Museum

Studies
Bridging Theory
and Practice

Editorial team:
Nina Robbins, Suzie Thomas,
Minna Tuominen, Anna Wessman
 Museum Studies – Bridging
Theory and Practice
Nina Robbins, Suzie Thomas, Minna Tuominen,
Anna Wessman

ICOFOM

University of Jyväskylä, Open Science Centre

2 

Editorial team:

Nina Robbins (editor-in-chief)

Suzie Thomas
Minna Tuominen
Anna Wessman

Proofreading:

Karl Robbins
Dorothea Breier (her own chapter)

Graphic design:

ICOFOM

Publisher info:
ISBN: 978-2-491997-31-1
ISBN: 978-951-39-8964-4 (e-book)
 3

Table of contents
Foreword and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Introduction to the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Nina Robbins, Suzie Thomas, Minna Tuominen, Anna Wessman

Section I – Museology and Museums as a

Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Reflections on Museology – Classifications,

conceptualisations and concepts at the core of museology
theory and practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Johanna Enqvist

Locating Museology Outside the Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Nina Robbins

Critical Museology, Social Museology, Practical

Museology or What? – International museologies and
Scandinavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Kerstin Smeds

The Genesis of Finnish Museology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Janne Vilkuna

Museum Leadership – New competencies and the cycle of

change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Susanna Pettersson

Strategic Management in a Changing Operating

Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Kimmo Levä

Continuing Professional Education as a Tool for

Developing Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Leena Tokila

Section II – Collection Management

Leading to Collection Development . . . . . . . . . . 165

How to be Dynamic – The potential of analysing

significance in Finnish museum collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Heikki Häyhä, Sari Jantunen and Leena Paaskoski

Collection Policy – Experiences and challenges . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Minna Sarantola-Weiss
4 

Home Museums – Biographical collections of significant

lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Liisa Oikari and Kristina Ranki

The TAKO Network – Developing collections together . . . . . 236

Teemu Ahola

3D Imaging in Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Visa Immonen and Ismo Malinen

Between Private and Public – Corporate art collecting

and collaboration with art museums in Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski

Section III – Communities and Audiences . . . 293

The Museum and its Audiences – A configuration of
interests, the case of the Finnish National Gallery . . . . . . . . . 296
Kaija Kaitavuori

Participating How, Why and in What? – Analysing Nordic

museum research case studies 2008–2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Mari Viita-aho

Outside Museums’ Own Walls – Experiences with

participatory projects as part of the Helsinki Model . . . . . . 333
Erja Salo

Accessibility Means More than Ramps – A critical

approach to the (in-)accessibility of museums, galleries
and cultural institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Dorothea Breier

What Finland Taught Me about Doing History in Public . . . . 367

Benjamin Filene

Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters

of Changing Museum Identities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Sharing Creative Efforts – Working as a curator in an art
museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Henna Paunu
 5

Looking for a New National . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394

Hanna Forssell

From Object to Subject – Creating relevant and engaging

experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
Mikko Myllykoski

Entering the Mystery – Helsinki Noir, a fictional

detective story created in a museum space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Sanna-Mari Niemi

About Transhistoricity – The Old Masters exhibited with

contemporary art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Minna Tuominen

Section V – Ethics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

The Twin Cornerstones – ICOM’s Code of Ethics for

Museums and the Museum Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Eero Ehanti

Repatriated Collections as a Source for Cultural

Revitalisation – Case examples from the Sámi Museum
Siida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
Anni Guttorm

Displaying Archaeological Human Remains in Finnish

Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Anna Wessman

Representing Difficult Histories and Contested Heritage

in Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Suzie Thomas

Section VI – Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547

6 
 7

Museum Studies
Bridging Theory
and Practice
8 

Foreword and
Acknowledgements
The collection of 27 chapters brings forth Finnish museum professionalism. This
volume is the end result of a three-year collaboration (2018–2020) between the
Museum Studies Programme at the University of Helsinki and Finnish museum
professionals. The aim of this collaboration has been to investigate how, indeed,
theoretical concepts reach the shores of museum practices and help promote
best-practice methods. Museums are in the business of mediating the long-term
understanding of society and acting as a bridge between past, present and future.
We editors are thrilled to be able to present ideas used in the Finnish context
to a wider audience.

Our process included a writing retreat weekend in January 2020 at the Lammi
Research Station of the University of Helsinki, with support from the Depart-
ment of Cultures, University of Helsinki. This intensive period helped not only in
collaboratively developing our chapter ideas and synergies among our writings,
but also created a strong sense of camaraderie for those that were able to attend.
Given that the world changed so soon after that time, with the introduction of
worldwide social restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are especially
thankful that we were able to spend this weekend together.

We would like to extend our appreciation to ICOFOM and the University of

Jyväskylä for their kind support, as well as to all the professionals who have
donated their time to our project. An endeavour of this magnitude does not
succeed without the dedicated efforts of many people. We are truly thankful for
all of their selfless contributions. It has been incredibly gratifying to see how our
museum community, nationally and internationally, works as one.

We editors hope that our book will encourage present and future museum pro-
fessionals gain a more significant voice in stating matters near and dear to them.

Nina Robbins

Suzie Thomas

Minna Tuominen

Anna Wessman

Helsinki, 16.4.2021
 9

Introduction to the Book

Nina Robbins, Suzie Thomas, Minna Tuominen, Anna
Wessman

This book is a handbook for everyone who is interested in museums and the wider
cultural and cultural heritage debates. In the spirit of lifelong learning, it aims
to connect the humanistic discipline of museum studies with the wider context
of society. Museums possess power as safekeepers of our memories. This book
will, in its own small way, take part in the discussion of making our past and
future memories matter, to show how important it is for us to understand our
past. In our contemporary culture it often seems that no time is allowed for this
kind of understanding; the constant flow of issues and “must dos” often hinders
us from seeing the connections between our past and present. In this turmoil,
things in the past can too easily be regarded as non-urgent and less important.
We, the editors, wish to shed light on why museums matter; we believe that it is
important to launch a book that is directed both to readers within the arts and
cultural heritage sector and readers outside of it. It is clear that readers within
the sector tend to agree with one another on the major cultural issues. For these
readers, our book offers up-to-date knowledge on the latest developments that
have taken place in Finland. It is as important to make these issues visible to
readers who situate themselves outside the sector and to connect these issues
with the wider context of society. The knowhow of cultural heritage disciplines
will aid in understanding the changes we are facing in the 21st century and help
give them perspective.

Museum Studies – Bridging Theory and Practice is an edited collection of 27

chapters by leading scholars and practitioners, most of whom work in Finland.
The book will, for the first time, give a concise presentation of current research
and practice in Finnish museum studies to a wider international audience, as
well as to students and museum professionals in the field in Finland. The book
combines current theoretical and practical approaches to museum studies, thus
making it the first English-language handbook of Finnish museology.

We are naming this book Museum Studies – Bridging Theory and Practice in
order to show the intertwined connection between theoretical knowledge and
practical approaches to museum work. We acknowledge the history of the two
concepts, museology and museum studies, and how they have been used to de-
scribe the work done in museums (Brulon Soares 2019; Lorente 2012; MacLeod
2001). In this volume the focus is on valuing both concepts; this is why the
authors have had the choice to decide which term suits their chapter the best.

The main sections are as follows: Museology and Museums as a Profession;

Collection Management Leading to Collection Development; Communities
and Audiences; Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities
10 

and Ethics. Recent developments in the field of museum studies in Finland are
highlighted and discussed through these main themes. Each section begins with
an introduction, which points out the main issues discussed in the subsequent
chapters. These function as a preview of the chapter contents. In addition, these
introductions bring together issues and highlight similarities among the chapters.

It is natural that every author has their own style of writing, and these differ-
ences are welcomed, since they promote the multivocal perspective that our
book strives to achieve. The contributing authors represent a wide spectrum of
interests, including museum professionals from fields such as museum direc-
torship, collections managers, curators and educators. Academics contributing
to the book come from related fields such as archaeology, cultural heritage stud-
ies, art history, ethnology and of course museology. Furthermore, many of the
authors who are now scholars also worked in the museum field prior to their
transitioning to university positions.

All of the chapters in this volume were written prior to the Covid-19 pandemic,
with the pandemic growing into its global magnitude during the editing process of
the volume. For certain, we will see tradition-breaking research projects regarding
new best-practice procedures done in museums due to the pandemic in the near
future. For now, it is safe to say that, as important as all the digital solutions for
museums are, they are not able to replace face-to-face human communication
or actual encounters with original museum objects and environments.

There are issues and large areas of knowledge that our volume will not cover.
For example, this first volume does not cover extensive descriptions of object
research, the work of public art commissions done in museums or various AR
(augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) options available to museums. Nor
does it cover issues of conservation, just to name a few. Furthermore, work needs
to be done in museums to increase their level of sustainability, i.e., to address
issues regarding global warming, systemic racism, assessments of queer and
trans experiences in relation to museums and the effects of Western colonialism.
These are issues that museum professionals are currently finding the need to
address in their everyday work, and certainly any future volumes will be able to
publish results and the best-practice methods regarding these themes.

The list of issues that are not present in this volume underscores the multitude
of museum-related themes. Indeed, museum professionals are and will be in
the future bearers of plenty. We do hope that some of these themes can come
to the fore in future publications, especially at this moment, when we seem to
be experiencing a boom in museum studies research in Finland. We should also
acknowledge, with deep gratitude, that the museum professionals featured in
this volume contributed their chapters, despite their very busy schedules.

Our endeavour owes a lot to the long tradition of museum practices. Ever since
the cabinets of curiosities the interest in seeking material evidence for literary
comprehension of the world has accumulated collections, first in the Western
world and later on globally. In the turmoil of our contemporary culture, one
 11

needs to keep in mind that the tasks of collecting and educating have always
been at the core of museums, but our understanding of these tasks has been
in constant flux. To study and understand this flux is the power that will keep
museums current, both now and in the future.

It is often stated that the role of museums in recent decades has transitioned
from being a place for storing collections to institutions that focus more on
the public, critically reflecting on their own role in society (Anderson 2004;
Hooper-Greenhill 2013). Duncan Cameron rather critically suggested that “our
museums and art galleries seem not to know who or what they are” (2004, p.
61). Discussions can also sometimes suggest, perhaps without intention, that
museums can either be social institutions or collection keepers – not necessar-
ily both, and not necessarily with the same priority given to both roles. Elaine
Heumann Gurian, for example, seemingly demoted museum objects to being
“like props in a brilliant play” (2004, p. 271) and Eugene Dillenburg rejected
the idea that collections are an integral part of what actually makes museums
museums (2011, p. 10). These different approaches to museums were clearly
in evidence during the ICOM (International Council of Museums) Kyoto 2019
General Conference in Japan, when professionals from all over the world dis-
cussed the meaning of museums, culminating in a quite heated debate over the
new Museum Definition.

In our view, collection work will always be an essential role for museums, and
this is directly linked to their societal position as well; museums are indeed
educators, facilitators of participation and even entertainers. But this is not
possible without their stewardship responsibility. The concept of responsibility
has been key ever since the cabinets of curiosities and the first museographical
documents, which laid the historical basis for how to manage, upkeep and care
for collections (Impey & McGregor 2001). The era of the grand museums in the
19th century transmitted that legacy to wider audiences through the first public
museums and their educational approach, such as was done in the Louvre or
the British Museum (Pearce 1992). The early years of the 20th century saw a vast
growth of museum institutions in Finland and elsewhere in Europe (Pettersson
& Kinanen 2010). In the post-war period, it became time to assess the level of
professionalism, and university education related to this started (Vilkuna 2010).
This led to a situation in which concepts such as old and new museology were
born. Old museology referred to the background of how museum collections are
cared for and new museology to the greater concept of why we regard museum
work as important (Halpin 1997; Maroević 1998; Vilkuna 2010). Throughout
the years of critical assessment and self-reflecting, the identity of museums was
enhanced and seen as one of the core elements in building sustainable museum
futures. Eventually concepts such as social museology (Moutinho 2016) and
critical museology (Shelton 2013) emerged. The latest research and publications
show that museums can indeed become strong policy makers in society.

