Helsinki could get its own Guggenheim

[The Ripper]

Helsinki could get its own Guggenheim
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation examines possibility of opening museum in Finland


Helsinki could become the next city with a Guggenheim museum. The City of Helsinki has commissioned a study from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on whether or not it would be feasible to set up a Guggenheim museum in the Finnish capital. The initiative was announced in Helsinki on Tuesday.

Guggenheim museums, which focus on modern and contemporary art, have been set up in New York, as well as in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The next Guggenheim will open in Abu Dhabi, and should be completed in 2014.

The Helsinki City Board gave its approval on Monday to an agreement between the City and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to study the feasibility of such a project. The work is to begin without delay.

It should be clear by the end of the year what the role of the Guggenheim Foundation will be in the project, and what kind of an exhibition lineup and educational programme it would have. Also to be examined would be the economic impact of the museum, as well as what kind of a relationship it would have with Helsinki’s existing art institutions and collections.

The work is to be done by outside consultants as well as members of the Guggenheim staff, under the guidance of the foundation’s deputy directors Juan Ignacio Vidarte and Ari Wiseman. If the study gives the green light to building the museum in Finland, the matter will go before the Helsinki City Council for a formal decision.

Helsinki Art Museum director Janne Gallen-Kallela-Sirén says that “an optimistic assessment would be that the museum might open in 2017-2018”.

Helsingin Sanomat has learned that preliminary plans are to set up the museum in either Katajanokka or the Töölö Bay area.

Gallen-Kallela-Sirén emphasizes that it is not certain that a new building will be built for the purpose. No decisions have been made on setting up an architectural competition.

“This is not an architecture-driven project. If we put architecture first, the content will not be sufficiently developed”, Gallen-Kallela-Sirén says.

The study will cost about two million euros, with EUR 500,000 coming from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, EUR 250,000 from the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland. The rest will come from the City of Helsinki.

“The aim of the study is to visualize what a museum of the 21st century could be. Even if the study does not lead to the establishment of a Guggenheim Museum, its findings can be used for the development of Finnish museums”, Gallen-Kallela-Sirén says.

Opening a Guggenheim museum in Helsinki would be a big boost for the city’s art scene, as well as for tourism and the economy.

“The museum would be of great significance to Helsinki. If it were to happen, it would advance the international status of Finnish art and culture. Helsinki would get a profile boost and more international visibility from the art. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has been of considerable significance for the city’s economy and development.”

In the past ten years Guggenheim has conducted several studies on cooperative projects in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. There have been proposals for opening museums in at least Guadalajara in Mexico, as well as in Brazil. The Helsinki initiative is only in its initial stages.

“I do not believe that we would have made it to this stage if there were no realistic possibilities for the establishment of the museum”, Gallen-Kallela-Sirén says.


Link. (http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Helsinki+could+get+its+own+Guggenheim+/1135263130906)

A NYT -article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/arts/design/18museum.html?_r=2&emc=eta1) on the subject.

Yay, another monstrously meaningless modern art museum. But hey, it is so trendy that I can understand if the 'cultural community' is jizzing its pants.

Modern "art" is publicly funded propaganda.

[Eldritch]

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has been of considerable significance for the city’s economy and development.

I'm not saying it isn't so, but I'd like to see some actual data on that.

Besides, am I the only one who thinks it's the Guggenheim Foundation's job (and not mine, as a Helsinki taxpayer) to figure out whether or not they should build a museum in Helsinki?

[Peerkons]

what is Guggenheim? o.O (pardon for my stupidness)
sounds jewish :O

[Eldritch]

what is Guggenheim? o.O (pardon for my stupidness)
sounds jewish :O

I heard about this cool website that helped you find other websites the other day, it was called "Gogol" or something.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

Googleheim museum.

[Treffie]

I'm not saying it isn't so, but I'd like to see some actual data on that.



One doesn't need data to show that Bilbao has benefitted since the Guggenheim was built in 1997. Over the past 10 years, I've visited Bilbao at least twice a year and the transformation of the city has been astonishing. True, it can be said that the city was going to be developed anyway, but the Guggenheim has been the catalyst for sure.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

Wouldn't Helsinki benefit more from a sexmuseum?

[The Ripper]

COMMENTARY: Big Bad G is coming to town

By Saska Saarikoski


Barely than a week has passed since the Guggenheim Foundation story broke and awakened Helsinki residents from their normal winter hibernation.

On the basis of the wild hubble and bubble that has marked the discussion since then, we have nevertheless witnessed a minor miracle in these few days.

