Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery

11 March 2022

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, one of the Finnish National Gallery’s three museums, closed its doors for more than a year in order to carry out renovation work to the building. During this period the museum staff were busy focusing on curating an extensive exhibition of international contemporary art ‘ARS22 – Living encounters’, which opens in April.

This exceptional period offered Kiasma a rare opportunity to concentrate on its collections. One result is the publication of a richly illustrated book, The Many Forms of Contemporary Art, which celebrates 30 years of collecting contemporary art. The current issue of FNG Research magazine publishes online two articles from the book, as well as an interview with the curators responsible for the book project. From a research point of view there was a specific chance for the curators to follow their own research interests and to avoid using the standard ways of looking at the collection, instead roaming freely through it.

Since 2017 the Finnish National Gallery has run a research intern programme to foster collaboration between the museum professionals and academic studies in art history. Interns have been recruited to work for three months on a selected part of our collections, honing their skills in researching chosen topics by studying material collection objects, such as specific artists’ archives. In this way we wish to support future museum professionals’ practical enthusiasm for actual physical objects in the collections in their many formats. This programme has proved to be successful both for graduate-level students and the museum’s professionals practising research.

Our research intern for the autumn period in 2021, Ida Pakarinen, chose to look at the collections from the viewpoint of current climate change. Through the artists’ works she chose to examine, her article, ‘Recycled Utopia – Where Art and Everyday Life Coalesce’, touches upon important questions concerning a museum’s collections management in the form of contextualising collections objects with metadata. Focusing on recycled materials and their status in artworks and artists’ working processes, she came to discuss certain key words or concepts, such as ‘trash’, ‘waste’ or ‘junk’, as part of the contextualisation of collection objects. Her approach makes visible how, for example, vocabularies used in cataloguing museum collections are entangled with transforming meanings and values.

An important international research project that FNG Research is currently following is entitled ‘Gothic Modern: from Medieval and Northern Renaissance to Dark, Emotive, Uncanny Modern Art’. The project schedule stretches from 2018 to 2025 and explores the pivotal importance of Gothic art for the artistic modernisms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this issue, we follow the international partners group meeting and encounter modern Gothic throwbacks in Finnish cultural history.

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Featured image: The Ateneum Research Library
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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Read more — Download FNG Research No. 1/2022 as a PDF

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Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery

23 January 2021

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We are beginning 2021 by publishing a second series of articles on the life and work of the Finnish painter Magnus Enckell (1870–1929). These articles were first published in the exhibition catalogue of Enckell’s monographic exhibition in October 2020.

A focal trait in Enckell’s art was his continued interest in classical European mythology, from his early output up to his very late works. Mythological themes offered him a way to align with the early modern Symbolist movement and its radical ideas in Paris in the early 1890s. These themes also served as a vehicle for the emotional transference he sought in his artistic practice along the lines of the emerging theories in modern psychology and art theory of the period. A fresh look at Enckell’s paintings has also revealed new links between his Neo-impressionist period from the early 1910s and European vitalist philosophy.

A major outcome of the Magnus Enckell research project is the publication of a separate illustrated catalogue of the artist’s paintings and graphic works, which is intended particularly as a future resource for the art-historical research community. A survey was conducted simultaneously with the exhibition project among Finnish museums, foundations and institutions that elicited information about several works in private collections that could be included as well. The catalogue refers to and complements to an extent a constitutive biography and catalogue raisonné of Enckell’s art by Dr Jaakko Puokka, published in 1949. Our new catalogue is available only online.

Accomplished artist women from Finnish art history have raised continuing interest internationally and some, such as the painter Helene Schjerfbeck, have been presented in solo exhibitions and gradually included in the canon of modern European art. However, the matter of looking more thoroughly than previously into women’s contribution in art is by no means complete. On the contrary, the results of an intensified investment in researching, for example the limiting conditions faced by women artists on their way to a more or less recognised artistic career, are yet to be seen. Now the Ateneum Art Museum, as part of the Finnish National Gallery, is participating in a groundbreaking project in co-operation with the national galleries of Sweden (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) and Norway (National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo) to shed new light and share innovative approaches to Nordic women sculptors between 1870 and 1940.

Last but not least, we are delighted to announce that the Finnish National Gallery’s successful research intern programme is continuing in 2021. Two research interns have been selected to work for a three-month period to investigate their chosen areas of the Finnish National Gallery’s collections. By investing annually in the programme we wish to encourage interest in our collections and support students who choose to study subjects based on physical collections and objects, archive material and data. During the past four years, this format of interaction between experienced museum professionals and masters-level students has created a bridge between museums and academia in a most fruitful and gratifying way.