It is widely known that museology is a young academic discipline. As shown in

recent publications, this is a fact that makes museology potentially more flex-
12 

ible and able to react to the current turmoils of society. In Finland, museology
has been taught as a university subject since the 1980s and publications on
best-practice methods have followed ever since (Heinonen & Lahti 2001 (1988);
Ketonen 1999; Rajakari 2008; Pettersson 2009; Kinanen 2009; Jyrkkiö & Li-
ukkonen 2010; Pettersson & Kinanen 2010; Niemelä & Jyrkkiö 2012). These
publications are directed toward domestic readers; this is why we feel that it is
important to share the tradition of this knowledge with international readers as
well. While the book draws primarily on expertise and developments from within
Finland, it has a relevance for students and professionals transnationally, as it
showcases the best practices in teaching museum studies, as first developed by
the University of Helsinki (Thomas, Wessman & Heikkilä 2018). Our book is
based on the work done during 2018–2020 when the curriculum was developed
further, focusing on making theory meet practice (Robbins 2019; 2021). Some
might claim that Finland, which is located in the North, might be a less active
participant on the international level. It is precisely due to the flexibility of the
discipline and the flexibility of a young nation that Finnish museology might
offer fresh perspectives. The international community of museum professionals
is very closely-knit, in which the concepts of lifelong learning and continuing
professional development are widely applied. We, as editors, believe that this
aspect also makes this a valuable book for a wider audience.

Throughout the chapters, concepts such as museological values and museo-

logical impact factors are discussed. These are tools for readers to help them
understand why our past matters. The concepts of values and impacts are often
nonspecific, and their definitions may be very philosophical or theoretical in
nature, thus making it difficult to find accurate ways to measure their existence
or efficiency. In the field of museum studies theoretical developments often end
up having practical and very concrete outcomes, and the chapters presented in
this book by museum professionals and researchers introduce ways to measure
the immeasurable. Eventually, they will help us navigate in the field of muse-
ological significance.

This first English-language book on Finnish museum studies is a building ground

for both the above-mentioned issues and any future ones that might arise. This
can be seen in the energetic, highly intelligent and dedicated approach that
current students of museum studies programme have shown in their work.
Our first book is intended to help this next generation develop museum studies
further, and in ten years’ time, or sooner, we will perhaps see new results, going
in new directions.

References
Anderson, G (ed.) 2004 Reinventing the Museum – Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham: Altamira
Press.
 13

Brulon Soares, B (ed.) 2019 A History of Museology: Key authors of

museological theory. Paris: ICOFOM.

Cameron, D 2004 The museum, a temple or the forum. In Anderson,

G Reinventing the Museum – Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham: AltaMira Press. pp.
61–73.

Dillenburg, E 2011 What, if anything, is a museum?. The Exhibitionist

Spring. pp. 8–13.

Gurian, E H 2004 What is the object of this exercise? A meandering

exploration of the many meanings of objects in museums.
In Anderson, G Reinventing the Museum – Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Lanham: AltaMira
Press. pp. 269–283.

Halpin, M M 1997 ‘Play it again, Sam’: reflections on a new museology.

Museum International 49(2). pp. 52–56. DOI: [Link]
org/10.1111/1468-0033.00092

Heinonen, J & Lahti, M 2001 (1988) Museologian perusteet. Helsinki:

Suomen museoliitto.

Hooper-Greenhill, E (ed.) 2013 Museums and their visitors. London:

Routledge.

Impey, O & MacGregor, A (eds.) 2001 (1985) The Origins of Museums.

London: House of Stratus.

Jyrkkiö, T & Liukkonen, E (eds.) 2010 Kokoelmalla on tekijänsä.

Helsinki: Valtion taidemuseo.

Ketonen, H (ed.) 1999 Nykytaiteen keräämisestä. Helsinki: Valtion

taidemuseo.

Kinanen, P (ed.) 2009 Museologia tänään. Saarijärvi: Gummerus

Kirjapaino Oy.

Lorente, J-P 2012 The Development of Museum Studies in Universities:

From Technical

Training to Critical Museology. Museum Management and Curatorship

27(3). pp. 237–252. DOI: [Link]
1995

Maroević, I 1998 Introduction to Museology – The European Approach.

München: Verlag Dr. Christian Müller-Straten.
14 

Moutinho, M 2016 From New Museology to Sociomuseology. In 24th

General Conference of the International Council of Museums in 2016.
Milan: ICOM.

Pearce, S 1992 Museums, Objects and Collections. A Cultural Study,

Leicester: Leicester University Press.

Pettersson, S (ed.) 2009 Tulevaisuuden taidemuseo. Helsinki: Valtion

taidemuseo.

Pettersson, S & Kinanen, P (eds.) 2010 Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki:

SKS.

Rajakari, P (ed.) 2008 Mitä meillä oli ennen Kiasmaa?. Helsinki: Valtion
taidemuseo.

Robbins, N 2019. Promoting Value Practice in Museums Creates Impact.

Curator: The Museum Journal. London: Wiley. Available at https://
[Link]/doi/abs/10.1111/cura.12350 [Last accessed 20
January 2020].

Robbins, N 2021. From Values to Strong Policy Making. In Research and

Review – Advancements in conservation and assessment of previous
experiences. The XXII International NKF Congress Publication.
Stockholm: NKF-S. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 21
October 2021]

Shelton, A 2013 Critical museology: A manifesto Museum Worlds 1(1). pp.

7–23. DOI: [Link]

Thomas, S, Wessman, A & Heikkilä, E 2018 Redesigning the

museum studies programme at the University of Helsinki: Towards
collaborative teaching and learning. Museum Management and
Curatorship 33(4). pp. 344–364. DOI: [Link]
775.2018.1485115

Vilkuna, J 2010 Museologia ja Suomen museot. In Pettersson, S & Kinanen,

P (eds.) Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki: SKS. pp. 332–346.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  15

Section I

Museology
and
Museums as
a Profession
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession
16 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

The first section of the book highlights the history of Finnish museology, es-
pecially the role of the University of Jyväskylä. The first professional courses
for museum workers in Finland were arranged by the Museums Association in
the 1920s (Vilkuna 2010). This book highlights one hundred years of museum
professionalism and places itself in this continuum in which history, but also
concepts used to describe that history, are seen as crucial. Johanna Enqvist’s
chapter comes first in our book because it concentrates on the importance of
these concepts and how they direct and guide our thinking.

Recent decades have shown us that the change from a more traditional approach
towards acknowledging museums’ roles as proactive players in society has become
evident. Current issues, such as the division of wealth and inequality, urgent
environmental matters demanding immediate actions and the understanding
of cultural sensitivities globally, are all huge endeavours, and museums have
a responsibility to be part of the overall discussion when searching for tools to
cope with these issues. In this work, museums can be strong policy makers in
society. The need for a clear vision and the understanding that museums are
bearers of power are both important. In order to deal with this shift of attitudes,
leadership is required. However, such leadership will need professionals who are
able to self-direct themselves in conjunction with it. In this area, the concept of
life-long learning is crucial. This section gives an insight into current and future
leadership in museums, emphasising the need for understanding the history
of the organisation in order to be able to see the wider context, as described
in Nina Robbins’ chapter. Here she places museums into the wider context of
economic and societal theories and brings museological value discussion to the
fore (Robbins 2019). Museums are in the business of originality, and it is in the
hands of museum professionals to bring forth the importance of this and create
fruitful opportunities for meaningful encounters.

Kerstin Smeds’ chapter presents a broader perspective. She places Scandinavian

museology within the overall European context. She gives us a clear perspec-
tive on why the need to understand concepts is important. It seems that the
discussion on what museology actually is has intrigued scholars and museum
professionals since the start of the discipline. This becomes clear not only in
Smeds’ but also Janne Vilkuna’s chapter. Studies show that education in Finland
is highly valued and the Pisa Effect is an internationally known concept (www.
[Link]). The museum profession is no exception to this, as is described in Lee-
na Tokila’s chapter on continuing education. In Finland, the Museums Decree
(2005, renewed 314/2019) means that university-level education in museum
studies is broadly accepted by many as a requirement for gaining employment
as a museum professional. This makes the museum studies courses offered at
the Universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Turku, Oulu and Tampere especially
significant disciplines, given their tangible connection to future career plans for
prospective students. Vilkuna’s chapter uses an archival approach to describe in
detail the developments that led to this exceptional position of museum studies in
Finland. These studies directly prepare students for a profession that has its roots
in the cabinets of curiosities of the European courts. Furthermore, as we note in
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  17

the book’s title, theory and practice have always been deeply interwoven within
museum studies, and the discipline has had several names, such as museology,
museum studies and museography (Brulon Soares 2019). This legacy-chain of
knowledge and the understanding of historical perspectives and concepts provide
students with skills to navigate among contemporary, short-term fluctuations.
Susanna Pettersson and Kimmo Levä describe the changing operational ground
of museums and museum leadership. They advocate the need for new strategies
and concentrate on developments in museum professionalism and management.

Johanna Enqvist
Reflections on Museology – Classifications, conceptualisations and concepts at
the core of museology theory and practice

Nina Robbins
Locating Museology Outside the Box

Kerstin Smeds
Critical Museology, Social Museology, Practical Museology or What? – Inter-
national museologies and Scandinavia

Janne Vilkuna
The Genesis of Finnish Museology

Susanna Pettersson
Museum Leadership – New competencies and the cycle of change

Kimmo Levä
Strategic Management in a Changing Operating Environment

Leena Tokila
Continuing Professional Education as a Tool for Developing Museums

References
Brulon Soares, B 2019 Museology, building bridges. In Brulon Soares, B
(ed.) A History of Museology: Key authors of museological theory.
Paris: ICOFOM. pp. 17–40.

Museums Decree (Museolaki) 314/2019. Available at [Link]

fi/laki/alkup/2019/20190314 [Last accessed 20 January 2020].

Robbins, N 2019 Promoting Value Practice in Museums Creates Impact.

Curator: The Museum Journal DOI: [Link]
cura.12350

Vilkuna, J 2010 Museologia ja Suomen museot. In Pettersson, S & Kinanen,

P Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki: SKS. pp. 332–346.
18 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Reflections on Museology
– Classifications,
conceptualisations and concepts
at the core of museology theory
and practice
Johanna Enqvist1
Abstract
This chapter theorises the museum as an agency or technology of classification
(Fyfe 1995) to discuss and demonstrate how world views, ideologies, knowledge
and power are composed and entangled in the classifications, conceptualisations
and conceptual systems of museums. I argue that the analysis, deconstruction
and awareness of nature and implications of conceptualisations, as well as the
discourses to which they are attached, are crucial, regarding both the theory and
practice of museology. Drawing from critical museology and heritage studies, I
consider the concept of the museum in light of its history as a Western institu-
tion and deeply implicated in the modernist and nationalist quest for an order
of things and peoples (Bennett 1995). While museums have transformed and
redefined their principles and practices in recent decades, the museum institution
has not abandoned its original function as an instrument for characterising and
representing the world by cataloguing. Classifications and conceptual systems
offer a critical key to the investigation and deconstruction of the museum’s
categorical legacy. This chapter presents the connection between classification
and conceptualisation, as profound human activities, and the formation of con-
cepts and discourses, as well as the intertwined dyad of knowledge and power
operating and manifesting itself in the museum institution. At the operational
level, I examine some examples of processes and applications, such as semantic
web ontologies, through which worldviews, knowledge systems and more or
less consciously pursued ideologies embedded in classifications and conceptual
systems are integrated into museum practices.

Keywords: concepts, classification, theory, critical heritage studies, critical

museology

Introduction
In the history of the modern museum, the concept of the museum has been fluid
and debated, constantly rethought and redefined, both in museums and heritage
organisations and in academic research concerning museums and heritage (Davis,

1. This chapter has been peer reviewed.

Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  19

Mairesse & Desvallées 2010; Woodham 2019). As some museums have radically
transformed, adjusted and re-invented their principles, policies and practices
over recent decades, ICOM stated in the aftermath of the 2016 ICOM General
Conference that the museum definition from the ICOM Statutes in 2007 no
longer seems to reflect the challenges and manifold visions and responsibilities
of museums (ICOM 2019). ICOM has thus invited members and other interested
parties to take part in creating a more current definition (see also Ehanti, this
volume). The responses to ICOM’s request, and the new alternative museum
definition based on them, stressed the museum’s institutional role as media or
as a cultural service, which enables and encourages its clients to engage with
their heritage and to participate in the process of heritagisation, where the past
is used in the present and for the future:2

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical

dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and address-
ing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and
specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future
generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for
all people. (ICOM 2019)

Despite the current aspirations to redefine the concept and purpose of the mu-
seum to appear as a more inclusive, more participatory and more democratising
facilitator of the critical dialogue, the decades-old characterisations of the mu-
seum as a “Classifying House” (Whitehead 1971, p. 155, p. 159; 1970, p. 50, p.
56) or “an agency of classification” (Fyfe 1995, p. 203, see also Macdonald 1996)
remain accurate. Museum practices – the ways museums classify and organise
space, people and artefacts – compose classifications, conceptual systems and
discourses, which guide us to perceive reality and its subjects, objects, actors and
their relationships in a particular manner. Within these frameworks, museums
offer representations of the world, which are socially constructed and profoundly
connected to their societal and cultural contexts (Shelton 2013).