Perhaps for the very first time ever, a topic has been found that can unite the hearts and minds of the so-called common people and the cultural elite: "We don't want no steenkin' Guggenheims round here!"

The massed ranks of the hoi polloi generally take a dim view of money being spent on the arts.

Right at the top of their hit-list in this respect is contemporary art, which the public has never approved of.

Even though the Ars exhibitions have tried on several occasions since 1961 to bring contemporary art to Finnish eyes, the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum is generally deserted, while people queue up in the snow for hours outside the Ateneum to catch shows featuring the national romantic works of Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931).

When the famously well-educated Finns cannot be persuaded to tolerate contemporary art, how was it possible to sell the Guggenheim project to the citizens of Bilbao?

It may of course have been helpful that thereabouts they had a hundred years of experience of artists that nobody could make head or tail of, such as Picasso,Dalí, Miró, or the architect Antoni Gaudí.

This means that the "And what's that supposed to be in aid of?" brigade have found themselves put to shame on so many occasions in the past that they now understand the wisdom of keeping quiet on the subject.

By contrast, Finns still suffer from the phenomenon that playwright and stage director Kristian Smeds recently described in a magazine interview as "truth fetishism": literature should be realistic, the pictorial arts should look like what they purport to represent, and theatre should be entertaining - otherwise the Finnish audience will get fits of angst and pique.

It is not only the public's loathing of art that must be overcome; the Guggenheim project is seen as a challenge to Finnish culture.

The venture's primus motori is Janne Gallen-Kallela-Sirén, Director of the Helsinki City Art Museum, whose grinning visage alone is enough to get the left wing of the cultural classes into paroxysms of rage.

Causing the American-style museum director to fall on his face is for many a sufficient reason to hope that the Guggenheim project will founder.

The annoyance is further fuelled by a sense among many that their own pet projects will be swamped by the museum.

What is common to these projects is that they do not greatly startle anyone or attract in the curious from abroad, but that they do achieve what is for many the most important objective: they offer work and visibility for their own particular discipline in Finland.

For my own part, I do not believe that the Guggenheim Museum should be spoken of in the context of other arts edifices.

The Guggenheim is an investment in Helsinki's economy and future - and that is how it should be judged.

If the calculations indicate that it is worth locating a Guggenheim Museum here, then it should be built, and the money for it should not be siphoned away from the arts.

Those companies that stand to benefit from the museum should be brought in to pay the bills, and the wealthy can have their shot at getting into the history books.

But if the Foundation's calculations end up showing red ink, there is absolutely no sense in building a museum based purely on arts values.

I hope that the money can be found. It would also be a victory for culture and the arts.

A successful Guggenheim would make Helsinki an arts city: the pictorial arts would be brought right into the core of urban thinking.

And even if its walls might not be filled to the rafters with the work of Finnish artists, it is hard to believe that it would not raise the profile of contemporary art and in so doing also boost the standing of the artists.

And if these opinions do not meet with general approval, I have others.
T
he next one is definitely going to be hard to resist:

The Guggenheim should be established in the House of Parliament, and the entire art collection of the Bank of Finland (to see which countless more Finns lined up in the cold last week) should be moved there.

The number of MPs would be summarily halved, and they would be given the task of running the museum's garderobe and cloakroom, and of shining the shoes of museum visitors.

Janne Gallen-Kallela-Sirén would perform the duties of a footstool for this purpose.

The Central Public Library would take over the premises of the neighbouring Pikkuparlamentti Annex to Parliament, currently in use as MPs' offices.

The flat roof of the main Parliament Building would have houses built on it for dance, children's culture, design, and multiculturalism.

These buildings would showcase less well-known artists, who should in the case of domestic examples all belong to a trade union, while the foreign ones should question the hegemony of commercial Western art.

That ought to do it.


Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.1.2011


The writer is the head of Helsingin Sanomat's Culture Desk.




http://www.hs.fi/english/article/COMMENTARY+Big+Bad+G+is+coming+to+town/1135263293286

[Eldritch]

^ Pretty distasteful even by SS's or Pravda's own standards methinks.

[Matuo]

Isn't there Kiasma already in Helsniki? Isn't that enough?

[The Ripper]

Isn't there Kiasma already in Helsniki? Isn't that enough?

It is too much. They could move it to... Tikkurila. ;)

[Eldritch]

I think Kiasma should be moved to the Onkalo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Onkalo_waste_reposit ory) nuclear waste repository in Olkiluoto.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Onkalo-kaaviokuva.png