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Featured image: Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, Portrait of Sigrid af Forselles, 1902, oil on hardboard, 37cm x 35cm, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

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Read more — Download FNG Research No. 1/2021 as a PDF

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 Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery

27 November 2020

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This autumn all three museums of the Finnish National Gallery have been a hive of activity. New shows have been opened and our audiences have received their exhibition programmes with enthusiasm. This is most rewarding after the Covid-19 lockdown earlier this year. It underlines the relevance of long-term and focussed art-history based research, which is the steady cornerstone of our exhibition programmes. Our current programme opens new horizons in looking at both Finnish and Italian art.

In this issue of FNG Research magazine we publish four articles that first appeared earlier this autumn in the context of a monographic exhibition of the artist Magnus Enckell (1870–1925) at the Ateneum Art Museum. Enckell was one of the key figures during the period when Finnish artists were being influenced by Symbolist phenomena in Paris during the early 1890s. Some 20 years later, Enckell was considered to be one of the first to lead Finnish painters towards a notable strand of Neo-Impressionism.

Comprehensive exhibitions of Enckell’s work have been rare in recent decades, but both the man and his art have been a constant source of interest to Finnish critics and art historians since his death. Enckell has been considered an enigmatic and rather inaccessible person. In the late 1900s and early 2000s, one reason for this was revealed in the art-historical studies undertaken by Harri Kalha, as well as Juha-Heikki Tihinen. Kalha’s article in the current exhibition catalogue, based on his extensive monographic study from 2005, discusses the discursive strategies of veiling and unveiling Enckell’s covert homosexuality, which seemingly created a deliberately enigmatic and rather inaccessible aura around Enckell’s person. Marja Lahelma sheds light on Enckell’s work after the turn of the 20th century from the perspective of the philosophical and health-promoting aspects of vitalism. The theme of plein air and marine landscape in relation to Enckell’s art is discussed by Anne-Maria Pennonen. And a new approach towards the artist’s late career is outlined by Marja Sakari, one of the exhibition’s curators.

For the first time ever in Finland, the Sinebrychoff Art Museum brings together more than 20 oil paintings, in addition to drawings and etchings, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his son Domenico. The exhibition includes a significant tranche of drawings by the Tiepolos from The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, whose leading Tiepolo expert, Dr Irina Artemieva, is interviewed in this issue. According to Dr Artemieva, the very subject of the exhibition, Tiepolo’s art in Northern Europe, is already new and offers a fresh approach to the study of these great Venetian masters. The show, and the research associated with the exhibition that is published in an accompanying catalogue, is set to stimulate justified interest and surprises among Tiepolo specialists internationally.

FNG Research magazine, together with the Ateneum Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum Kiasma and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, wishes readers and collaborators inspiring and thought-provoking discoveries in our latest issue.

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Featured image: Magnus Enckell, a page from a sketch book, 1912, probably showing the Variety Theatre Bal Tabar in Paris, pencil on paper, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

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Read more — Download FNG Research No. 6/2020 as a PDF

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Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director, Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

26 March 2019

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All art historians most probably know Linda Nochlin’s ground breaking article with its challenging title ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (ARTnews, January 1971). The feminist approach and growing interest in women artists who were left out of the canon of art history is echoed also in the Finnish art history scene and research on Finnish artist women has been published, especially from the 1980s onwards.

Reorganising art-historical canons seems not to be a quick and easy process but rather one that involves generations of researchers, curators and other actors of the art world. Let us take as an example the Swedish painter who has her first solo show in the United States at the Guggenheim, New York, up to the 23 April. Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) is among the artists who were presented in the exhibition ‘The Spiritual in Art’ and its comprehensive catalogue in 1986 and thus her name has been known at least by those art historians who have been interested in spiritual ideas connected with art. Now the time seems to be right for establishing her rightful status in the history of pioneering abstract artists. In this issue Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff is writing in the context of a current exhibition at the Ateneum, about František Kupka who, on the other hand, is among the recognized abstract painters from the early 1900s.

Interestingly, the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) was born the same year as Hilma af Klint. Schjerfbeck’s art is exceptionally well represented in the Finnish National Gallery’s collections and has so far been shown, for example, in Paris, Hamburg and in several venues in Japan. An exhibition arranged by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and co-curated by the RA and the FNG, is opening in July. Current trends of looking at modernity in art from angles other than solely the aspiration towards abstract expression, are apt to pave the way for deepening recognition of artists like Schjerfbeck in the context of European modern art. In an interview published in this issue of FNG Research Marja Sakari, who has recently taken up her new role as director of the oldest of our three museums, the Ateneum, discusses research prospects, such as those concerning women artists.

Art-historical canons have traditionally been based on the idea of individual artists implementing exceptional or even heroic human creativity in the anthropocentric modern world. In this issue of FNG Research Satu Oksanen, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, discusses the work of Alma Heikkilä, a contemporary artist woman whose solo exhibition is shown in the museum. Heikkilä challenges both the anthropocentric world view and the traditional idea of unique and individual authorship in art. Her art practice is linked with environmental issues and human impacts on ecosystems. As Oksanen writes: ‘During this epoch of ecological threat, taking action means searching for new ways of existing, speculating, and recognising the agency of the non-human. (…) Heikkilä strives to broaden the scope of authorship beyond the individual, dismantling structural hierarchies and making space for more-than-human agencies. In doing so, she challenges not only anthropocentrism, but also museum conventions.’