However, despite their seemingly natural, normal and rational nature, these
depictions of the world are not inevitable, but contingent. To allow and enable
the genuinely democratised and inclusive discussion – a critical dialogue – about
the past in the present, the naturalising process and ideologies embedded in

2. The process of composing the proposition for the new definition apparently turned out to be far
from unanimous. For instance, François Mairesse, a professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
and the chair of the International Committee of Museology, critiqued the proposal as being “not a
definition but a statement of fashionable values, much too complicated and partly aberrant” (Noce
2019). The proposition for the new museum definition was intended to be put to a vote as part of
the ICOM Statutes at the Kyoto International Conference in 2019. However, after a debate among
ICOM members, the Extraordinary General Assembly decided to postpone the vote (based on the
arguments presented in the debate, see, e.g., Ehanti, Turtiainen & Patokorpi 2019; Nelson 2019).
The museum definition proposal is to be submitted for a vote again at the ICOM General Conference
in 2022 (ICOM 2021).
20 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

museum practices could, and should, be made more visible and analysed criti-
cally, both at the theoretical and operational levels of museology.

It is essential to acknowledge that taking a critical perspective does not mean

merely to judge the current state of affairs as problematic, but to increase aware-
ness of the fact that the current situation that seems to be inescapable is not
(Hacking 1999). Concerning museology, the critical approach has been emerging
since the 1970s “in opposition to the objectivist claims, universalist pretensions,
and ideological effects of operational museology”, as Anthony Shelton (2018,
p. 1), an anthropologist and researcher in critical museology, has put it (see
also Smeds, this volume). According to Shelton (2018), and aligning with the
more or less explicated goals of critical heritage studies (Smith 2012a), critical
museology examines not only the practices of operational museology, but also
the range of academic, administrative and professional heritage institutions,
organisations and policies through which institutional narratives and discourses
are mediated and regulated. The suggested purpose of critical museology is to
sustain an ongoing critical dialogue that provokes a self-reflexive attitude towards
museum practices (Shelton 2013, p. 18).

In the creation of the representations and displays – the museum’s distinc-

tive ways to communicate with society and address its diverse communities
– classifications, concepts, terms and conceptual systems play a crucial part.
They are necessary for ordering the otherwise chaotic reality and abundance
of potential museum objects, the collections of artefacts and specimens. At the
same time, they carry a package loaded with connotations, allusions and direct
references connected to ideologies, knowledge systems and structures of power,
intertwined with the development and history of Western science, societies and
nation-building (Aronsson & Elgenius 2015). As one of the Western institutions,
the museum is deeply implicated in the modernist and nationalist quest for an
order of things and peoples (Bennett 1995; Macdonald 1996). Classifications and
conceptual systems, the supporting structures of institutional discourses, thus
offer one key to the investigation and deconstruction of this legacy.

Moreover, as cultural theorist and critic Mieke Bal (2002, p.13) has claimed, we
should care for concepts because they “are the sites of debate, awareness of dif-
ference, and tentative exchange”. Bal’s thesis states that interdisciplinarity in the
humanities must seek its heuristic and methodological basis on concepts rather
than methods. Merely borrowing a loose term here and there would not create
real interdisciplinarity. Instead, we should embrace concepts, not so much as
firmly established univocal terms, but as dynamic and vague, as they are. While
groping to define what a particular concept may mean we gain insight into what
it can do. Bal (2002, p. 11) stresses that it is in this groping that the valuable
work lies, and such groping, our fumbling efforts to analyse and define concepts,
is a collective, continuous endeavour. Therefore, concepts are the backbone of
cultural analysis and interdisciplinary studies, such as museum and heritage
studies – not because they mean the same thing to everyone, but because they
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  21

do not. For the same reason, concepts can also work as instruments in building
a bridge between museology theory and practice.

Classification and conceptualisation – Creating order

A certain Chinese encyclopaedia, a fictitious taxonomy of animals described by
Jorge Luis Borges in his 1964 essay, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,
is often used to illustrate the contextuality, arbitrariness and cultural specificity
of any attempt to categorise the world:

Animals are divided into: (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) em-
balmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids,
(f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classi-
fication, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones,
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) others, (m) those
that have just broken the flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from
a distance. (Borges 1964, p. 103)

Borges’ fable inspired the philosopher, historian and social theorist Michel
Foucault’s (1966/2002) seminal work The Order of Things, in the foreword of
which he writes:

Out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage [in Borges], all
the familiar landmarks of my thought – our thought, the thought that
bears the stamp of our age and geography – breaking all up the ordered
surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild
profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb
and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and
the Other. (Foucault 1966/2002, p. xvi)

Foucault (ibid., pp. xvi–xix) asserts that Borges not only demonstrated the ex-
otic charm of another system of thought, but also the limitation of our own, the
impossibility of thinking disorder, i.e., combining things that are inappropriate
in terms of the prevailing classification systems and conceptualisations we have
adapted. Arguing that the museum in its classifying role has been actively en-
gaged over time in the construction of varying rationalities, museologist Eilean
Hooper-Greenhill (1992, pp. 4–5) quotes Borges (and Foucault) as well, noting
that “the system of classification, ordering, and framing, on which such a list is
based is so fundamentally alien to our western way of thinking as to be, in fact,
‘unthinkable’, and, indeed, ‘irrational’”. However, she asks how we can be sure
that there is not a rationality that explains the sense of the list. As Hooper-Green-
hill suggests, the whole classification process used to create museum collections,
with all the exclusions, inclusions, values and priorities, also creates systems of
knowledge, epistemes (see also Foucault 1969). Therefore, we should be aware
of the fact that existing classifications and taxonomies within the museum might
enable some ways of knowing, but prevent others.
22 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

The cultural, post-colonial and social theorist Couze Venn (2006) points out that
museums, as cultural artefacts and documents of prevailing rationales and intel-
lectual discourses themselves, reveal how a society or culture at a particular time
in history addresses “the ordering of the orderable” (ibid., p. 36). Like Foucault
(1966/2002; 1969) and Hooper-Greenhill (1992), Venn connects the question
of order, on the one hand, to the idea of the knowable and orderable, and, on
the other hand, to a worldview, one that is profoundly contextual, historical
and contingent. The techniques and practices that museums apply to collect
and interpret their objects, classifying, cataloguing and naming, can thus be
defined as a distinct epistemological genre, as particular ways of understanding
the world and composing a category of knowing (Robinson 2019, pp. 34–35).
The aspirations to reform the museum into “democratising, inclusive and pol-
yphonic spaces for critical dialogue” (ICOM 2019), with participatory practices
and shared agency in the creation of institutional heritage, evidently generate
situations where diverse knowledge and knowledge systems are compared and
contradicted. Especially in participatory or communal research projects, nego-
tiations concerning these epistemologies should be part of the research subject
and under analysis as well (Atalay 2010), to which classifications and conceptu-
alisations offer considerable value. However, it is not worthwhile to evaluate the
truth value of conceptions and belief systems that seem to be in contradiction to
scientific knowledge and worldviews. Their value lies instead in their capacity
to propose alternative conceptions of reality and to convey unfamiliar ways of
being in and perceiving the world (Enqvist 2016, pp. 28–29).

The knowledge systems and rationalities embedded in a museum’s ordering

practices also connect these practices to the intertwined nature of knowledge and
power. As Foucault (1980) argued, knowledge and power always occur together,
and knowledge is power in the sense that it creates space where power can work
(see also Foucault & Gordon 1980). For instance, the discipline of history, as an
inspection of the past, also controls the past by knowing it (Husa 1995). Like
history, other fields of research or expertise, such as heritage governance, gen-
erate spaces of knowledge, for which they position themselves as guardians and
authorities. Moreover, because power is involved in the construction of truths,
and knowledge has implications for power, the production, distribution and
consumption of knowledge are always political, understood as workings of power
(Macdonald 1998, p. 3). The anthropologist and museum and heritage scholar
Sharon Macdonald (ibid.) accurately summarises that at the museum, politics
lies not just in explicit policy statements and intentions, but also in implicit and
apparently non-political details, such as the architecture of buildings, techniques
of display or classification and the juxtaposition of artefacts in an exhibition.

Concepts, Terms and Discourses

Concepts have been studied and theorised in several disciplines. This is obviously
the case in linguistics, but also in philosophy, psychology and history, as well
as in the cognitive and computer sciences. Despite their varying emphases and
definitions regarding the meaning of the concept, all the perspectives analysing
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  23

concepts agree that they are kinds of mental representations that categorise
the world for us, creating order to an otherwise chaotic reality (Machery 2005;
Murphy 2002, p. 5; Smith & Medin 1981, p. 8). As suggested by the cognitive
metaphor theory in linguistics, we classify the world through our embodiment,
so concepts are part of our experience as neural beings (Johnson 2017; Lakoff &
Johnson 1999, p. 19). In addition to their embodied nature, conceptualisations
and their linguistic forms are adapted, by growing as a member of a specific
community and culture (Larjavaara 2007, p. 152; Piccinini 2011, p. 179). Conse-
quently, the connection between conceptualisation and culture brings conceptual
systems to the fore, firstly, in any attempt to study and represent cultures and
cultural artefacts, one of the central ideas of the museum, and secondly, in any
analysis of the past, present or future museum as a cultural institution and
artefact in and of itself.

The sociocognitive approach to terminology describes concepts, the items which

need definitions in a terminological sense, as units of understanding, through
which it is possible to observe and dissect the interaction between the human
mind, language and the world (Temmerman 2000, p. 73). Especially regarding
research, it is crucial to acknowledge that boundaries of knowledge are the same
as boundaries of concepts and the language used to designate them (Kivinen &
Piiroinen 2008, p. 207; Raatikainen 2008, p. 11, p. 13). This does not insinuate
that scholarly thinking is predetermined or delimited by some inherent and fixed
conceptual frames. On the contrary, conceptual creativity is an essential trigger
for intellectual innovativeness and paradigm shifts (Bal 2002).

Although language composes one aspect of the concept, concepts should not be
conflated with words and language. The multidimensionality of the concept can
be represented within the framework of the so-called semiotic triangle, as three
aspects of the concept (Karlsson 1994; Ogden & Richards 1923):

• The mind, or meaning, which is sometimes compared with the concept

itself. The concept is its meaning.

• Language, or linguistic expression (word, name, definition and sign),

which designates the concept. Pictures or images are also signs, and thus
belong to the sphere of language.3

• The world, meaning a referent, is the object or objects of the world to

which the concept refers.

Discourse can be understood as the home of the concept, where its meaning
emerges in relation to other concepts in the network of a conceptual system. In
everyday language, discourse usually refers to a discussion, but as a scholarly

3. In terminological work, the mere designation is often called a term, which is then the linguistic
form of the concept. Designations vary in different languages, and even in the same language there
can be synonymous designations. That is why the starting point for terminological work is always a
concept – the meaning of the term.
24 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

term, it can be defined as a coherent perspective that guides our communication

and interaction. As such, discourse composes a context-specific framework for
making sense of some aspect of reality (van Leeuwen 2014). Since concepts,
including scientific categories, are bodily and perceptually based, metaphorical
models link a language system to the world of experience and functioning of
the embodied mind, our cognition and conceptual system (Lakoff & Johnson
1999, 1980; Temmerman 2000). Language can thus be defined as a resource
for discourses that both reflect and affect the social context in which they are
created, maintained and reproduced (Fairclough 1995, pp. 40–41; Verschueren
2009, pp. 19–20).

