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

—

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.’

—

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

…

Read more — Download ‘Lighting up Colour’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

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

—

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.

—

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

Read more — Download ‘Peder Balke’s Visions of the Far North’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

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

—

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.

—

Featured image: Kunstkolonie Worpswede, Fritz Overbeck with his students in Worpswede, 1896. Photographer: Hermine Rothe
Photo: Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung
…

Read more — Download ‘Crossing Borders, Making Links’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

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

—

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.

—

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
…

Read more — Download ‘A Bridge between Worlds’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

Ferdinand von Wright, Pigs and Magpies, 1875, oil on canvas, 63cm x 83cm Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

A Question of Time

April 3, 2023April 1, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

As the Ateneum Art Museum reopens to present its new-look display of its permanent collection, Gill Crabbe discusses its core theme with the curator Anne-Maria Pennonen and doctoral candidate Mariia Niskavaara and asks how they set about their radical approach in viewing its artworks through the lens of today’s urgent world issues

—

This spring, if you walk into the Central Hall of the Ateneum Art Museum, the architectural heart of this elegant neoclassical building which houses the Finnish National Gallery’s Ateneum Art Museum collections, you will no longer encounter the grand Golden Age paintings that have long resided there as lauded foundation works in the canon of Finnish art. Gone are the classic monumental canvases of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Pekka Halonen, and Albert Edelfelt, some to be dispersed across other rooms in the new reworking of the collections display. Instead, in this cream of the Gallery’s exhibition spaces one finds a dynamic mix of works old and new, famous and less well-known, large-scale and small, some iconic in a new way, some charming and some frankly confronting. And their common ground? All are reflecting one of the most urgent issues on today’s world agenda – Nature.

For the age of nature is the age which it is said we are now entering; having traversed at ever-increasing speed the anthropocene, we are now beginning to face a world that places humans and non-humans on a more equal footing, as we start to realise the impact of humans on the non-human world. Thus for the Ateneum Art Museum’s new collections display the theme of The Age of Nature has emerged, following discussions, consultations and copious research, as the central topic alongside three others: Art and Power, Images of a People, and Modern Life. These four themes together provide a lens through which we can view afresh the Gallery’s collections under the umbrella title of the exhibition ‘A Question of Time’.

Since 2016, when the previous reworking of the collections display opened to mark the centenary of Finnish Independence with the theme ‘Stories from Finnish Art’, the world has changed more than we could possibly have imagined, with Covid-19, war in Ukraine, widespread economic recession, the energy crisis and of course climate change. These urgent issues seek expression through an art that not only reflects these changes but more importantly can respond to them, to educate the art-going public, and ultimately to change people’s lives. The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s policy programme for 2030 exhorts museums to do just that: as the Museum’s Director Marja Sakari writes introducing the new collection display in her foreword to the catalogue of the exhibition, ‘(t)he values it sets for museums are community and interactivity, reliability and continuity, pluralism and democracy, courage and open-mindedness […] thereby creating opportunities for creativity, education, identity-building and understanding change’. And one important way to embrace those values is to present the canon of art history through concerns that are pivotal today, because to understand the past is to understand how we reached this point of the present, and to contemplate how we might take our next steps into the future.

So how did the Ateneum Art Museum go about exploring these pressing issues of our time in curating this new display; and more specifically how did the curators of the Central Hall’s theme of The Age of Nature create a display that goes beyond a specific narrative to invite viewers to join a conversation that can have a real impact on their lives and on the world today?

‘Our express purpose in the process has been to critically discuss the canon of Finnish art and radicalise the ways in which our collection is customarily viewed,’ Sakari writes. ‘From the outset, an important factor in the planning of the new collection display was making the curatorial process transparent and opening it to discussion.’ Aligned to this was a need for larger curatorial teams and a fresh look at involving external actors. Accordingly, over the winter of 2021–22, the Museum organised a discussion series, together with the Bildung+ project of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra (an independent organisation which fosters research and co-operation in building sustainable futures) under the theme of ‘Perspectives on Time and Power’. The purpose was to consider how the Finnish National Gallery’s art collections can be viewed from the perspectives of climate crisis, identity and equality.

