Museum as a friend

Many museums have a Friends’ association, a group of loyal customers supporting the museum either financially or through voluntary work. In turn, the association members are offered special programmes and benefits in the museums. The Friends of Contemporary Art was established in 1991 to promote museum activities, enhance public awareness about contemporary art and increase members’ knowledge of, and experiences offered by, contemporary art. Following the building of Kiasma, a museum entirely devoted to contemporary art, the association changed its name to the Friends of Kiasma.

The Friends of Kiasma offers its members diverse activities, such as exhibition previews hosted by artists and curators, art trips in Finland and abroad, lecture series, studio and other visits, etc. Lectures and discussions are usually arranged in co-operation with Kiasma and are thus open to all. For further information on this spring’s lecture series, please see the calendar section.

Besides the activities, the member benefits include invitations to the openings of major exhibitions, previews of all exhibitions, free entry to the museum and reductions in Kiasma Store and Café Kiasma. Friends of Kiasma receive a membership bulletin and Kiasma Magazine, which is available to members only by subscription.

Every year on Valentine’s Day the association nominates a Friend of Contemporary Art, a person or organisation that has significantly contributed to contemporary art. The President of the Republic of Finland, Tarja Halonen, was appointed the Friend of Contemporary Art in 2003. The makers of a Swedish-speaking cultural programme Artur were also nominated.

The Friends of Kiasma support the museum, for example, by donating funds for art acquisitions. Cildo Meireles’s radio tower Babel, an acclaimed attraction of the
ARS 01 exhibition, is one of the acquisitions the Friends of Kiasma helped acquire for the museum collection.