Consequently, and in contrast to the understandings and criticisms of discourse

as solely linguistic, and thus exterior to material reality, the concept of discourse
can be regarded as a multi-modal, multi-semiotic and historically contingent
social practice (van Leeuwen 2014). While the central role of language in human
interaction and communication has to be acknowledged, the multi-modality of
discourse puts alternative modes of meaning-making under analysis as well: how
concepts and discourses emerge through embodiments, visualisations, physical
constructions, technologies and practices. Aligning with the embodied origin of
our conceptual systems, Karen Barad’s (2003, 2007) theory of agential realism
offers one thought-provoking theoretical framework to back up the analysis of
the multimodality of concepts and discourses. In Barad’s account, meaning and
materiality are not separate and separable, but co-emergent in the process of
creative becoming. Barad states that concepts and things do not have determi-
nate boundaries, properties or meanings apart from their mutual intra-actions;
therefore, meaning and materiality emerge in a continuous materialising per-
formance of the world. Also, we are all part of it: “We do not obtain knowledge
by standing outside of the world; we know because we are of the world” (Barad
2007, p. 185). Barad refers to this as onto-epistemology – the study of practices
of knowing in being.

According to Foucault (1971, 1969), the formation of utterances in a discourse

is regulated by practices of discourse, the set of socially established ways to
communicate. Practices of discourse direct us to write or speak about things in a
specific manner, defining what is normal and accepted interaction in particular
situations (see also Fairclough 1992). Classifications and conceptualisations can
be regarded as constitutive elements of discursive practices that regulate our
communication. Besides language and texts, these rules can concern material
reality, institutional structures and the organisation of people, tools and archi-
tecture, which can all express the prevailing practices of discourse. Foucault
(1971) also described discourse as “violence against things”, as he states that it
is the discursive practice that guides the way we communicate, but it also alters
the subject of the communication. Practices of discourse thus convey a specific
ideology or worldview composing and producing ways to perceive reality and
its subjects, objects, actors and their relationships. In an academic context,
this worldview can be compared to a paradigm or a particular combination of
theoretical and philosophical commitments.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  25

Hence, discourse, supported by its distinct conceptual system derived from the
classifications of the world, both constrains and enables what can be said, as well
as how the world can be represented and signified, constituted and constructed
with meanings (Fairclough 1992). It also defines what counts as meaningful
statements or knowledge, referring to both the subject of knowledge and the
conventions of producing knowledge (ibid., pp. 127–128). Foucault (1969, 1971)
furthermore claims that the anonymous rules that guide the practices of discourse
are too obvious to be detected by the people who are creating and maintaining
a discourse. The action, effects or ideology of discourse can, therefore, only be
examined and revealed through consistent and systematic analysis.

Nonetheless, conducting research on key concepts and the official discourse of

archaeological heritage management in Finland (Enqvist 2016), I discovered
features that at first glance seem to question the coercive nature and almost
independent agency of discourse, as claimed by Foucault. For instance, some
of the heritage officials I interviewed were both conscious of and displeased
about the fact that institutional discourse concerning archaeological heritage
twined so intensively around the Antiquities Act, presenting mainly juridical
arguments for the protection of archaeological sites. Also, the dissonance be-
tween the conceptions written in official texts and the reflections archaeologists
expressed in personal interviews was evident. In the interviews, the archaeol-
ogists articulated far more complex views and versatile understandings of the
key concepts than they did in the texts they had produced while representing
the institution of heritage governance. Those working as heritage officials con-
sidered the restricting of the concept of heritage merely to the material objects
as a pragmatic, conscious choice they had to make, to simplify communication
with their interest groups, especially when they were dealing with laypeople
(Enqvist 2014; 2016, pp. 266–267).

Although the awareness of the interviewees seemed, to some extent, contrary to

Foucault’s assumptions about the conductive and coercive power of discourse,
one might argue that this is how discourses work. They produce and maintain
a world view that includes conceptual classifications, identities and roles – an
ideology – that composes a coherent framework in which some choices appear
to be more practical, logical, correct or even necessary than others. From this
perspective, they would not really be choices at all, but more like explanations
produced retrospectively for the choices the discourse makes for its participants.
Besides, an authoritarian work culture, as well as controversies, tensions and
insecurities caused by a lack of resources and work opportunities, have for a long
time characterised the social context of Finnish archaeology. These detrimental
characteristics may have created a social environment where archaeologists,
especially those working in heritage management, have been likely to exercise
strong self-control in order to preserve and protect not only archaeological her-
itage, but also the conventional discourse within which conceptualisations, such
as the given meaning of the concept of heritage, are constructed and represented
(Enqvist 2016).
26 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

The museum as a classifying house

While museums have transformed, adjusted and re-invented their principles,
policies and practices in recent decades, the museum institution has not aban-
doned its original function as an instrument for characterising the world by
cataloguing. The process of classifying, i.e., creating categories through distinc-
tions and combinations, concerns not only the artefacts in museum collections,
but also the museum itself as an institution, the people governing, researching,
curating and visiting the displays and the physical and organisational structures,
buildings and environments involved in composing the museum.

The primary questions regarding classification processes arise from the prevailing
understandings of the museum and its purpose as one of the cultural institu-
tions serving contemporary society: How do we define the museum compared
to other cultural institutions or memory organisations, e.g., to libraries and
archives?4 How do we categorise different kinds of museums? (see also Oikari
and Ranki, this volume) What kinds of objects are appropriate to collect and
display in a museum in the first place, i.e., what makes up the heritage that a
museum is supposed to preserve and represent? The distinctions we make an-
swering these questions, such as the conceptualisations of nature and culture
or art and ethnography, also turn into materialised manifestations, which both
reflect and create a societal and cultural context with a particular spatial and
temporal order, identity and interaction (Gordon-Walker 2019; Hooper-Greenhill
1992, p. 6; Macdonald 1996). In the following, I examine some examples of the
processes and applications with which world views and ideologies embedded in
classifications and conceptual systems are woven into museological practices.

The concept of ideology refers here to a general system of thinking which con-
sists of all ontological, epistemological and ethical conceptions and beliefs about
the world, not just consciously conducted political or religious ideologies. As
an analytical tool, ideology connects the analysis of conceptual systems and
discourses to the human mind, and the activities of individuals and communi-
ties, guided by ideologies (Fairclough 2004, pp. 9–10, 1989; Heikkinen 1999;
Verschueren 2011). The underlying presumption for this analysis states that a
conceptual system reflects and produces ideological meanings, i.e, elementary
conceptions and categorisations concerning good and bad, right and wrong or
us and them. Ideologies thus define how communities themselves, their mem-
bership or relationships to other communities or how the social hierarchies,
values and rules of a particular community are represented (Heikkinen 1999,
pp. 95–97). At the same time, ideologies serve power by legitimising existing
social relations and positions of power (Fairclough 1989, p. 2; Heikkinen 1999,

4. It is noteworthy that one of the major targets of the opponents regarding the proposal for the
new museum definition (ICOM 2019) is the proposal’s claimed inability to catch the distinguishing
characteristics of the museum in relation to other cultural institutions, such as cultural centres,
libraries or laboratories, or to take into account the “extraordinary variety” of museums (Noce 2019).
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  27

p. 94). The conceptual systems adopted, produced and maintained by museums

are not an exception in this regard.

Museums are constituted within the prevailing epistemological context. There-

fore, they enable different possibilities of knowing, depending on the context,
rules and structures in place at the time (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, p. 191). The
emergence of the museum in the nineteenth century is linked with the devel-
opment of modern ways of seeing and knowing the world, through the eyes
of the detached viewer, depicted as ordered and organised representation, as
“world-as-exhibition” (Bennett 1995; Macdonald 1998, p. 10; Mitchell 1991,
p. 13, p. 19). Embodying the close connection between knowledge and power
(Foucault 1980), museums were thus places where political power could operate
to maintain the existing social order by representing the newly created nations
and categorisations of people based on cultural, racial and class differences as
facts and knowledge with tangible evidence, i.e., museum objects (Bennett 1998;
Macdonald 1998, p. 11; Mitchell 1991, p. 7). Museum collections also offered
relevant source material for research. Consequently, the arrangement of objects
and displays in museums aimed to manifest the profound principles and evo-
lutionary order revealed by science. Museums were hence not conceptualised
just as containers of scientific facts, but as important actors and educators in
spreading the scientific world view to the uneducated masses (Bennett 1998;
Macdonald 1998, pp. 12–13).

Accordingly, this two-fold purpose of the museum, in addition to stressing

knowledge as the museum’s primary product, also included and required an
ideological categorisation of people engaged in museum activities. This created
the role of experts/educators, whose responsibility was to produce, save and
share knowledge, and non-experts/learners, whose task was to obtain and ac-
quire that knowledge. Experts, researchers and museum professionals, further
classified by their disciplinary expertise, were thus granted privileged access to
examine collections as their research object, as well as authority to define what
knowledge is and how it is supposed to be represented.

Besides the division of people into the roles of active communicator and passive
receiver, the disciplinary perspectives, with their classifications and concep-
tualisations, are elementary to the categorical legacies with which museums
must work today (Gordon-Walker 2019). Also, they are focal instruments for
so-called authorised heritage discourse (AHD), a theoretical concept coined by
the archaeologist and heritage scholar Laurajane Smith (2012b, 2006), which
refers to the official, traditional and mainly Western way of understanding and
defining heritage in contemporary societies. Created, maintained and reproduced
within the network of national and international heritage organisations, their
institutional practices and key texts, AHD privileges expertise and represents
heritage as an official canon of sites and artefacts that sustain the narratives
of nation, class and science (Smith 2006; on Finnish AHD, see Enqvist 2016;
Linkola 2015; Vahtikari 2013).
28 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Research knowledge always includes classifications, which serve their aim if they
successfully ascertain and reflect real differences and similarities in the world. A
famous example of such a successful scientific classification is the periodic table
of the elements (Dupré 2006). In effect, classification serves a particular purpose
at all times. Different purposes, such as research and collection management, will
motivate and produce different classifications. However, as Hooper-Greenhill
(1992, pp. 4–5) has noted, classification in the museum often takes place within
an “ethos of obviousness”. This note aligns with my conclusions (Enqvist 2016)
on Finnish AHD regarding archaeological heritage, i.e., it represents the world
turned into indisputable and naturalised conceptual categories, as well as into
quantitative measurements – exact numbers reflecting scientific rigour. Things
in this world are divided into taxonomy-like categories and classes, which are
then appointed, by the practice of naming, to specific expertise and experts. For
instance, the category of archaeological heritage is defined as particular kinds
of material entities whose physical integrity, interpretation and representation
archaeologists, the experts, control as owners and guardians of heritage (see also,
Smith 2006). The world, classified and named in a certain way, is thus taken as
a circumstance-like condition, almost as a self-organised system following some
natural order (Enqvist 2016, p. 265). Furthermore, this epistemic certainty does
not concern merely the classification of physical reality and material things, but
also the categories based on values and evaluations related to artefact types or
individual artefacts (ibid., pp. 272–273).

The categorisation of disciplines itself is profoundly connected to one of the

most pervasive distinctions in museums, i.e., the distinction between nature and
culture. This distinction is based on the Western philosophical tradition and the
Enlightenment, but was established even more firmly throughout the nineteenth
century with the emergence of modern museums (Berger 1980). According to
Caitlin Gordon-Walker (2019), museums have been instrumental in representing
and reproducing the nature/culture distinction through their material collections
and exhibitions, paralleling the emergence of academic disciplines. This division
into separate departments, or even separate institutions, devoted respectively to
natural history and human culture, came with more formalised strategies for the
interpretation and care of museum collections. Understood through taxonomic
systems, as a scientifically ordered entity, nature was thus conceptualised as more
knowable, something which could then be mobilised for various purposes. For
example, the classification of indigenous peoples as scientific specimens which
belong to the realm of the natural, enabled the legitimising of colonial practices,
such as slavery, the appropriation of territory and the establishment of laws and
institutions intended to civilize indigenous populations. The scientific mastery
of the natural world is also connected to the technological and physical mastery
over what was later conceptualised as natural resources to be exploited or, with
the emergence of the conservation movement, protected (Gordon-Walker 2019,
pp. 251–252).