—

Featured image: Ferdinand von Wright, Pigs and Magpies, 1875, oil on canvas, 63cm x 83cm
Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

…

Read more — Download ‘A Question of Time’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

—

Alexander Lauréus, A Monk in a Ruin, which has been made into a Wine Cellar, 1823, oil on canvas, 65cm x 50cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen

Alexander Lauréus – Journey to Success

April 3, 2023April 1, 2023 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

The exhibition ‘Alexander Lauréus – To Rome’ involved careful research and curation in reassessing the artist’s oeuvre, as well as in attracting international audiences who might be less familiar with this foundational artist in Finland’s national art collection. Gill Crabbe meets the show’s two curators, Ira Westergård and Lotta Nylund, to discuss their collaboration

—

Planning a bicentennial exhibition of an artist offers a golden opportunity to reassess their significance, not only in terms of their place within the canon of art history but also their relevance to today’s culture. So when the Sinebrychoff Art Museum was approached in 2020 by Lotta Nylund, Chief Curator of Villa Gyllenberg Art Museum, with a proposal to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Alexander Lauréus (1783–1823), whose oeuvre is the subject of her doctoral thesis, they did not need much persuading. Yet while this might in some ways seem strange for an artist whose fortunes had long been in the doldrums, and who had not been the subject of an exhibition in over 40 years, the museum’s chief curator Ira Westergård could see the potential in spotlighting this Turku-born painter who in his day had enjoyed considerable success as a pioneer of a new kind of genre painting in the early Romantic period. For this kind of exhibition project can not only revive interest in an artist, marking a pivotal point of ‘rediscovery’ but also, in spreading the net to a wider international audience, it can even mark a moment of discovery for the very first time.

From the Finnish National Gallery’s standpoint there was ample reason to stage a Lauréus exhibition now at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum. First and foremost, Lauréus has excellent credentials. ‘Lauréus comes at the starting point of the Finnish canon of art,’ Westergård points out. ‘When the Finnish Art Society was established in 1846, Lauréus was among the very first whose works they collected. A group of nine oil paintings had already been acquired in 1849, and the FNG Collection now includes a total of 31 oil paintings, making it the biggest collection of his paintings in Finland. Although his career really started when he enrolled at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Lauréus was born in Turku, so the Finnish Art Society more or less co-opted his art into the Finnish context as part of its aspirations in creating a Finnish national identity.’ Lauréus was also a technically excellent painter, executing fine copies from the 17th-century Dutch masters and painting innovatory genre subjects from ordinary life. He was also renowned as a master of chiaroscuro. His works in the collection would therefore have offered opportunities for students at the Art Society’s Drawing School to learn directly from his oeuvre.

—

Featured image: Alexander Lauréus, A Monk in a Ruin, which has been made into a Wine Cellar, 1823, oil on canvas, 65cm x 50cm
Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen

…

Read more — Download ‘Alexander Lauréus – Journey to Success’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

—

Albert Edelfelt, Self-Portrait in 17th-Century Costume, oil on canvas 1889, 64.5cm x 70.5 cm Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Albert Edelfelt Goes on Tour

November 22, 2022November 22, 2022 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

As the Ateneum Art Museum prepares to open its exhibition of Albert Edelfelt in 2023, Finland’s beloved 19th-century painter has already drawn huge crowds in Paris and the show has now travelled to Gothenburg. Gill Crabbe asked curators Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari about the secrets of their successful international collaboration

—

When the onset of Covid-19 spiralled into a pandemic, one of the many consequences for museums was the havoc it played with exhibition programming. While plans had been carefully laid over several years, across the globe the museum world saw cancellations, postponements and rescheduling of major shows as its custodians struggled to work with the devastating impact of the pandemic. However, Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari, curators at the Ateneum Art Museum, had already been forced to think outside of the box when they started planning for a major exhibition of one of Finland’s most beloved and greatest artists – Albert Edelfelt. Long before Covid-19 struck, they had been considering how to navigate the upcoming year-long closure of the Ateneum Art Museum for essential repairs. As it turned out, they found there were some advantages to doing things differently.

Now, as Finland awaits the opening in 2023 of the most comprehensive exhibition to date of an artist who is a national hero, Paris has been enjoying the glorious show ‘Albert Edelfelt: Lights of Finland’ at the Petit Palais, a venue built for the 1900 World Fair that Edelfelt himself was closely involved in. Not only that, but the exhibition has now travelled to Gothenburg Museum of Art, ahead of the Ateneum opening. In so doing the curators at the Finnish National Gallery have reversed the traditional sequence of opening their exhibition first on home territory and then touring it abroad.

