See the Tips on New Exhibitions and enjoy the Cultural Spring in Finnish Museums!

This spring’s new exhibitions bring an extensive selection of art, history, design and pop culture icons to museums. Experience the top talents of design from Yrjö Kukkapuro to Nanny Still, and Finland’s biggest names from Tom of Finland to Albert Edelfelt. You can also dive in to the new currents of modern art, as well as internationally significant photographic art.

In addition to art, the spring’s new experiences offer intriguing stories from times gone by. The Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka will introduce you to an internationally successful exhibition on Pompei, the city buried in ash. Helsinki City Museum offers an overview of the present and past of Helsinki as experienced and told by Afro Finns, and The Museum of Finnish Architecture will take you on a trip to a 1970s suburb and the phenomena of the time.

We have compiled the new exhibitions. Read more and experience the spring’s most renowned exhibitions with a Museum Card!

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Being Black – Afro Finns’ Experiences

Helsinki City Museum, Helsinki | 22.4.–24.9.2023

The exhibition offers an overview of the present and past of Helsinki as experienced and told by Afro Finns. Key themes include family and friendships, ideals of beauty, identity and activism. The purpose of the exhibition is to raise awareness of Afro Finnish culture by telling how the Afro Finns are part of Helsinki and the Helsinki identity, and to strengthen the Afro Finnish cultural heritage in the museum’s collections. The exhibition at the City Museum provides an opportunity for Afro Finns to also influence how their own local history and story are conserved. Read more >

Generation 2023

Amos Rex, Helsinki | 29.3.–20.8.2023

Amos Rex’s Generation 2023 exhibition is the third edition of a triennial presenting art and visual culture by young artists. From gathering confessions to everyday observations of a fragment collector, from knitted diaries to monster outfits – in this third edition of Generation triennial, the young artists’ relationship with creativity continues to be multidisciplinary and open-minded. The artists of Generation 2023 move fluidly across different art forms avoiding strictly defined genres. Read more >

Shoji Ueda

Turku Art Museum, Turku | 3.2.–21.5.2023

The spring season at Turku Art Museum opens with an exhibition of photographs by Shoji Ueda (1913–2000) – the first show in Finland to include work from the artist’s entire career. Ueda is considered one of the foremost Japanese photographers of his day. He is best known for surreal and dreamlike pictures in which human figures – often members of the artist’s own family – appear playfully set against a landscape of sand and sky. Read more >

Photo by Tom of Finland Foundation.

Tom of Finland – Bold Journey

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki | 28.4.–29.10.2023

Tom of Finland is one of the most recognized Finnish artists in the world, renowned for his signature style and iconic images. The exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki highlights Tom of Finland’s artistic mastery, establishing him as a major figure in 20th century contemporary art and visual culture. Alongside drawings, the exhibition features archive material, Tom’s personal clothing and memorabilia, letters, publications, magazines, films, and a new VR experience. Read more >

Escape from Pompeii

The Maritime Museum of Finland, Kotka |31.3.–1.10.2023

The city that flourished and died! The year is 79 AD. A small, lively town in Italy wakes up to noise and screams as a dormant volcano nearby comes to life with a roar, sowing destruction all around it, burying the town in ash for centuries. The eruption of Vesuvius is one of the most famous and destructive natural disasters in history. The Escape from Pompeii exhibition is produced by the Italian Expona and Contemporanea Progetti, together with the National Museum of Finland, and it is displayed in the Maritime Centre Vellamo in Kotka. Read more >

Spirit of the Can

Kuopio Art Museum, Kuopio | 12.5.–27.8.2023

The smell of fresh paint, hiss of the can, and rattle of skateboards take over the Kuopio Art Museum in summer 2023 with the opening of a graffiti- and street art exhibition. Spirit of the Can is a unique exhibition that displays the diversity of urban art. Read more >

Elina Brotherus – Visitor

Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki | 11.2.–28.5.2023

Elina Brotherus is an internationally acclaimed artist and one of the most known photographers in Finland. The exhibition juxtaposes Brotherus’s recent work with key themes from her long career. Drawing on the unique atmosphere of the Didrichsen Art Museum, the exhibition is the first public display of Brotherus’s photographic series Visitor (Villa Didrichsen). Read more >

Still Life – Nanny Still’s Glass, Design and Art

The Finnish Glass Museum, Riihimäki | 11.2.–23.4.2023

The Finnish Glass Museum’s exhibition creates a view of the personality of the designer and artist, Nanny Still. The exhibition consists of practical glassware found in many Finnish homes, coveted collection pieces and unique works of art. The showcased pieces come from both The Finnish Glass Museum as well as private collections. Many of the items have rarely, if ever, been publicly exhibited before. Read more >

Yrjö Kukkapuro – Magic Room

EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art | 1.3.2023–28.1.2024

EMMA is proud to present the colourful, imaginative and experimental oeuvre of an influential pioneer of Finnish design, Yrjö Kukkapuro. Magic Room is an exhibition marking the occasion of the designer’s 90th birthday, presenting his iconic designs alongside his greatest long-term source of inspiration – art. Read more >