Although there is no uniformity with regard to the detailed terminology of herit-

age governance between countries (Ahmad 2006), the current categorisation of
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  29

institutionally managed cultural and natural heritage within AHD is internation-

ally agreed to include tangible, intangible, digital and environments (Council of
the European Union 2014; UNESCO 2003a; 2003b; 1972). This categorisation
relates not only to the nature/culture division, but also to Cartesian mind/body
dualism (aka substance dualism), stating that mind and matter, the mental and
the physical, are ontologically distinct substances (Robinson 2017). In feminist
thinking, the opposition between mind and body have been correlated with an
opposition between male and female, with the female regarded as trapped in
her bodily existence at the expense of rationality (Lennon 2019). As the philos-
opher Kathleen Lennon (ibid.) notes, such enmeshment in “corporeality” has
further been attributed to colonised bodies and the lower classes (Alcoff 2006,
on categories reflecting the bourgeoisie gender system; see also Sarantola-Weiss,
this volume).

Nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, cultural elitism and ethnic and social

discrimination represent kinds of grievances, societal control and governmen-
tality of which critical heritage studies is aiming to neutralise and deconstruct
through critical analysis and redefinition of heritage (Smith 2012a, pp. 534–535).
Consequently, rethinking, recognising and dissolving modernist dichotomies,
such as the division of nature and culture, mind and matter or the human and
non-human worlds, has been claimed as one of the strategies of critical herit-
age studies, and a vital presumption in novel research perspectives based on
posthumanism and new materialism (González-Ruibal 2013; Harrison 2013,
pp. 44–45; Sterling 2020). In terms of museum theory and practices, a post-
human reconceptualisation of research and documentation procedures could
support the analysis and description of objects as “thingness” and “socio-material
compositions”, as suggested and demonstrated by museum and digital heritage
scholar Fiona Cameron (2018, p. 352). Nevertheless, the categorical legacies of
Western science and thinking will undoubtedly continue to outline the organi-
sation and practices of museums, as well as other cultural institutions dealing
with heritage, long into the future.

Interpreting cultural heritage with ontologies and

vocabularies
As demonstrated in this chapter, museums and memory organisations have a long
tradition of using classifications, conceptualisations, taxonomies, term lists and
controlled vocabularies to organise and interpret their collections (Hyvönen 2012,
p. 57; Parry, Poole & Pratty 2010, pp. 96–97). Ross Parry, Nick Poole and Jon
Pratty, museum scholars with expertise in digital heritage (2010, p. 96), elaborate
further that “semantic thinking” has always been an integral part of museums;
the ongoing act of making meaning with and among collected objects defines
museums today and has throughout their history. In other words, museums are
places where “we give or reinforce meanings to things” (ibid.). In recent decades,
the automated and systematic processing of computer technology has come to
support and augment this semantic project of museums. The application of the
30 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

principles and technologies of Linked Data and the Semantic Web is the newest
approach to address the problems of managing and publishing syntactically
and semantically heterogeneous, multilingual and highly interlinked Cultural
Heritage (CH) data produced by memory organisations. This development has
led to the creation of national and international portals, such as Europeana, to
open data repositories, such as the Linked Open Data Cloud and to publications
involving-linked library data in the USA, Europe and Asia (Hyvönen 2012, p. vi).

Ontologies, i.e., formal and explicit specifications of a shared conceptualis-

ation, such as domain-specific gazetteers, classifications, concept hierarchies
and controlled vocabularies, are integral to the structure and development of
the Semantic Web. Ontologies can be processed with algorithms, so they are
used for facilitating and harmonising metadata descriptions, for fostering in-
teroperability across different organisations and domains and for data linking
(Hyvönen 2012, pp. 57–62). As explicit representations of conceptualisations and
conceptual systems, ontologies offer a particular, fixed and ordered selection of
meanings with which objects, or their metadata, can be precise and annotated,
and thus enriched. In Finland, the National Library maintains Finto, a Finnish
thesaurus and ontology service, which enables the publication and utilisation
of vocabularies, ontologies and classifications. The Finto service also includes
the Ontology for Museum Domain and Applied Arts (MAO/TAO) combining
three different ontologies, one of which is composed, maintained and updated
for the description of museum objects by the Finnish Heritage Agency (Kouki
& Suhonen 2017).

In the most optimistic aspirations, the Semantic Web enables global memory
organisations (museums, libraries and archives) to share their collections and
contents online, as open, semantically rich and connected data, with new kinds
of intelligent semantic search and recommendation services (Hyvönen 2012, p.
2). Moreover, as Parry, Poole & Pratty (2010, p. 103) note, the principle of the
Semantic Web to connect meaning and object resonates with museums’ long-time
objectives to define, classify and present. However, regarding cultural heritage
data and the Semantic Web, there lie some dilemmas to solve and obstacles to
overcome before this vision can become reality, if ever. The biggest problems are
caused by the fact that, unlike digitisation or cataloguing, the Semantic Web is
not a coherent practice or set of practices. Therefore, it is difficult for museums
to make informed decisions about which technologies, platforms, models and
methodologies to use (Parry, Poole & Pratty 2010, p. 104). One of the fundamen-
tal challenges to the ability of museums to make their collections semantically
rich is the same lack of time and resources, which had slowed down the actual
cataloguing process even before the arrival of new technologies (ibid., p. 102).
The composing, maintaining and updating of ontologies and vocabularies needed
in the process is not a simple task either, but requires a considerable amount of
person-years and expertise, both in substance and conceptual analysis.

In addition to the practical and economic challenges, the practices of mean-

ing-making involved in applying new technologies raise complex issues and
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  31

questions that are more deeply rooted in the foundations of the museum in-
stitution and its purpose. How do we ensure that the evolving practices and
technologies, such as ontologies, align and support the paradigms, perspectives
and ideals chosen for future museums? In what ways might they transform the
museum institution, or the ways museum objects are interpreted, understood
and accessed? (Cameron 2010, p. 80) As Cameron (ibid., p. 81) argues, collec-
tion management databases are, after all, the primary tool with which museums
document, organise and interpret their objects, and at the same time, define and
communicate their significance and value. Cameron stresses her point by referring
to historian and museologist Gaynor Kavanagh’s (1990) acknowledgement that
it is in the individual object records that conventional and totalising practices
take root. How an object is acquired and documented will, to a considerable
extent, determine how it will be understood in the future.

Concerning the semantic future for museums, there are at least two different
versions, according to Parry, Poole & Pratty (2010, p. 99). Firstly, there will be
an “extreme vision of the hard Semantic Web”, with prescribed and persistent
ontologies based on existing collection standards and term lists predicated by
the professional community of experts. Secondly, there will be a vision of a “soft
Semantic Web”, with user-defined ontologies and community-created solutions,
composed by several communities of interest, also outside the museum institu-
tion. The vision of a softer future emerges from justified suspicions concerning
the possibility to construct universally applicable ontologies, instead of localised,
variable and liquid conceptualisations more suitable to capture the dynamic and
contextual nature of any conceptual system.

There is, indeed, empirical evidence showing that the difficulty of prescribing
categories that can be applied universally, i.e., the problem of conceptual fit,
is particularly evident concerning access to and documentation of Maori and
Aboriginal collections (Cameron 2010, p. 88). This observation supports the idea
of considering and exploring alternative classification systems that acknowl-
edge, for instance, indigenous knowledge models. Also, as addressed already by
Hooper-Greenhill (1992, p. 7, pp. 194–196), instead of having some essential,
fixed identity, the identity and meaning of material things are constituted in
each case according to the articulations of the epistemological framework, the
field of use, the gaze, technologies and power practices. This polysemy of ob-
jects thus means that an object’s meaning and its classification is not objective,
self-evident or singular, but situated and contextual (Macdonald 2006, p. 6;
Robinson 2019, p. 33). Accordingly, the imposition of an artificial order and
fixed categories in acquisition, documentation or object records is ill-suited to
the new ways of seeing objects as polysemic entities, with fluctuating and varying
meanings, open to interdisciplinary interpretations (Cameron 2010, p. 84; see
also Häyhä et al., this volume).

The aforementioned idea of fluctuating and contextually constructed meanings

also aligns with the most recent critical understandings and theorisations of
heritage, as a cultural process composed of a series of discursive practices and
32 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

implicated in power relations and ideological constructs, i.e., a performative

process of meaning-making, of doing instead of being (Harrison 2013, p. 113;
Harvey 2001). At the same time, it is evident that there are in fact several con-
cepts of heritage, the meanings of which do not have strict boundaries (on the
history of heritage definitions, see, e.g., Davison 2008). Instead, they demon-
strate deeply intertwined, overlapping and interacting aspects of the phenomena
called heritage (Enqvist 2014; 2016). However, only one of these meanings is
currently chosen to characterise Cultural Heritage regarding the development
of Semantic Web technologies: the official definition, which classifies heritage
within the categories of cultural and natural or tangible and intangible heritage
(Hyvönen 2012, p. 1). While concentrating and building on these fixed categories,
this conceptualisation misses the actual process of heritagisation, the framing
and practice through which heritage is created and maintained.

Conclusion
The community of museum and heritage professionals can be considered a spe-
cialised epistemic community that shares a knowledge system and a discourse,
which is organised and structured by classifications, conceptualisations and
concepts, the units of understanding. Any analysis and redefinition of the societal
meaning, goals and purpose of the museum institution thus require analysing
and deconstructing the prevailing implicit and explicit classifications, but also
the categorical legacies that frame and guide museum theory and practice.

Museums have played an essential role in creating and legitimising the scien-
tific framework for classifying and conceptualising, for instance, the categories
of nature and culture, to further support the ideals of empire, nation, gender,
industry or conservation (Bennett 2004; Gordon-Walker 2019; Yanni 1999).
However, this also applies to the idea of human exceptionalism in regard to
other species, as well as to our detachment from nature and the environment.
Challenging the existing order can enable us to be not only more aware of the
manifold implications of classifications and categorisations, but also to think,
literally, outside the box to create novel and innovative perspectives, and to
facilitate a constructive and critical dialogue that could increase our under-
standing of ourselves and others. In other words, we should consciously work
to be aware of the existence and the ways in which particular concepts and
discourses construct our social reality and conventions, which are transmuted
into an inevitable and naturalised way of organising the world (Waterton, Smith
& Campbell 2006, p. 343).

Nevertheless, museums are stuck with classifications – every display is organised

and constructed on a particular conceptual system, the order for which it also
has the potential to re-create and redefine. Classifying concepts and specific
terminologies applied to museum collections and displays reflect understandings
of general concepts and profound conceptions, such as the nature of time or hu-
manity. Therefore, conceptual analysis can serve as a useful tool for much-needed
self-reflection on ontological, epistemological and ethical commitments behind
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  33

representations created at museums. As concepts and their meanings associated

with museum objects are plural, cross-disciplinary, alternative and sometimes
conflicting (Cameron 2010, p. 86), the role of the laypeople, museum visitors
and collection users should also be recognised and appreciated in the cycle of
knowledge and meaning-making.

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40 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Locating Museology Outside the

Box
Nina Robbins

Joskus sanotaan, että pitää ajatella laatikon ulkopuolella. Mutta ei laa-

tikon ulkopuolellakaan voi ajatella ilman laatikkoa. Bengt Holmström
(Helsingin Sanomat, 16 July 2018)

Sometimes you hear that you should think outside the box. But even
outside the box, you cannot think without the box. Bengt Holmström
(Helsingin Sanomat, 16 July 2018)

Abstract
My chapter explores the possibilities of how museum professionals can prepare
themselves for value-related discussions with other stakeholders within soci-
ety. In this process, it is important to view museological issues from a wider
perspective. By locating oneself outside the box, so to say, this becomes more
plausible. While engaging in such discourse, one should not disregard the value
of museum collections. The care of collections, century after century, is clear
evidence of a significant value mechanism at work in the field of museums. This
heritage should be seen as the basis for current museum work, and it resonates
well with society’s increasing demands for a sustainable future.

Key words: museology, value discussion, Doughnut Economics, sustainable

future

Introduction
In this chapter, I bring forth concepts such as museological values, signifi-
cance, object energy and impact in connection to the current economic theory
of Doughnut Economics. In addition, I use terms such as systems thinking and
self-directing in order to achieve a mutually beneficial co-existence of cultural
significance and contemporary economics. It may seem like somewhat of a stretch
to combine these concepts, but it is my pre-research hunch that is motivating
me to bring together concepts of cultural significance and economic realities.
With this chapter, I am locating myself outside the box, but am also bringing
with me thirty years of museum experience as an insider.

This text is part of the history and theoretical section of the book. In connection
to other authors, it provides a theoretical line of thinking of how to construct a
culturally significant and sustainable future. Furthermore, it will be essential
for current and future students of museum studies to learn to evaluate these
culturally significant aspects of society from outside the box. The abilities for
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  41

critical evaluation, cross-disciplinary co-operation and argumentation skills will

be essential tools for current and future museum professionals. This chapter
provides a means to reach this end.