There are advantages to scheduling a show internationally in this way, not least because new discoveries from research undertaken by other museums involved can open up fresh perspectives and stimulate further research for the Finnish iteration. For a proposal to gain traction with museums abroad, a theme that to some extent can be adapted to suit the location of an individual venue places it in a good position to be accepted. As Anne-Maria Pennonen, who is co-curating the Helsinki show, explains: ‘The idea for this show had already been mooted for several years. Then, when we learnt about the Ateneum building renovation, we thought it would be an ideal opportunity to let our classics travel. Of course, when you think of Edelfelt, then the show had to go to Paris, as he had such strong connections there and even lived there for many years. Our museum Director Marja Sakari had previously been Director of the Finnish Institute in the city and via her contacts a proposal was put together. We had decided that the key theme would be Edelfelt’s international contacts because this is something that is of interest to all parties and he himself was the first Finnish artist to build such an international network.’

—

Featured image: Albert Edelfelt, Self-Portrait in 17th-Century Costume, oil on canvas 1889, 64.5cm x 70.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

…

Read more — Download ‘Alber Edelfelt Goes on Tour’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

Senior conservator for contemporary art at the Finnish National Gallery Siukku Nurminen goes smoke diving to light incense cakes inside an enclosure during the installation of Collateral, by Sheela Gowda, for the exhibition ‘ARS22: Living Encounters’ Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

A Life in Conservation

November 22, 2022November 21, 2022 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

The Finnish National Gallery’s senior conservator for contemporary art, Siukku Nurminen, has turned her hand to the most unexpected tasks during her 35-year career, as well as developing the field of Finnish conservation, as she explains in an interview with Gill Crabbe

—

When I was young, perhaps seven or eight years old, I wrote a story at school, describing how when I grow up I shall study at the Ateneum[1]. On other hand I was also dreaming of becoming a schlager singer, so that I could buy Porsches for my elder brothers.
– Siukku Nurminen

From conserving the 16th-century panel paintings of Lucas Cranach, to repairing a sculpture by contemporary artist Anni Rapinoja of a handbag made from bog whortleberry containing moose droppings, the senior conservator at the Finnish National Gallery Siukku Nurminen has seen some big changes in the kinds of works entering the conservation room over the four decades she has been working in the field. Having finished school in 1977, there was no dedicated training course in conservation available in Finland at the time. But once she gained her Diploma in the Conservation of Works of Art in 1987 from Vantaa Institute for Arts and Crafts, Nurminen joined the Fine Arts Academy of Finland as a conservator at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum. Five years later, she moved to the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery. As her career developed, she gained a BA from EVTEK Institute of Art and Design in 2004 and a Masters in Culture and Art in 2009. She has now worked at the FNG’s Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma since 1997.

When I contact Nurminen to arrange an interview and mention some of the background research I have done, she replies: ‘I see you have been doing some detective work.’ As they say, it takes one to know one, and perhaps of all the skills required in her profession it is the forensic attention to detail in piecing together how materials endure, as well as a persistent curiosity, that are the most essential requirements in her field. ‘Being a conservator is indeed like being a detective,’ she says. ‘We must solve what the criminals (artists) have done. It is like the criminals (artists) are always a little further ahead of us,’ she smiles.

One approach that Nurminen certainly brings to her work is a sense of adventure. Following the principle that there is no better way to understand how an artist uses their more unusual materials than to engage in the actual making of the piece, Nurminen lights up as she describes burning the incense in the process of installing an artwork that was shown at the recent ARS22 exhibition at Kiasma. The installation piece, Collateral (2007), by Sheela Gowda, consisted of dozens of burnt incense cakes, their residual heaps of ash in various shapes presented resting on low wooden tables covered in steel mesh.

—

[1] There were two schools at the Ateneum then: Finnish Art Academy School, now the Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Art and Design, now Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

—

Featured image: Senior conservator for contemporary art at the Finnish National Gallery Siukku Nurminen (front) lights incense cakes inside an enclosure during the installation of Collateral, by Sheela Gowda, for the exhibition ‘ARS22: Living Encounters’
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

…

Read more — Download ‘A Life in Conservation’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

To see an excerpt from the installation process of Sheela Gowda’s Collateral at the ARS22 exhibition at Kiasma, click ‘play’ below. Video: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

—

Jean-Michel Picart, Still life of Flowers, 1600–82, oil on canvas, 35cm x 48.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis

The Flowering of Science and Art

July 6, 2022July 5, 2022 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

Flower painting in the western canon of art became an independent genre in the 17th century. As the Sinebrychoff Art Museum displays its exhibition ‘Linnaeus: Glimpses of Paradise’, Gill Crabbe asks curator Claudia de Brün about the research involved in developing themes for the show

