We continued our journey to the Ateneum Art Museum (Finnish: Ateneumin taidemuseo).
It is one of the main museums in Finland. It is located in the centre of Helsinki on Central Station Square. It has the largest collection of classical art in Finland.
The works were just incredible. We had the opportunity to see with our own eyes a painting by Andy Warhol, one of my favourite artists. I was absolutely smitten!
I was especially surprised by the arrangement of the paintings. Being used to visiting museums and art galleries in France, I noticed that in Finland there was not one painting per slope of the wall, but several. The paintings are staged by sculptures, and very close to each other forming like bouquets of flowers.
The history of this museum is also very special as it has had several lives.
In the 1870s Carl Gustaf Estlander took the initiative to establish the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts, a school providing high level art education. This project was realised in the 1880s when Theodor Höijer designed a building for the visual arts. Its construction on Helsinki Central Station Square was completed in 1887 and the Ateneum building was inaugurated in 1887.
Today the building is open to the public, where major works and the visual arts archive are exhibited.
Our language holidays in Finland 