I deal with four concepts, where one concept leads to another. First, the concept
of museological values is used to show how value dialogue can be an identity
builder in museums, and how this work in turn has impact. This impact is only
useful if it is put into a wider context, which is presented as the second concept.
The concept of Doughnut Economics gives museological impact a global frame-
work. The third concept introduces evidence of how the doughnut works in the
field of cultural heritage and the idea of object energy is presented. The fourth
and final concept locates the individual in the centre of this process, where the
abilities of self-directing and using the systems thinking method offer concrete
tools for future museum professionals.

There is growing interest in new economic theories that offer ways in which
the concept of cultural heritage can be connected with the concept of economic
sustainability (Senge 2008; Jackson 2009; Raworth 2017; Mazzucato 2017).
There is no doubt that economic thinking is the leading political force in our
current world. It is even claimed by some to be the master narrative of our times
(Raworth 2017, p. 6). However, there are also multiple layers in societies, for
which current contemporary economics cannot offer sustainable truths (Stiglitz
2012; Stone 2017). One example of current criticism comes from the economic
circle itself, when 180 CEOs claimed in 2019 that shareholder value is no longer
considered the only value-forming mechanism (Gelles & Jaffe-Bellany 2019).
Historically, museums have been in the business of collection care and visitor
pedagogics (Impey & McGregor 2001; Pettersson 2020). The institution bears
roots all the way to the cabinets of curiosities and this tradition also has some-
thing to offer the current global discussion on sustainability. One could perhaps
even claim that a fundamental part of the institution’s historic focus has been
in the area of sustainability. That said, it is also fruitful to inspect the current
sustainability discourse from the economic point of view. After all, we still live
in a reality where we have to take this master narrative into account and find
new and attractive ways in which to integrate culturally significant chapters
into that narrative.

The Context of Value and Impact Discussion in Museums

Value discussion is an essential part of any museum practice, as it helps give
the needed support for decision-making. It is clear that our world values vari-
ous phenomena from multiple perspectives: philosophical, aesthetic, morally
bound, ethical, economic, etc. Since the 1980s, social psychology has surveyed
people’s values in over 80 countries and found out that there are ten clusters
of basic personal values across cultures: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism,
achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence and univer-
salism. The survey also shows that all of these basic values are present in all of
us and can be engaged if triggered; the level of their intensity varies over the
42 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

course of our lives, but also on a daily basis. According to the study Are There
Universal Aspects in the Structure and Content of Human Values? carried out
by the social psychologist Shalom Schwartz, these values constitute the value
network of human existence (Schwartz 1994; Raworth 2017, pp. 107–108). The
fluctuating network of values built into us and our society will eventually affect
the ways in which we see and recognise points of significance in our society. In
addition, value discussion can also be reached from a more philosophical view-
point. Philosopher George Dickie (1926–2020) introduced a broad concept of
an institutional art theory, where he explored the value network of us humans
from the artwork and artworld points of view (Dickie 1974). Namely, to learn to
appreciate something as art, a context that is learned from childhood onward is
needed. This claim resonates well with Schwartz’s notion of network of values
built into us and our society. It seems that context and the ability to read that
context are both key when we engage in discussions about values.

The context in this chapter is museological, and the aim is to point out culturally
significant aspects of society. Therefore, the value discussion here is museo-
logical in nature. In this context, it would be perfectly plausible to emphasise
the philosophical and/or aesthetic perspectives regarding museum values and
take some of the monumental theories or concepts such as Immanuel Kant’s
concept of ohne Interesse as our starting point (Beardsley 1958; Adorno 1970;
Bourdieu 1979; Wollheim 1980). Alternatively, one could also start from the very
practical points of view such as visitor experiences, rescue plans or insurance
values (Faro Convention 2005; Piekkola, Suojanen & Vaino 2013). The problem
with philosophical and pragmatic value assessments is that they tend to focus
on single and perhaps isolated themes and are to some extent determined by
outside factors and players. One can also engage in value discussion from a
museological perspective. When value assessment is museological in nature
it recognises a wider range of issues crucial to our work in the heritage sector
(Robbins 2016; 2019). This approach comprehensively takes the whole span
of museum operations into account. However, it also addresses the need to
take both philosophical and practical approaches into consideration. If value
discussion is museological in nature, it has a chance to work as a functional tool
regarding museum practices.

An example of a museological value assessment was a survey that I published in

2016 involving Finnish art museums. As part of the survey material, museum
personnel were given an opportunity to freely choose values that best fit their
museum. The following five values emerged from the material as the most im-
portant ones in Finnish art museums at that time: artistic value, aesthetic value,
museum value, research value and value related to locality (Robbins 2016, p.
178). These were also congruent with the concepts presented in the operating
ideas regarding Finnish art museums and can be interpreted as their overall
collective values. The questionnaire also asked to what degree museum pro-
fessionals deal with value assessments in their everyday work. The answers
included various actions, such as acquisitions, disposals, prioritising functions
within collection management, art historical evaluations, research and publica-
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  43

tion projects, monetary evaluations, including insurance or accounting values,

work with visitors and preservation plans within the community – the list is
long and comprehensive. The research showed that museum professionals have
a lot of information, knowledge and know-how regarding value assessments,
especially museological value assessments, but to a large extent this information
has not been comprehensively utilized. It is time to bring this information to
the forefront.

To recognise the various value networks as identity builders in museums and to

harness them to benefit our cultural heritage are both substantial endeavours.
In this work the concept of the impact factor becomes helpful. In general, it has
been used by museum scholars as a key concept when studying meaningfulness
in society, either from the economic or more intangible points of view. What do
people consider meaningful in their own environment, and why? (Weil 2002;
Knell 2004; Scott 2013; Piekkola 2013). Often impact is something that is quan-
tified, but for non-profit institutions it has been challenging to find suitable
ways to do this (Holden 2006; Vaikuttavuusindikaattorit 2009). To find ways
to register impact is seen as important because with this ability it is possible to
align the value goals of non-profit institutions with the value goals of society at
large. Museum scholar Stephen Weil wrote about the role of impact in museum
operations already in his 2002 book Making Museums Matter:

Viewed from outside their own sometimes insular world, museums might
find themselves more highly regarded than ever when they are consistently
able to present themselves as organizations that warrant support through
their demonstrable effectiveness in accomplishing well-articulated and
worthwhile purposes that can logically be shown to make a positive dif-
ference to their communities. (Weil 2002, p. 108)

The time of the isolated past may be over, but more measures are needed in order
to connect the values dear to museums with those of society at large. The task
is to make the heritage sector matter in a society where the turnover of themes
and circulation of events is accelerating. In order to be able to justify the impact
factor in the field of heritage, one needs to point out the impact of intangibles.
“Intangibles, we find, are emerging as central ingredients in business success,
sustainable community development and social policies concerned with the
well-being of communities and their citizens” (Scott 2011, p. 4). So, it is not
only in the heritage sector that intangibles are being studied. Market-based
corporations have also started to use terms such as “shared value” or “social
capital” in their daily way of doing business, and new, more synergetic ways are
being explored (see also Luukkanen-Hirvikoski, this volume). “They (traditional
corporations) continue to view value creation narrowly, optimising short-term
financial performance in a bubble while missing the most important customer
needs and ignoring the broader influences that determine their long-term suc-
cess” (Porter & Kramer 2011, p. 4). Professor John Holden argues that due to
a misunderstanding of the concept of value, it has been difficult for non-profit
institutions to take part in society’s impact discussion at large. One needs to
44 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

define what values and impact mean for different players. Politicians are inter-
ested in instrumental values, museums professionals in intangible values and
audiences in both intangible and institutional values. As a result, there is often
a misunderstanding, where investors do not understand the value structure or
goals that audiences and museum professionals prioritise (Holden 2006, pp.
32–35). In order to minimise this misunderstanding, museum professionals
need to voice in a clearer manner the value network behind their work.

Museums are gathering places in our Western society where visitors have learned
to trust the neutrality of produced information, but the concept of museums being
neutral safe havens of society also has opposing opinions. Art historian Carol
Duncan argues in her influential book Civilizing Rituals (1995) that museums
hold power in their way of providing a place for rituals and secular first-world
knowledge, and this aspect has been imbedded in museums’ purposes. In her
book she studied the ritual content of secular ceremonies and drew her examples
from the birth of the most influential art museums in the Western world such
as the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York (Duncan 1995, pp. 7–8). According to her, these
museums are good examples of the temple-like architectural structures that are
trusted to hold our memories for educational and aesthetic purposes, but also
present places for Western rituals to be performed, be they historical, aesthetic,
social or political in nature. As holders of objective knowledge in the name of the
Enlightenment, the purpose of museums to collect, educate and present were
methods used to make museums matter at the time when the idea of publicly
open collections was born and applied throughout Europe in the 19th century:

Through most of the nineteenth century, an international museum cul-

ture remained firmly committed to the idea that the first responsibility
of a public art museum is to enlighten and improve its visitors morally,
socially, and politically. (Duncan 1995, p. 16)

In addition to the educational context, art museums in particular came to be seen

as places for aesthetic contemplation during the 19th century, and this goal was
emphasised with details of display, such as movable wall structures or colours,
where the most significant works of art were separated and illuminated within
a straight line of presentation. All these methods aided the viewer in the act of
looking and being part of the ritual, being part of official and institutionalised
high culture (Duncan 1995, p. 16, p. 19, p. 55).

The order of the world and our understanding of objective knowledge has changed
since the birth of these institutions, and the rituals practiced inside their walls
must also change. This has become very evident during our book project. In the
course of just a few months, the world changed dramatically due to the Covid-19
pandemic and we authors had to revisit our pre-pandemic arguments. Neverthe-
less, one needs to keep in mind that at the time of writing it was not possible to
see the entire impact that all of this will eventually have. Duncan’s perspective to
see museums as places of secular rituals makes a clear point that museums are
manifestations of politics and they hold power, both in the kind of stories they
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  45

tell and who they choose to include in these stories (Duncan 1995, p. 9, p. 22;
see also Ehanti, this volume). These questions have been begging for an answer
since the 1990s, and supporting arguments have been presented since that time.

Museologists Eilean Hooper-Greenhill and Stephen Weil have advocated for the
importance of audience engagement in the process of making museums matter.
In Hooper-Greenhill’s volume Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (1997)
and Weil’s volume Making Museums Matter (2002) the core message is that it
is vital for the wellbeing of museums and their collections that the community
surrounding the institution sees it as something worth valuing. Furthermore,
in the two extensive reader-type volumes Reinventing the Museum, edited by
Gail Anderson (2004), and Museum Studies – An Anthology of Context, edit-
ed by Bettina Messias Carbonell (2006), as well as in the collection of articles
Museums and Public Value, edited by Carol Scott (2013), the reader is taken
through a paradigm shift and presented various new alternatives as to how to
make museums matter. Values outside the Western world, the legitimacy of
collections and alternative historical narratives are presented in these works.
The common threads in Gail Anderson’s reader are related to the public aspect of
museums and the museum’s ability to serve and fulfil the needs of its community
(Anderson 2004, p. x). Several articles in Anderson’s reader suggest focusing
on the educational mission of museums. It gives an overview of relevant issues
since the early years of the 20th century and strongly suggests that methods of
audience engagement should be emphasised in the future, and that collections
should be considered in a supporting role as props (Anderson 2004, p. 4; Gurian
2006, p. 271).

In a time when the role of museums is more and more under scrutiny, one
should ask whether contextual information or contemporary usability are the
only possible building materials for an object’s value network and significance.
Are these aspects the only ones to be considered when deciding the level of
relevancy of the object as part of a museum’s collection?

The need to emphasise the public aspect of the museum had a strong presence
in the political scene of Europe and the United States during the course of the
19th century (Duncan 1995). Ever since John Cotton Dana’s historical article The
Gloom of the Museum was first published in 1917, the message that museums
should bring their actions closer to the greater community has been increasing.
In an article by art historian Alma Wittlin, A Twelve Point Program for Mu-
seum Renewal, first published in 1970, she writes about exposure, educational
goals and the challenges of funding and identity (see also Pettersson, this vol-
ume). All these issues are still relevant to current museum professionals, but
one should look into the relationship between the audience and the object a bit
more closely. As her fourth point, Wittlin brings up the character of museums as
unique places, where visitors are able to study original objects. She talks about
the importance of three-dimensional object-concreteness as a unique character
of museums (Wittlin 2006, p. 46). It is this nature of museums as holders of
original and concrete objects that will be the main differentiating factor when
46 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

making museums matter in the future. There are not many institutions in society
that both possess the same uniqueness and are trusted to function as mediators
between the past, present and future.