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Featured image: The Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society, painting class in 1899. In the front row from left Väinö Hämäläinen, Thyra Malmström, Maria Boehm, and Agnes Leidenius. In the middle from left: Hanna Hirn, Ester Hougberg, Lydia Bäckström, and Karin Nordensvahn. In the back row from left: Edit Petander, Bruno Hahl, teacher Albert Gebhard (1869–1937), nude model and Sigrid Lehrbäck. Photographer Jakob Ljungqvist, Helsinki 1899. The Väinö Hämäläinen Archive. Archive Collections, Finnish National Gallery

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Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director, Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

19 July 2018

Multiculturalism and opening up to the changes and challenges of today’s world are topics that are often discussed when museum professionals get together in meetings and conferences. It is about being relevant to the societies around us.

Collections are traditionally considered the core of museums and the kernel of museums’ role as providers of reliable knowledge about culture and its history. Therefore a significant interest in the histories of collections – that is for whom, in what historical period and for what reasons the collections were formed – has been shown within the museums themselves, as well as in the academic field.

Metadata is a key concept when talking about making collections and collections’ data relevant. Metadata creates patterns of knowledge that are connected with each single object in the collection. The data are gathered in museums’ databases and, ideally, shared via digital platforms, thus serving as an important primary source for academic research, as well as other interests.

The ways in which we organise, enrich and share the metadata that is formatting the knowledge do matter. This part of professional practice has the potential to reflect a museum’s and its collection’s relevance and also offers the possibility to participate in current discourses within academic research fields. Collections as sets of chosen objects are relatively static, but the metadata connected to them, and the procedures for constituting knowledge, need not be.

The Finnish National Gallery has very recently accomplished the task of migrating its collections’ data to a new database system and we are planning to share the data on a new website next year. We are also looking forward to experimenting with crowdsourcing keywords.

While doing this, we will be happy to hear about our colleagues’ experiences and to share with others what we are learning.

Wishing you all a nice summer!

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Featured image: Otto Mäkilä, Summer Night, 1938, oil on canvas, 70cm x 90cm, Herman and Elisabeth Hallonblad Collection, Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum

On the Finnish National Gallery’s website the basic information given about this painting is: Otto Mäkilä, Summer Night, 1938, Keywords: kesä, maisema, heinäpelto, figuuri, yö, nainen, allegoria. In future we wish to share the keywords with you also in English: summer, landscape, hayfield, figure, night, woman, allegory.

Information about the FNG collection is also available on these data platforms:

• Europeana
• Finna.fi portal

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Antti Kuivalainen

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Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director, Collections Management, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki

30 November 2017

One of the topics of this issue is Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), who is one of the most well-known artists in the Finnish art of the turn of the 19th century. Many national
art histories have their ‘golden ages’ and Finland’s relates to this particular period
when Hugo Simberg, together with artists such as Helene Schjerfbeck and Akseli
Gallen-Kallela, renewed Finnish visual art in the spirit of international early modernism. A fascinating aspect of Hugo Simberg’s work has always been the way in which he weaves myths and tales together with an animated feeling of nature.

Hugo Simberg is also one of the artists who is exceptionally richly represented in the Finnish National Gallery’s collections. Together with some 800 art works, the museum holds a significant number of documents such as the artist’s letters and photographs both taken by him or of him. All of the materials in the collections have been thoroughly catalogued at different times, according to varying methods and means.

Today, museums and other cultural heritage organisations are expected to emphasise their ability and willingness to share the cultural property that they possess as widely as possible. At the Finnish National Gallery digital technologies have enabled us to increase digital collections data in our databases and to deliver this information via cultural heritage platforms such as Europeana or the Finnish portal Finna.

Even so, there is still a whole lot of work to be done. Improving collections metadata together with choosing the right digital platforms will enable us to connect datasets that have not previously been linked. If we succeed in carrying out this current objective, this will also strengthen our role as a relevant research organisation and facilitator. All users of digital collections will profit from better data, researchers and research included.

Generating principles for creating relevant collections metadata that meet the needs of future research also requires research skills. We need clearly defined problems to be solved, relevant working methods shared by an active team and a focused plan for reaching the goal. A museum’s mission of being a source of high-quality knowledge is no longer fulfilled only by keeping the collections but also by finding ways to connect those collections to other sources of knowledge via digital metadata.

At the Finnish National Gallery we are looking forward to migrating all of the collections data to a new platform. In the future we wish to serve researchers all around the world with data that will foster the creation of new knowledge about artists such as Hugo Simberg in new and so far unimagined contexts.

To view Hugo Simberg’s works at the Finnish National Gallery’s current collections web page click here:

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Featured image: Screen capture of the Finnish National Gallery Archive Collections webpage Lähteillä with material related to artist Hugo Simberg

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