—

The Sinebrychoff Art Museum’s ability to tend its garden of art treasures and cultivate innovative exhibition material continues with its wide-ranging show on the theme of the Northern garden, flower painting and its relation to science, ‘Linnaeus: Glimpses of Paradise’. From its own prize possessions of 17th-century flower paintings by artists such as the Dutch master Johannes Borman, court painter to Louis XIV Jean-Michel Picart, and the workshop of the supreme Dutch master Jan Brueghel I, the museum has negotiated loans of significant works in the genre from Northern European museums to complement them. The show’s theme opens out to include floral elements in religious art, the importance of botanical illustration, the meeting of art and science in the vision of the iconic Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and how floral themes appeared not only via the art that Paul and Fanny Sinebrychoff collected but also in the decorative and functional pieces that adorned their everyday life.

There is also the contextual theme of paradise – the word’s original meaning of a walled area or garden being rooted in ancient Iranian language – which takes in the socio-political developments of colonial nations during the 17th and 18th centuries. Exotic plants and species were brought back from voyages of discovery for wealthy elites to create ornamental gardens, with walled enclosures, trees and water fountains providing a haven from the wild nature beyond. In the exhibition, the paintings of such earthly delights as a pineapple plant that bloomed in 1729 at the gardens of royal palace of Ulriksdal near Stockholm, by the Swedish artist David von Cöln (1689–1763), the anthological florilegia of the 16th and 17th centuries, and Hieronymus Francken II’s Connoisseurs at a Gallery, all serve as examples to underline the specific value of plants as collectors’ items in this period.

—

Featured image: Jean-Michel Picart, Still life of Flowers, 1600–82, oil on canvas, 35cm x 48.5cm. Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis

…

Read more — Download ‘The Flowering of Science and Art’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>

Nina Roos, Lost in Yellow, 2000, oil on polycarbonate sheet, metal stand, 90cm x 175cm x 241cm (each sheet), installed in the lobby at Kiasma Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Celebrating Three Decades of Collecting Contemporary Art

March 12, 2022March 11, 2022 Gill Crabbe

Gill Crabbe, FNG Research

When a national collection marks a milestone in its history, it offers a chance to get a glimpse of the changes that have contributed to its evolution. Gill Crabbe asks three curators from the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma / Finnish National Gallery about the process of preparing a new book that opens the doors to the past 30 years of the museum’s acquisitions

—

In our digital age when e-books and online webzines are the order of the day, the production of a book is a special project. It is an In Real Life event, a hand-held object that has a physical life and span, something not only to be read, but for the reader or readers perhaps to adorn with personalised marginalia, a concretised narrative that can be physically place-marked with folded page corners, easily navigated (no endless screen scrolling) and delved into anywhere anytime without plugging-in. The book, far from being an anachronism, is in fact gaining in value as the exponential expansion of electronic media progresses. And books, especially when commissioned to commemorate or celebrate, can be a multiple monument, honouring achievements over time. This is the case with a beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated book, The Many Forms of Contemporary Art, which celebrates 30 years of collecting contemporary art. It is the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma’s monument to its own art collection, in book form.

‘ I think a physical book is still important and it’s a topic we discussed a lot ourselves,’ says Kati Kivinen, Chief Curator of Collections at Kiasma, one of three of the museum’s curators who were driving the project. ‘Personally, I prefer to roam through a book when accessing a theme or topic, rather than looking at hundreds of images of artworks online, even more so after two years of watching everything on screen during the pandemic. Also the book is closer to the works themselves, being concrete – a book lying between an image on screen and the actual artworks.’

In addition to its celebratory aspect, the decision to publish the book was also practical – Kiasma has been undergoing renovations since early 2021 and with its exhibition spaces out of action, and many projects off the agenda, the museum’s curators found themselves time-richer, and in Kivinen’s words ‘with an opportunity of a book project on 30 years of collecting. We have never done a comprehensive overview of the collection like this before and since our publications have always been linked to the exhibitions that we present, this offered a rare chance to concentrate on the collection without this kind of agenda.’

—

Featured image: Nina Roos, Lost in Yellow, 2000, oil on polycarbonate sheet, metal stand, 90cm x 175cm x 241cm (each sheet), installed in the lobby at Kiasma
Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen
…

Read more — Download ‘Celebrating Three Decades of Collecting Contemporary Art’, by Gill Crabbe, as a PDF

Download the interview as a PDF >>