It is evident that we need audience engagement in order to make objects from

the past relevant to contemporary consumers. In this context, museologist Ken-
neth Hudson’s concept of the Great Museum fits well into the global discussion
(Hudson 1993). The concept goes beyond the functions of the museum as an
institution. It sees all of society as bearing culturally significant signs that we
as inhabitants have to learn to pick out and interpret. The museum institution
exists to help people see these signs and take part in their signification process.
In the new global era, one has to see the concept as extending beyond any one
nation’s borders and reaching out to show people culturally significant signs
on a global level.

Museum Professionals as Mediators

In addition to this history and museums’ responsibilities to their current public,
it is important to bring forth the purpose of museums as mediators. Museums
are established institutions to which society has entrusted its legacy. This re-
sponsibility is not to be taken lightly and the role has to be seen as the role
of a mediator between generations. A museum’s collection work and visitor
work are often presented as contradictory, and this can be seen in sentences
such as “a paradigm shift from collection-driven institutions to visitor-centred
museums has really taken hold” (Anderson 2004, pp. 1–2). This indicates that
collection-driven museums belong to an era of traditional museums, and to
see museum functions from the contemporary visitor’s point of view would
be a more preferable approach. This discussion suggests that these two core
elements of museum work are indeed contradictory, and that what impacts one
negatively impacts the other positively. Current and future museum mediators
need both functions. Both collections and audience engagement are to be seen
as essential in contemporary museum work. One does not replace the other by
being either more traditional or more progressive. The history of museums as
public places and places of museographical knowhow are both factors that any
future endeavour needs to build upon.

As previous paragraphs showed, the impact discussion in museums has orig-

inated from either the economic or pedagogical points of view. In addition to
these studies, it is beneficial to expand the impact factor to also include museum
collections and their original objects. Museum collections are an essential and
enduring part of society. It is important to understand that there have been
institutional structures showing interest towards meaningful objects century
after century. All this is strong evidence of museum collections’ impact value, at
a time when the concept of impact value is seen as quite relevant in society. This
is why traditional economic or pedagogical approaches alone are not sufficient.
One has to also focus on the concept of an impact factor in the area of collec-
tions. One cannot include only the impact of our own time, but must also apply
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  47

this concept to both the past and future. This approach will intensify the role of
museum professionals as mediators. It is essential that museum professionals
understand and see their role as mediators, and not merely as contemporary
time consumers. To see one’s role as a mediator is to see collection management
as something that will outlive one’s own career. This implies being a safekeeper,
helping to ensure that any short-term fluctuations will not disturb the more
important long-term continuum. Professor of museology Janne Vilkuna from
the University of Jyväskylä states the following: “Their (the younger generation
of museum professionals) research and preservation-related expertise will de-
termine what kind of past our future will have” (Vilkuna 2003, p. 10, translated
by the author).

One can ultimately address this issue through the following question: To what
extent has a museum succeeded in its work as a mediator? One way to meas-
ure such success is to look at the impact factor of meaningful objects in socie-
ty. Museum collections and their museological value are things that not many
other institutions in society possess. This reality should not be disregarded in
time and place, where one’s own impact is indeed a factor. The fact that there
are societies in the world that consider museum collections to be important is
a straightforward indicator that an impact factor is truly present in the field
of everyday museum practices. The continued existence of museum objects
throughout the centuries is very strong evidence of this.

From Impact to Policy Making

Museum professionals have to see their role as mediators who transfer the im-
pact of museum work to the next generation. This process can be seen having
policy-making potential. Museums possess political power, which needs to be
defined from within the organisation. In order to make museums matter in the
present world order, museums need a flexible focus adaptable to change and
learning (see also Tokila, this volume). To reach these goals museums need
self-directed evaluation and they need to define their own network of values
and position in their community (Weinberg & Leeman 2013, pp. 19–27). These
goals show that the necessary premises for museum operations have to be in
order, but in the heritage sector one cannot ignore the meaning of intangible
values, which in this context are the development of local identity through public
museum collections and the distribution of their significance (Scott 2011, p. 11).
Understanding these goals will eventually synchronise the value goals in society,
be they immaterial or economic in nature (Holden 2006, pp. 56–60).

Furthermore, if museums are seen as places of secular rituals and are currently
in need of a paradigm shift, or this shift is already taking place, as we have seen
in Duncan’s and Anderson’s books, museums indeed have to be considered po-
litical entities. Politics presents itself in every exhibition, publication or opening
speech in every encounter with the visitor, be it inside the institution or as part
of its fieldwork.
48 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

This aspect should be made more visible. One method is to openly present the
scenarios behind any public activity of the museum, for example, to openly write
about the reasons and justifications of exhibition processes as part of exhibition
visitor material, to expose the “behind the scenes” work to the public (see also
Tuominen, this volume). This thought was presented by Stephen Weil already
in the early 1990s:

To what extent are museum workers able to articulate for themselves

the values, attitudes, and assumptions that underlie the exhibitions they
now organize? To what degree can or ought those values, attitudes, and
assumptions be articulated to the visiting public as well? (Weil 2004, p. 77)

These questions still remain relevant, maybe even more so now than 30 years
ago. Weil asked for more open communication at a time when museums were
questioning their role as rightful interpreters of all cultural material that was
entrusted into their care. This discussion is still active and intense and has per-
haps a larger global resonance than it did at the time of Weil’s article (see also
Thomas, this volume). This is the reason why we must take up the challenge
for a more open approach. This kind of exposure to the public would alter the
character of internal connections and sources of expertise, from tacit to more
visible, and would thus intensify the impact of museums as part of a political
and economic society, helping to synchronise the values between the humanistic
and economic sectors. In this process, one needs to keep in mind that today’s
politics is largely practiced in the economic context of the given society, which
in turn is controlled by the global market. This is why, as much outside the box
as it may seem in this context, an overview of new economic trends and skills
with which an individual will be able to navigate in the contemporary flux is
given in the following paragraphs.

Connecting Values and Impact with the Doughnut

This section introduces the concept of the Doughnut Economics by the British
economist Kate Raworth. This short insight into economics will help us connect
issues dear to museum professionals with fluctuations in society. Using this larger
perspective, it is possible to connect aspects of museological value discussion
and significance, people’s aspiration for self-directing and the meaning of mu-
seological impact as part of a sustainable economy. These aspects of society are
indeed direct manifestations of the Doughnut Economics at work.

Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics (2017) points out how interconnected the
globe is from the economic point of view. She describes economic development
since the mid-19th century and focuses on the central role of GDP (Gross Domes-
tic Product) growth in contemporary economic theories. She calls for a more
detailed discussion on our concept of growth in an era when constant monetary
GDP growth will no longer be a sustainable vision for the future, given the globe’s
finite resources. She argues that we need to define the meaning of growth from
a wider perspective and integrate such conditions as social equality, political
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  49

voices, preserving natural resources and access to education and healthy living
into the scenario. The GDP way of thinking is too narrow a concept to be applied
to the contemporary challenges of the world’s shrinking natural resources, and
it does not address the issue of human inequality that the 21st century is facing.
The economic crash of 2008 was a wake-up call for many. Not only was the
economic structure of the world in crisis, but issues such as global inequality,
food supply, security and climate change also started to demand more and more
attention. By no means were these issues new in 2008, but they started to appear
more widely through the news and social media, and people started to become
more instantly aware of the vulnerabilities of our globe. Economist Kate Raworth
sums up the situation as follows: “Due to the scale and interconnectedness of
the global economy, many economic effects that were treated as ‘externalities’ in
twentieth-century theory have turned into defining social and ecological crises
in the twenty-first century” (Raworth 2017, p. 143).

The neo-liberal economy has been under a critical eye for a long time and in-
creasingly so after the financial crash in 2008. This criticism is not entirely
new, as is seen in numerous historical efforts to break down the circle of wealth
accumulating wealth (Stiglitz 2012; Harvey 2005; Raworth 2017). It has long
been known that a large percentage of global income is in the hands of a small
percentage of people; this is known as Pareto’s 80–20 rule (Raworth 2017, p.
166). Economist Thomas Piketty argued in 2014 that in time and place when
the return to capital grows faster than the economy as a whole, it leads to wealth
becoming concentrated to those who own capital (Raworth 2017, p. 169; Piketty
2014). Global technology has made the level of inequality better known to wider
audiences than ever before, and it seems that this scale of inequality has reached
the breaking point. IMF (International Monetary Fund) research shows that
inequality hinders GDP growth. The more unequal societies are, the more fragile
and slower economic growth they have (Raworth 2017, p. 173).

Raworth writes about the challenges of globalism and the prospects we are facing
before the year 2050. The common estimate predicts that the global economy
will triple in about thirty years, which will bring a whole new perspective to the
concept of sustainability. According to her, it will no longer be enough to teach
future economics using the mindset that originated in 1950s textbooks, which
in turn were rooted in the theories of the 1850s. It is no longer possible just to
master any old curriculum (Raworth 2017, p. 6, p. 8). Raworth writes that we
need a new kind of thinking and a new kind of authority. “For the twenty-first
century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person
within the means of our life-giving planet” (Raworth 2017, p. 25).

Raworth takes a critical stance and questions the need for constant GDP growth
as a goal. “Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they
make us thrive: what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or
not they grow” (Raworth 2017, p. 30). She points out that the history of GDP
is actually not that long. It originates from the political situation of the mid-
1930s in the United States, where a measure for national income was needed
50 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

to be able to monitor the advances made in society, especially during the time
of Roosevelt’s New Deal. For that purpose, economist Simon Kuznets made a
calculation, which became known as Gross National Product (GNP). It was based
on the income generated by a nation’s residents (Raworth 2017, pp. 36–37). The
GNP soon became a very useful tool and by the 1960s, it was taken as a valid
measure for a society’s success. A decade later critical voices started to appear
and arguments for the transition from growth to global equilibrium appeared
(Meadows et al. 1972, p. 24). Even Kuznets had already stated early on that one
should make a distinction between quantity of growth and quality of growth
(Raworth 2017, p. 40). In the 1980s emphasis changed to measure the growth
within a nation’s borders and GNP changed to GDP (Gross Domestic Product),
but there were no changes as to the demand for and expectation of constant
growth. The economic crisis of 2008 made Western leaders rethink Kuznets’
1930s calculation and they came up with various growth-related word combina-
tions such as sustainable growth, balanced growth or long-term, lasting growth,
but they still very strongly insist on growth as the main measure (Raworth 2017,
p. 41). Nevertheless, the need to define growth in more specific terms entered
the discussion. To conclude, since 21st century globalism does not correspond
to the calculations of the 1930s, a newer deal is needed.

Raworth introduces a way of thinking that she calls Doughnut Economics. Her
model is based on a circular form, hence the name Doughnut, where “the social
foundation of human rights and the ecological ceiling of planetary boundaries
create the inner and outer boundaries of the Doughnut” (Raworth 2017, p. 49). In
her model, sustainable life takes place between the inner and outer boundaries.
Outside the ecological ceiling lie ecological risk factors such as climate change,
land conversion and biodiversity loss. Inside the Doughnut lie preconditions
for sustainable human life, such as social equality, peace and justice, having a
political voice, education and health (Raworth 2017, p. 49). It is easy to see that
all these factors are very much interconnected. Once one sector reaches a crisis
point it inevitably affects all the other sectors. Her model describes the goal but
admits that the world still has far to go to meet this goal. Furthermore, in the
efforts to solve the obstacles on our way to meet the goal, we need different tools
than what the 90-year-old GDP model has been able to offer.

