Picasso in the cellar

The history of the museum project as seen through public discourse

The much longed for Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art has been in planning for decades. Discussions throughout the history of the project have generally expressed one of two viewpoints. There has, on the one hand, been a recognition that the Ateneum building's impracticality and small size has been a formidable constraint on exhibition space. The other viewpoint has emphasized the need for a museum devoted entirely to contemporary art because of the Ateneum's inability to fulfill its mission in the area of contemporary art which also curtails its development into a living centre for contemporary art. Discussions within the government have focused on broadscale issues of arts administration as well as on the acute spatial constraints also faced by other museums and art institutions. The proposed solutions have differed sharply depending on the historical decade in question.

The need for new exhibition space was already articulated during the 1940s. Nykytaide ry (Contemporary Art Association) was founded in 1939 in order to help alleviate a situation characterized by a lack of exhibition space for contemporary art as well as prohibitive organizational costs regarding exhibitions. Galerie Artek (founded in 1935) was the driving force behind the birth of Nykytaide ry, an association which came to reflect the gallery's ideological stance. The association evolved essentially into an exhibition organization which sought to promote "the development of contemporary visual arts in our country by supporting a dialogue between foreign art and Finnish artistic life". One of the objectives inscribed in the association's charter at the time of its founding was the building up of a museum art collection. A lack of funds nevertheless prevented the collection from being established.

Nykytaide ry's role in the art scene of the 1950s was particularly significant in that it filled the gap left by the near total absence of State-administered international cultural exchange activity at a time when bilateral cultural agreements were not yet a reality. During the 1960s, the association began to cooperate more frequently with the Finnish Academy of Art in organizing exhibitions. For example, the very first ARS Exhibition, organized in 1961, resulted from this cooperation. In its revised 1964 regulations, the association declared itself to be the background support organization of the Museum project. The association ceased to operate in 1990 once its prime objective had been reached with the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art on September 1, 1990.

ONE OR TWO MUSEUMS?

The objective of a museum dedicated to contemporary art began to receive wider support at the onset of the 1960s. The public popularity of many large contemporary art exhibitions showed that the premises of the Ateneum and the Helsinki Art Hall were inadequate for showcasing the art of the times. A proposal concerning the building of a Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki had, in fact, been tabled by Councillor Janne Hakulinen of the Helsinki City Council as early as 1961.

Public discussion and written articles addressing the need for a contemporary art museum became more frequent as the sixties progressed:

"Picasso is in the cellar, where's the museum of contemporary art?" (Raimo Reinikainen, Kansan Uutiset, May 1, 1965)

"The Ateneum exists but....We need a living art museum" (Kirsti Sarmanto, Suomen Kuvalehti, October 23, 1965).

"The Ateneum for the old masters - a new museum for modern art" (was the hope expressed by the Finnish Association of Realist Artists in the Helsingin Sanomat, February 14, 1965).

The Päivän Sanomat drew a comparison between Stockholm's Moderna Museet and the Ateneum (February 17, 1961), noting that the former showcased names in contemporary art that "are never seen in the art museums of our country except by virtue of a peculiar manifestation of chance, good luck or a fluke".

A piece entitled "Shortcomings", in the Yykoo paper of February 14, 1964, provides the following commentary: "The Museum of Finnish Art, Ateneum, is blamed for neglecting good contemporary art- especially when it comes to new acquisitions. Even though the Museum's acquisitions may seem very peculiar at times, bad artworks nevertheless usually end up being buried in dusty warehouses. Successful acquisitions will, of course, hopefully remain accessible for public viewing.

Since the Ateneum lacks not only space but a spirit of aliveness as well, Finland should finally be able to lay claim to a contemporary art museum, which, in addition to having its own collection, would also be effective in showcasing contemporary international art of good quality, in organizing lectures, discussion forums and film showings as well as providing a retail outlet for art publications,etc. Such a museum would considerably enhance Tampere's standing as a city of culture."

Official discussions during the 1960s were marked by a clash of opinion pitting the Central Museum against the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Ateneum building. The possible alternatives were seen as either the establishment of a unified Central Museum which would house all the Ateneum collections, or two separate museums: the Ateneum for classical art and another museum for contemporary art. The proponents of a single Central Museum did not consider the idea of two separate museums to be financially realistic. Instead, they proposed that the Central Museum be divided into two sections, one for older art and one for contemporary art. The Finnish National Committee of the Arts issued a statement in 1965 supporting the concept of a Central Museum in a report submitted on the subject. According to Alvar Aalto's plan for the city centre, the Central Museum would have been constructed in the Töölö Bay area. The plan for a Central Museum was kept alive until the mid-1970s.

