Vaasa City Museums will open for the summer from 2 June
Vaasa City Museums will gradually open from 2 June. Unlike before, the exhibitions completed in March will continue at the Tikanoja Art Museum over the summer, but the Vaasa City Art Gallery will remain closed throughout the summer.
The first museums to open on 2 June are the Tikanoja Art Museum and Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art.
The next museums to open, 10 June, will be the Museum of Old Vaasa and the Ostrobothnian Museum, where the Vaasa 400 main exhibition and the Hedman collection will be on display during the summer. The space for temporary exhibitions and Terra Nova are closed over the summer due to renovation work.
The Vaasa City Art Gallery will also be closed during the summer, and the scheduled Filmverkstaden exhibition will be postponed until the following year.
Visitors are once again warmly invited to visit the exhibitions in these exceptional times but are encouraged to promote safe social distancing measures and show consideration for other visitors in the interests of public safety. Due to this exceptional situation, no events will be organised so far.
Two new exhibitions
Two new exhibitions will be seen at the Tikanoja Art Gallery. The exhibition, Poplar Alley and Other Works from the Emil Aaltonen Collection, are representative of the golden age of Finnish art and older European art. The exhibition is on display until 23 August, up to two weeks longer than originally planned.
Emil Aaltonen built his collection in Tampere at the same time as Frithjof Tikanoja (1877–1964) and Karl Hedman (1864–1931) were putting together their own collections in Vaasa. Aaltonen’s favourite artists included Albert Edelfelt and the von Wright brothers, among others. The exhibition also features works by other well-known artists, such as Gunnar Berndtson, Fanny Churberg, Pekka Halonen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Hugo Simberg.
Another of the new exhibitions, Visiting the Collector, uses photographs to present Vaasa’s almost unbroken tradition of art collectors, which has had a great significance on the city’s cultural life. The exhibition is on the 3rd floor of the Tikanoja Art Museum.
Contemporary art and the history of Vaasa
The exhibition, By Nature, which presents nature through contemporary art, continues at the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art over the summer. The exhibition was on display for less than a month before the museums had to close their doors in March.
One of the exhibition’s works of art was also carried out behind closed doors. The streaming of the artist John Court’s performance gathered more than 8,000 viewers on social media.
The artist’s performances will continue on 1 August and 29 August. The exhibition will remain on display at Kuntsi until 30 August.
This summer, the Ostrobothnian Museum will focus on presenting the collections in the permanent exhibitions. The history of Vaasa can be explored in the Vaasa 400 exhibition and in the Old Vaasa Museum.
Admission to the Old Vaasa Museum is free during the summer. The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday until 30 August.