The insides and outsides of Helsinki’s energetic art scene

Art lovers who know, know to not sleep on Helsinki. Finland’s capital is loaded with museums, galleries and walls covered with elaborate murals and graffiti. For the best of art on both the outside and inside, plan to visit the main attractions, like the Ateneum and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, then turn rudderless and wander around town to see what creativity you might stumble on.

Finnish art, past and present

The Ateneum is the mother of all Finnish museums, providing a “crash course in the nation’s art,” Lonely Planet said. The museum houses a vast collection of 30,000 paintings, sculptures and other works, including pieces by Helene Schjerfbeck, Albert Edelfelt and Pekka Halonen. Though the museum boasts the world’s largest collection of Finnish art, Vincent Van Gogh is also part of the roster: His “Street in Auvers-sur-Oise” was acquired by the Ateneum in 1903. On the first Sunday of the month, guided tours are offered in English, Finnish, Swedish and Russian, offering insights into both the art and the museum’s “palatial” 1887 neo-Renaissance building.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma looks outward, with “international modern works” filling the “ultra-modern building,” Time Out said. The temporary exhibitions here are “quirky” and “cool” and include a recent thought-provoking exploration of what it means to belong. Kiasma has a growing collection of 8,800 contemporary art works, adding about 100 every year, and routinely invites artists for discussions that are open to the public.

In a city filled with well-established museums, Amos Rex is the new kid. Open since 2018, Amos Rex aims to surprise visitors, often offering experimental contemporary art. When entering the museum, housed inside a functionalist building from the 1930s, you head underground to the exhibition halls. The works on display “bring the traditional, the new and the future together in an intriguing space,” Lonely Planet said, with skylights in the museum’s ceiling giving passerby the ability to look inside. Established artists are part of the collection, but young creatives get their due every three years, when Amos Rex holds its Generation showcase of 15- to 23-year-old artists.

Architecture that takes risks

Architects in Helsinki do not believe in copying and pasting. The most iconic buildings in the city have their own distinct styles, starting with the 1919 Art Nouveau granite train station designed by Eliel Saarinen. Two “stern statues” flank the main entrance, The New York Times said, with a tall clock tower soaring above. This is in contrast to the new Oodi library, a “monumental, three-story, curved-wood building” made of spruce timber with walls of windows that is steps from the train station.

No materials are out of the question. Finlandia Hall, a stark white marble masterpiece, took its inspiration from an iceberg, and the copper-domed Temppeliaukio Church was built directly into solid rock. This created a “striking appearance and wonderful acoustics,” Forbes said, and is “yet another example of how Finnish design seeks to connect with nature wherever possible.”

Art hits the streets

Street art is having a resurgence in Helsinki, following a crackdown between 1998 and 2008 that eliminated most of the unauthorized murals and graffiti that covered walls, staircases and electrical boxes around the city. Head to Baana, which has the largest concentration of murals in Finland, to see a massive mural painted in 2017 by famed Finnish graffiti artist EGS and his Brazilian counterpart Os Gemeos, or Keran Hallit. You can get in on the action yourself in Suvilahti, where the Make Your Mark gallery sells spray paint for tagging in authorized areas.

Traditional public art is also spread out across the city. It is an eclectic mix of styles spanning hundreds of years — a bust of Alexander I created in 1814 is in the courtyard of the University of Helsinki Library, a few miles from “Arabia’s Horses,” a 2003 sculpture designed for children to touch. The public art collection is 500 pieces strong and managed by the Helsinki Art Museum, which put together a handy map showing each work’s location, the name of the artist and when the art was made.