An experience, not something to trip over

"People need to experience art personally. If you truly encounter a work of art and confront yourself, some small change is likely to take place. Art changes society by changing the individual - through personal experiences and perceptions," says Berndt Arell, Kiasma's Museum Director.

Kiasma's anniversary year will provide the public with personal experiences: "People always experience art on a personal level even though in some fields of art, it is possible to arrange for several people to have the same experience simultaneously." Berndt Arell feels that the only true level of experiencing art is the personal level: "Since we can't build individual exhibitions for each single visitor, we endeavour to build a wider ranging exhibition so that as many people as possible find something that touches them personally."

The Museum Director feels that a museum should offer a safe and enjoyable environment and create the kind of atmosphere where viewers dare to perceive things themselves and be receptive to art: "I hope that the visual arts have real meaning in people's daily lives. I hope that a visit to an exhibition leaves a lasting impression in the same way as when you read a good book, watch a movie or go to a concert. Our job is to ensure that the visual arts offer an equally experiential and impressive option of encountering art."

Time holds the keys

Kiasma's concept of time makes it an extraordinary museum. Many museums display new art from the 1900s but time at Kiasma starts from the 1960s - Kiasma has always concentrated on the contemporary, in the literal sense: "You can see this when the people working at Kiasma talk about the art of the 1970s-80s, they refer to it as the history of contemporary art and not as contemporary art itself."

At best, we easily relate to contemporary art, the art of today, as it often deals with the things we see around us all the time. But experiencing contemporary art can also be daunting because it creates things that perhaps do not even yet exist. Older works of art are often familiar, maybe from the pages of a schoolbook. When people later see a familiar work for real on the wall of a museum, the encounter is easy - they come face to face with something they know.

Unlike with older works of art, we do not have a definitive relationship with contemporary art; instead, each new experience re-establishes the relationship. As is often the case between two complete strangers, the encounter between contemporary art and the viewer becomes easier when the new acquaintances are introduced to each other: "One way to make contemporary art more familiar is to present its history - to display works that the public has perhaps come across already. I believe that our public has been hoping for new art of a more classic genre; people want to see works from the end of the last century that are in some way familiar."

During Berndt Arell's time, Kiasma will offer visitors the opportunity to strike up a relationship with the classics of contemporary art - to get to know the history of contemporary art. Kiasma's role is to portray the entire period of contemporary art, a period that includes the present: "We have to look at history to see why we are where we are now."

Power and responsibility

"I don't find art as such interesting. By that I mean I'm not interested in the internal discourses of art. What is stimulating is art that converses with people's reality, that engages in dialogue with society and people. Art that teaches me things about myself is thought provoking. Of course, as a museum director, I join in the internal discourses of the art world because that's how we develop art and the way we look at it, but that's not what matters to me most. What interests me is how art can have an impact on social matters, politics, our common life, my life."

Because Kiasma is a prestigious institution, its opinions carry weight: Kiasma makes the voice of art heard in social discourse. Only an institution of this stature can make it possible for contemporary art to have any relevance in society. Kiasma's position as an opinion-leader in Finnish contemporary art is both a burden and an opportunity: "Everyone working here wields a lot of power, which is part of the mission of a national gallery. We're not part of the fringe art world, we're the most powerful element in the mainstream. We have to accept that we are a major actor in the field of contemporary art in Finland and shoulder the responsibility this brings with it."

Kiasma's role as a major museum, an institution, is to display all contemporary art - including the mainstream. This is, of course, how things are done in other fields of art as well: institutional theatre performs classics and publicly funded orchestras play popular symphonies. Berndt Arell stresses that as a major museum, Kiasma should operate along similar lines in its own field - in art that is being done now.

"The fringe should be displayed in the marginal. Our role is not to constantly question the mainstream phenomena of contemporary art. If we only display alternatives, most contemporary art will never be shown - then we'll be giving the public a distorted image of present-day art. The public will imagine that all contemporary art is what the fringe does. Instead our task is to provide alternative contemporary art movements with an institutional sounding board for the fringe to sharpen their claws."

However, the institution's role does not mean having no bite and being boring: "Our mandate lays down the foundation for our regeneration and originality - we are a museum of contemporary art. We always display the latest, significant and thought-provoking art. Ten years down the line, young people will still find Kiasma stimulating - and I would like us to be able to keep the young people who visit us now as our regulars, and to constantly raise new generations to come here, too."

Bold but safe

Art should be introduced in an environment where encountering it is safe, a museum: "Say a work of art is taken physically to where people are, like to a street, but it remains unconnected, it doesn't relate to anything, the work does not really approach people. If a work does not appeal, generate an experience, people won't see the work in their midst, they just trip over it - and what use is that?"

Berndt Arell feels that whenever museums implement projects with the public in mind, projects that the public get the most out of, those projects do well. However, if exhibitions are built from theoretical perspectives it is easy to get the feeling that curators set up exhibitions for each other - experts for experts and not for the public.

On special occasions, hosts and hostesses play an important role welcoming their guests and putting them at ease so that they have a good time together. Some museums call their lecturers museum hosts or hostesses: "At best, museum pedagogy removes the obstacles to people's visits; the visitor does not need to feel nervous about being in a museum." But there is no need for interpretative pedagogy because people feel that over-explaining and interpreting is demeaning - a person interested in art is, or should be, interested in creating his or her own personal interpretation of a work.

Berndt Arell underlines that the personal nature of experiencing art also means the viewer is responsible for his or her own experience: "Unfortunately, few people are so open that they dare to be receptive to the change and experience art has to offer. People think that art is not life, that it only portrays life. If they consider art merely as "art" then no change takes place. The artist intended his or her work to become a part of reality. The viewer should dare to take the risk to make art part of his or her own reality."

-Milla Unkila