Duane Michals – The Portraitist

The Finnish Museum of Photography K1, Helsinki | 17.2.–21.5.2023

Duane Michals – The Portraitist presents the first comprehensive overview of portraits by Duane Michals, a pioneering photographer who in the 1960s broke away from established traditions of documentary photography. He is well known for staging photographs that tell stories like a progression of film stills, as well as for adding handwritten captions, messages and poems on the photographic prints. His work has been described as performative, narrative and illusionistic. More than a ‘photographer’, Michals enjoys being called a storyteller.  Read more >

Albert Edelfelt: Girls in a Rowing Boat (Summer in the Archipelago), 1883. Photo by Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen.

Albert Edelfelt

Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki | 5.5.–17.9.2023

The long-awaited exhibition provides an overarching view of the life’s work of one of Finland’s most renowned and popular artists, Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905). As well as being a pre-eminent artist, Edelfelt was socially skillful and spoke several languages. He travelled widely across Europe and the Nordics and lived a large portion of his life in Paris. While living and working in France, he met several of the leading names in the field of arts, culture and science as well as art collectors and dealers. Read more >

Jörn Donner – Travelling 1951–68

Hakasalmi Villa, Helsinki | 31.3.–3.9.2023

Film director, writer and politician Jörn Donner (1933–2020) travelled throughout his life, and he left behind a remarkable archive of photographs. The existence of Donner’s photographs – and their real quality – only came to light a few months after his death. The images reveal a completely new side of the multi-talented Donner, which you can witness in the photo exhibition opening in late March. Read more >

Kaarina Heikinheimo: 5+ rooms

Tikanoja Art Museum, Vaasa | 31.3.–24.9.2023

Visual artist Kaarina Heikinheimo (b. 1946) is known as a textile artist whose career spans over five decades. The exhibition 5+ rooms presents a long artistic career as an aesthetic whole, which extends from the first copper wire work made in 1967 to the newest summer textile reliefs from 2023. Read more >

Outi Pieski: Rematriation of a Ládjogahpir – Return to Máttaráhkká

Sámi Museum Siida, Inari | 6.2.–24.9.2023

The ládjogahpir, a popular and striking Sámi women’s hat in the 18th and 19th centuries; forbidden, forgotten, and disappeared in the 19th and 20th centuries; revived and revitalised in the 21st century. The exhibition is part of an art and research project Máttaráhku ládjogahpir – A Foremother‘s Hat of Pride (2017-2020). The project is a collaboration between artist Outi Pieski and researcher Eeva-Kristiina Nylander (formerly Harlin). Read more >

Alexander Lauréus – to Rome

Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki | 16.2.–20.8.2023

The exhibition offers a comprehensive and eye-opening look at Lauréus’s life and art. Alexander Lauréus (1783–1823), who was born in Turku, enjoys an undisputed position as a key Romantic-era artist. Individual works of his have often been displayed, but a broader exhibition of his entire oeuvre has not been seen in Finland for forty years. Read more >

Concrete Dreams – And Other Perspectives on 1970s Architecture

Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki | 17.5.–15.10.2023

Please join us on an excursion to Finland in the 1970s! This was a decade when the nation dreamed of economic growth, prosperity and equality. The suburbs became the new home for many of those who had moved to the city in search of work. They were able to enjoy the increasing amount of free time sat in their modern living rooms, watching television. In architects’ studios, society’s dreams were given a concrete form – and more effectively than ever before. Read more >

Marko Vuokola: Ocean of Love

Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki | 11.3.–16.4.2023

Marko Vuokola's works are extremely refined, subtle and seemingly simple. Yet underneath the surface, something is brewing.

What do a seashell, a green flash, and a glass of water have in common? In his exhibition, Vuokola addresses natural phenomena and perception, and how images are structured. The methods used for making the works range from photography to moving image, from objects to drawings, sound and installations. Read more >

Eastern Spirituality

Villa Gyllenberg, Helsinki | 26.4.–13.8.2023

An art and cultural historical overview of how 'Eastern spirituality' has been imagined in Finnish art. The exhibition highlights interesting works, fascinating life stories and artefacts in which notions of Eastern spirituality have lived on in Finnish art and culture. In addition to visual art, the exhibition includes enchanting illustrations, photographic material and religious artefacts collected e.g. by former president and Marshal of Finland, Gustaf Mannerheim and painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Read more >

Klaus Haapaniemi: Voyagers

Lahti Museum of Visual Arts Malva, Lahti | 3.3.–3.9.2023

Klaus Haapaniemi’s exceptional solo exhibition combines skilled handicrafts and intangible media artworks. Haapaniemi, a known designer, brings a magical voyagers’ campsite to Malva, which transports the visitor to an unfamiliar and fascinating landscape. In this exhibition, skilled handicraft meets media art, creating a comprehensive experience for museum visitors. Read more on the exhibition (in Finnish only) >

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