EXHIBITIONS FOR THE OPERA INTERMISSIONS

Many divergent solutions were proposed during the 1970s as ways to alleviate the Ateneum building's problem of a lack of space for contemporary art. In 1972, two separate committees recommended that the Ateneum building be converted into a lieu for classical art and that the new 'National Centre for the Arts' be built for housing modern art as well as the Museums of Architecture and Industrial Arts. The planned location for this arts centre was the so-called Sugar site on the Töölö Bay waterfront. According to a third recommendation, the latter two institutions were to be housed in an enlarged Ateneum building converted for this purpose. According to the so-called Pasila project, the Ateneum was said to have become an arts centre for experimental and documentary visual arts, as well as architecture and industrial arts. The modern art collections as well as both educational establishments (the College of Applied Arts and the Finnish Art Academy School functioned in the Ateneum building at the time) would have been transferred to the new building in Pasila.

The government took a stand in favour of the Museum of Contemporary Art for the first time in 1975. The National Visual Arts Council action program underlined that a centre for contemporary art should be rapidly built in order to remedy the lack of exhibition space in the centre of Helsinki. The 1970s even witnessed the strange attempt to solve the spatial dilemmas of the opera and the visual arts sector through the building of one multipurpose facility. The plan for the new Opera House included areas set aside for temporary exhibitions. However, the plan made absolutely no mention of any premises to be set aside for the visual arts library, for research, for the archives or for technical support. The mere existence of an exhibition space would not have made up for the lack of a centre for contemporary art in metropolitan Helsinki. The areas set aside for exhibitions were finally omitted from the Opera House plan due to opposition from the visual arts community. The Opera House project continued to advance at its own pace and the visual arts community was left waiting until the end of the following decade before a solution to its needs was found.

PRO(VOCATIVELY) CONTEMPORARY ART

The 1980s dawned without any new official plans for the creation of a centre for contemporary art. The decade was marked by growing public discussion both in the press and in committees and seminars, as well as by other activities which also served to support the founding of a Museum of Contemporary Art. Economic growth and a business boom combined with a more pluralistic cultural and artistic climate set the stage for the decisive move to found a Museum of Contemporary Art at the end of the decade. Although thriving economically and culturally, Finland nevertheless seemed increasingly like a cultural backwater ("A country without a Museum of Contemporary Art is not a cultural nation") because it lacked a Museum of Contemporary Art. Awareness of this fact gave rise to numerous associations and a host of events for the purpose of animating and furthering discussion on the subject. One provocative intervention took place during a 1981 Helsinki Festival press conference, and consisted of declaring the Gallery of the Old Student House the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art.

1983 saw the founding of the Contemporary Art Museum Association. It came into being through an initiative of the Finnish Artists' Association during the spring of 1982. The Artists' Association decided to undertake immediate action toward the goal of obtaining a Museum of Contemporary Art for the city of Helsinki. It invited artists, those working in the arts and other interested parties together for the purpose of discussing the project as well as the measures required to bring the project to fruition. The plan was, first of all, to make a positive change in public attitudes toward the project. This would be followed by a drive to collect initial capital, after which the government would finance the museum. Sub-projects and long-range plans were carefully prepared in advance. One of the most important of these was attaching the Museum of Contemporary Art project to the Kamppi-Töölö Bay planning competition. The aim was also to begin museum operations in temporary premises. Indeed at one stage, Katajanokka's customs storehouse No.15 was seen as the appropriate temporary location. The activities of the Association ranged from public discussions to publishing and organizing different types of events. For example, in 1986 it organized an international seminar on the subject of contemporary art museums.

The Carrot Association was founded in 1986 as a forum of spontaneous activity in support of the founding of a Contemporary Art Museum. It represented the young art historians', art history students', critics' and artists' alternative to the Contemporary Art Museum Association. Their objective was to carry out small-scale, grass-roots actions in order to help to speed up the museum project. Carrot's first exhibition was held in autumn 1988 in the Old Student House Gallery. The exhibition served as a forum for making public its international artist-donated contemporary art collection. The exhibition along with the collection of 70 artworks was a symbolic gesture on the part of the association and the donating artists in favour of the museum. The Starting Point exhibition and the "Documentation" project were other Carrot activities undertaken on behalf of the museum.

PERHAPS A MEGA-WORKSHOP AFTER ALL

Muu ry was founded in 1987 as a forum for artists doing interdisciplinary work and/or for those working outside traditional artistic domains. Its appearance on the scene reflected, in part, the absence of a contemporary art museum while also suggesting a vacuum in the world of contemporary art. Both Muu ry and the artists working under its umbrella took a strong position concerning the contemporary art museum plan. Their statements were frequently museum-critical: there was a drive to substitute the word 'museum' with the term 'activity centre' or 'mega-workshop'. Museum-like activity was to be replaced by an emphasis on working spaces and artistic production.

