escalator, 2017, single-channel video, duration 3min 30sec. Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery

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Jacolby Satterwhite, En Plein Air: Music of Objective Romance: Track #1 Healing in My House, 2016, video, duration 9min 27sec Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery

Entry to a Land that Is Not

August 23, 2023August 22, 2023 Max Hannus

Max Hannus, MFA, freelance curator, writer with an interest in the interfaces of desire, human relationships and the making of art

Transl. Soili Petäjäniemi

My life was a burning illusion. But one thing I have found and one thing I have really won – the road to the land that is not.
Edith Södergran^[1]

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I’m passing time and dreaming. In my dreams I become attuned to another kind of reality for a moment. I imagine another time which I call the future. Something is coming.

‘Dreamy’ is an exhibition where dreams, fantasies, nightmares, visions, and scenes are seen as signs of queerness existing in the world and of the potential for sharing, finding common ground. How has art documented queer time over time? And how can we, as viewers of art, find entry to something we couldn’t even dream of? Queer time opposes itself to the linear time of order. It is outside chronology, another reality and parallel to straight time.^[2] Artworks created in various decades settle in their unique ways into queer time, where they trace and create new dreams and seek pleasure. ‘Dreamy’ is a collection drawn from queer time.

For the exhibition I went through almost 9,000 pieces in the collection of the Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. As I was looking through the collection, I thought about why certain works caught my attention, while others did not. On what grounds was I choosing the pieces for ‘Dreamy’? I mulled over the question of when an artwork can be considered queer. I set as a point of departure that queerness is life as lived rather than a particular visuality – that an artwork is not queer unless it relates to the experiences of the artist and the social conditions in which the artist operates. I thought it is important to reflect on the positions of the artist and the different crossroads at which the works are constructed.

While studying the collection I also considered different questions concerning representation. Which artists’ works can be found in the collection and which artists are omitted? Who has more works there, who less? I observed that a large percentage of the artists included in the collection whom I recognised as living queer lives were homosexual men, or assumed by me to be so. There were considerably fewer women represented, as were the non-binary identities. The Finnish National Gallery’s statistics follow three options on the gender of artists, but listing is a tricky business because it begs the question: what criteria are used in making the list and how often is it revised? Is it, for instance, relevant to document statistically the gender of artists who have already died, if they themselves were never asked how they identified in terms of gender?

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^[1] Edith Södergran. ‘The Land That Is Not’, in Complete Poems. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books, 1984 (1925). Transl. David McDuff. The author’s reference is to the poem ‘Maa jota ei ole’ (1925). Transl. Uuno Kailas.

^[2] José Esteban Muñoz. Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009, 25.

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Featured image: Jacolby Satterwhite, En Plein Air: Music of Objective Romance: Track #1 Healing in My House, 2016, video, duration 9min 27sec. Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery

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