Point of View: New Environment, New Perspectives

"Music, sound, comics and design – all extend the boundaries of contemporary art."

A CULTURAL CENTRE is emerging in the vicinity of Kiasma in the Töölönlahti bay area. Along with the new Helsinki Music Centre, the area has developed into a meeting place for citizens and culture, to be complemented in the future with the planned central city library. In this new environment, a new light is shed on the architecture of Kiasma and its operations.

THE AREA in front of Kiasma has always been a place that has attracted all sorts of people and events. The area between Kiasma and the Music Centre has only recently been completed. It will be interesting to see how people begin using it.

ONE OF THE KEY missions of Kiasma is to make art available to everyone, even beyond the walls of the actual museum. ARS satellite exhibitions, the URB Festival, the School on Wheels – projects such as these have taken art elsewhere in Finland, to the suburbs of Helsinki and the grounds of Kiasma, the busiest place in the city. Our aim in the future is to ensure that as many people as possible will be able to access art in or from Kiasma.

NEW APPROACHES are another way of making contemporary art accessible to the wider public. The exhibitions of the spring programme attest to the living and mutually enriching relationship between popular culture and contemporary art. The Thank You for the Music exhibition examines the way in which we are moved by music. The Murder of Crows by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller constructs a soundscape on the top floor of the museum. In the spring, one of the floors will be taken over by contemporary Finnish comic art, and in the summer the Camouflage exhibition exploring the interplay between contemporary art and design will spread beyond the museum’s walls. The latter exhibition is part of the World Design Capital 2012 programme.

MUSIC, SOUND, comics and design – all extend the boundaries of contemporary art, both within and beyond Kiasma

WELCOME!

Pirkko Siitari, Museum Director