The mid-1980s saw the appearance of new proposals for resolving the spatial dilemmas of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Pasila machine shop, the Katajanokka warehouse, the Glass Palace and the Nokia Cable Factory were mentioned as prospective premises. Those addressing the issue were divided into two camps: the ones who adhered to the Töölö Bay plan and the construction of a new building in Helsinki's emergent monumental centre, and those in search of alternative solutions based on alterations to existing buildings.

The discussions were further complicated by the fact that the city of Helsinki was planning to move the Helsinki City Art Museum out of Meilahti where it had originally been built in 1976. The two distinct museum projects were confused with one another to the extent where the City Art Museum was even frequently referred to as the Contemporary Art Museum without any subsequent clarification. For example, Jörn Donner made frequent public pronouncements about founding a contemporary art museum in Helsinki, by which he meant the Helsinki City Art Museum's planned museum building which looked at one point as if it could end up occupying the tram hall site in Töölö. The conversion of the Glass Palace into a cultural facility was already being planned at that time, a project which also elicited the 'Museum of Contemporary Art' label even though the City Art Museum was the actual beneficiary.

There was also some discussion during the 1980s about constructing premises for temporary exhibitions on a vacant lot between the Museum of Applied Arts and the Museum of Architecture. This centre for temporary exhibitions was supposed to alleviate both the problems of space encountered by museums as well as by temporary exhibitions in general. The plan for the Centre for Temporary Exhibitions was followed up in large part: the results of the architectural competition were made public in 1987 and the premises were to have been functional by the time of Finland's 75th year of independence celebrations in 1992. The excessively small size of the designated plot of land had become apparent already in the planning stage with the result that the winner of the competition was a plan by Tuomo Siitonen in which most of the premises were to have been located underground. The project nevertheless ran into difficulties during 1989 and a new proposal was thrown into the air. The idea was to incorporate the temporary exhibitions section as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art on Terrassitori. The nineties have seen the abandonment of the plan of locating the temporary exhibitions building on the plot sandwiched between the two museums. This outcome was at least partly due to the excessive costs of the project. It was further decided that the problems of inadequate space encountered by the Museums of Architecture and Applied Arts would be solved in other ways.

THE MUSEUM BECOMES OPERATIONAL

The end of the 1980s was a time of rapid progress due to increased interest on the part of the authorities after the project became more of a public than a private undertaking and the Museum of Contemporary Art issue was addressed in the context of a broadscale reform program.

The report of the Central Art Museum Commission on the establishment of a National Gallery was made public on November 15, 1988. The report recommended that legislation be drafted and a statutory order carried out concerning the establishment of a National Gallery. This National Gallery would encompass the Museums of Finnish and Foreign Art, the Central Art Archives, the Administration Department, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Commission, which included representatives from the Museum of Finnish Art, Ateneum, was thus instrumental in creating the support organization for the Museum of Contemporary Art. The issue of inadequate space was, in turn, left to be tackled at a later point in time. The report specified that the Museum of Contemporary Art was to become operational within the Ateneum premises in September 1990. The legislation and statutory order prescribed in the report were ratified by the government in its 1990 budget proposal. The Museum of Contemporary Art promptly opened its doors on the above-mentioned date. It operated initially out of temporary premises on Kansakoulunkatu and moved to the Ateneum building in May 1991 following the completion of renovation work.

Surprisingly, the plan for a new facility went ahead in tandem with the creation of an administrative body to oversee the Contemporary Art Museum project. The slow and tortuous avenue of government financing was by-passed thanks to a 1989 land transaction agreement between the City of Helsinki and the Finnish Government concerning the Kivikko area. The City was suffering from a land shortage and was therefore willing to commit itself to building a contemporary art museum in exchange for state-owned land in Viikki to be used for building residential housing. The initial strategy was to house both the City Art Museum and the Contemporary Art Museum in the same new premises. This idea was nevertheless abandoned and a working group was established whose task was to produce a Terassitori-situated master plan for the Contemporary Art Museum. The working group submitted its findings to Education Minister Anna-Liisa Kasurinen in January 1990. An architectural competition for the designing of the Museum of Contemporary Art was announced in autumn 1992. The competition was directed at architects from the Nordic and Baltic countries. Among those invited to compete were five internationally acclaimed architects. The American Steven Holl's Kiasma was chosen over 516 competing works. The controversial Kiasma project entered the construction phase in 1996.

Sanna Rekola