British economist Tim Jackson called for sustainable economics already in his
1996 book Material Concerns. In his 2009 publication Prosperity Without
Growth, he developed the concept further and showed how we must alter our
way of thinking about the concept of investment. Instead of relating the concept
only to the growth of new products produced by market-oriented enterprises,
we should widen our scope and consider the possibilities of sustainable invest-
ments. As an example, he uses cultural institutions as places that possess the
know-how for producing sustainable investment in societies (Jackson 2009).
Furthermore, Kate Raworth connects the sustainability of ecological resources
with the demands of the economy and argues that the almost 90-year-old concept
of constant economic growth cannot solve the contemporary ecological problems
we are facing. What is needed is a regenerative economy.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  51

Financial income is just one narrow slice of what an economy generates

when its aim is to promote human prosperity in a flourishing web of life.
… the new metrics will monitor the many sources of wealth – human,
social, ecological, cultural and physical. (Raworth 2017, p. 240)

This is exactly where museums will be in demand. To see itself as a sustainable

investment that produces regenerative good for its surrounding community has
always been at the core of museum operations. We need a sector of society to
show us the culturally meaningful aspects of society – to show us the culturally
meaningful aspect of regenerative economics.

Theorists of regenerative economics are interested in forming scenarios of what

comes after GDP, since the classical curve of constant growth ultimately leaves
us hanging in the air (Raworth 2017, pp. 246–250). The mainstream economy
has not invested in that question; even economist Walt Rostow in his 1960 book
The Stages of Economic Growth does not address this, but ends his five stages
of economic growth at the age of mass consumption (Rostow 1960, p. 6). We are
entering the stage after mass consumption and the question for the 21st century
is: How sustainable is the next stage? It seems that a human lifetime is just not
long enough for us to truly understand this question. According to Raworth,
GDP has played such a central role in economics that questioning its ultimate
importance has not even occurred to many.

We are entering an era where the damaging effects of inequality on the social,
political, ecological and economic levels are proving to be too serious for policy
makers to ignore. We cannot any longer shun the efforts towards a sustainable
society by claiming these things are too romantic or socialist in nature. The
idea of sharing prosperity has often been seen as a naïve utopia and has had
serious political connotations in history (Couto 2010). In our contemporary
culture technology has made sharing easier and faster, both on the individual
and global levels. Individuals are more widely and more quickly aware of the
opinions and behaviour of other people, and they have the technology to make
their opinion globally known and heard. Worldwide communication and data
streaming are transforming our communities in unseen ways. We are no longer
talking only with the voice of single nations; we are talking with the voice of the
globe (Ormerod 2012, pp. 28–29). The concept of sharing has taken a new turn
and it is too valuable of a tool to be discarded because of its interpretations in the
past. As Kate Raworth has pointed out, our planet needs the concept of sharing.
This global level requires individuals to learn skills of self-directing in order to
avoid falling into the patterns of past failures. The word “sharing” includes the
idea of the individual responsibility and accountability that one has to have in
order to make the act of sharing successful.

The question of what happens next is not an alien one to museum professionals.
They are in the field of questioning our past, present and future. They constantly
have to make decisions and choices as to what kind of past our future will have
(Vilkuna 2003, p. 10). It is up to museum professionals to point out culturally
significant moments and transfer such knowledge to the future. This is why
52 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

they should see their careers as being mediators, not just current consumers.
Museums and their collections are part of the regenerative everyday, with re-
generative economics being one part of this.

In the heritage sector, various methods of analysing and mapping cultural sig-
nificances are cooperative and aim to point out cultural importance in society.
They offer ways to make deeper connections with phenomena surrounding us
by use of a method that uses novel and adaptive thinking. With the help of these
methods, the heritage sector of society can take part in the discussion of what will
be relevant in the future. For example, Significance 2.0 (Russell & Winkworth
2009) was written in Australia and subsequently modified in Europe in such
works as the Dutch Assessing Museum Collections (2014) or the Finnish Merk-
itysanalyysimenetelmä (Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2015; and this volume).
In general, these methods investigate the realm of culturally significant objects
by cooperating with experts and interacting with object users. In this process,
it is essential to try to determine an object’s history from the beholders’ point of
view by recording the significance and stories integral to it. The selected objects
are enriched by these stories and their context in the community is recorded as
a statement of their significance. The community’s voice is heard, thus connect-
ing things from the past more closely to lives in the present. Museologist Peter
van Mensch talks about cultural biography and says that culturally significant
collections can be seen as impact-increasing potentiality in society (van Mensch
& Meijer-van Mensch 2011, pp. 32–33). Another example from the Finnish
cultural historical museum sector is the TAKO Tallennustyöjako (Distribution
of Preservation Responsibilities). TAKO means that museums actively discuss
and exchange ideas as to what to preserve and collect. With this sharing of
information, the tendency of multiple museums collecting the same items or
working in the same field of preservation is avoided (see also Ahola, this volume).

Analysing significance and engaging in TAKO co-operation are both ways of

sharing knowledge, dividing resources and offering peer support to map out the
Finnish cultural biography. These forms of co-operation are good examples of
how museum organisations are able to join forces in making museums matter,
including collections in the process. Sharing information, offering participation
and taking part actively in peer support are all elements of signification. As stated
earlier, it will not suffice if museum professionals only agree among themselves
on making museums matter. This kind of co-operation of smaller groups and
individuals must be placed into a larger context, as suggested by Doughnut
Economics, for it to have longer-lasting effects on society.

Intangible Object Energy as Evidence of Sustainable

Action
Kate Raworth writes about the flourishing web of life. This description can be
understood in a manner that our existence adds up to something larger than just
the sum of its parts. In the museum context we use terms such as immeasurable
and rare or give some objects uncontested key status. Very rarely do these terms
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  53

relate to monetary value of the chosen objects, but are the result of centuries
of value generation that is based on something other than just numbers. In the
following paragraphs I am using the term object energy to describe this process.

Objects and material culture have always been at the core of museum operations.
To collect, display and catalogue collections have been signs of professionalism
since the cabinets of curiosities (Pearce 1994). Austrian writer and professor
Alma Wittlin (1899–1992) wrote about object-concreteness and the possibility
to see original items from the past being a unique character of museums (Wittlin
2004, p. 46). Janne Vilkuna mentions a museum collection’s ability to transmit
object energy as a differentiating factor to many other institutions. “The tales
of the museums differ from many other tales because they are based on the
evidence that objects include, and are transmitting, object-energy” (Vilkuna
1997, p. 57). Object-concreteness and object energy are critical concepts when
the impact of museums is under scrutiny. Vilkuna connects object energy to
this context, but one can contemplate it through a more intrinsic point of view
as well. With the term object energy is meant that the original museum item
includes properties that exceed its knowledge-based values. This object energy
is comprised of an object’s originality, form and the history of its existence, but
ultimately is something more than the sum of these parts. This energy is not
present in copies. The thought of object energy relates to philosopher Walter
Benjamin’s (1882–1940) thinking that there is something in the character of
an original object that neither science nor the intellect can explain. Benjamin
talks about an aura and wrote about it in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in
the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Mechanical Reproduction). He
relates the concept of aura with the reproducibility of photographs and films,
especially at the time when these two art forms were coming into their own.
“What withers in the age of technological reproducibility of the work of art is the
… aura.” (Benjamin 2008, p. 22). For Benjamin, aura is an abstract quality that
is embedded in unique and authentic artworks. This quality is accumulated by
the existence of the artwork throughout history: “By replicating the work many
times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence” (Benjamin
2008, p. 22). Time has passed since the early days of photography and moving
pictures. The idea of reproduction has entered the art scene and is no longer
seen as problematic. There is an aspect in Benjamin’s writings that has held up
over time, however, namely the concept of aura, the feeling of seeing something
original and authentic that bears all the stories and physical marks of its care
throughout history. To conclude, in addition to the needed context information
of an impact-full museum item, the intrinsic value and object energy it transmits
have to also be considered. Finnish art historian Anne Aurasmaa writes how
the memory of the museum consists of facts and evidence, but also builds upon
something deeper.

It is evident that even though factual knowledge is a crucial part of educa-

tional programs in museums, we need to include the sensuous aspect of
objects as well, in order to fully understand the depth of impact, relations
and values. (Aurasmaa 2005, p. 22, translated by the author)
54 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

In Aurasmaa’s text one should relate the aspect of sensuousness to Walter Benja-
min’s concept of the aura of the original item, which in turn is heavily connected
to object energy. This line of thought gives us perspective on the intrinsic value
of museum collections and maybe the thought of museum items having intrinsic
qualities will not be seen as so remote any longer. Sensuous object-concreteness,
aura and object-energy are concepts that not very many institutions can be guard-
ians of. This responsibility should not be taken lightly, nor should it be ignored
by saying that museum objects are merely props (Anderson 2004, p. 4, p. 271).

In addition, one should regard individual museum objects that bear an aura
and various collections within and outside museum care as unifying factors,
regardless of who might be the caretaker during any given generation or era.
Especially in countries such as Finland, where the “cultural layer” is relatively
young and thin, one should look at the bigger picture. The totality of Finnish
culturally significant items, places or memories all conform to Kenneth Hudson’s
idea of the Great Museum. Some of them are housed and cared for in museums,
some privately owned and some owned by corporations or other institutions.
Regardless of their current ownership and legal status, one can argue that their
aura and significance will remain past that ownership. To see the whole picture,
not just from one institution’s or generation’s perspective, but from an entire
society’s perspective, is to intensify the impact of culturally significant sectors
of society. This process falls easily into the concept of the Doughnut.

The Need to Self-direct Ourselves in the Systems

Thinking Way
As stated earlier in my text, museum professionals have voiced their need for
practice in order to fully engage themselves in value discussions. This paragraph
will introduce two concepts that help to address this need. The concept of self-di-
recting offers a good point of departure. The contemporary working environment
is all about completing projects, meeting deadlines and being able to contribute
your daily working hours outside of the traditional office. After their academic
years, students enter a relatively different working environment than was the
case few decades ago. Studies show that any vital and effective organisation has
three properties: a healthy hierarchy, self-organisation and resilience (Raworth
2017, p. 159). The people in these organisations need to be able to self-direct
themselves in order to make all these aspects work. Especially in organisations
that consist of highly educated and expert-based work, the ability to self-direct
one’s day becomes vital. A study made in 2011 by the Institute for the Future
listed skills that will be needed in order to cope in the working environment in
the future (Davies, Fidler & Gorbis 2011). The study calls them the key work
skills that will become essential in the next ten years, namely sense making,
social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency,
computational thinking, new-media literacy, transdisciplinarity, design mind-
set, cognitive load management and virtual collaboration. All of these skills are
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  55

properties that an individual will need in order to be able to navigate and make
sense in the world of a cross-cultural fast track.

In an edited volume Itseohjautuvuus – Miten organisoitua tulevaisuudessa?

(Self-directing – How to get organized in the future 2017), Finnish philosophers
Frank Martela and Karoliina Jarenko point out why the ability of self-directing
will become a basic requirement in the future. By self-directing they mean a
person’s ability to function without the need for outside supervision or control.
In order for people to be able to self-direct themselves, they must possess three
properties: motivation, initiative and skills. They must have initiative to do things
without outside force or traditional management supervision. They must have
a clear goal toward which they are focusing their self-directing actions. Finally,
they must possess the required skills in order to reach set goals. If these skills are
lacking, the person will need extensive supervision and guidance, and the idea
of self-directing will not be fulfilled. In addition to the technical skills needed
for the work process at hand, the required skills for self-directing will include
properties such as time management, resource control and prioritising, all of
which could have previously been outsourced to one’s supervisors (Martela &
Jarenko 2017, p. 12, p. 14). The importance of self-directing is connected with
the need to be able to react fast and to be flexible in a society that is under
constant change. There are three reasons as to why self-directing will be more
and more important in the future. The first is that the reaction time to address
change in contemporary society is much shorter than a few decades ago. The
second is the fast replacement of human labour by technological solutions and
applications in various fields. In turn, creative expertise remains a sector that
will be more difficult to replace by these technologies, thus intensifying its role.
The third is the democratising effect of information technologies, in which hier-
archical structures are no longer so needed, because information has an ability
to flow fast and openly within any given organisation (Martela & Jarenko 2017,
pp. 18–25). These changes require a flexible organisation in which strategies
are created in co-operation with participants and non-functioning structures
can be abandoned without heavy decision-making processes. More and more
contemporary companies are transforming their operations according to these
more flexible and cooperative methods (Martela & Jarenko 2017, p. 15).

With the help of new economic thinking and the methods of self-directing it
will be possible to join efforts in the field of cultural heritage with ideas of
economic sustainability. These viewpoints come from the Systems Thinking
perspective, where things in the world are interconnected and one cannot ex-
pect either singular or linear answers to complex questions (Meadows 2008).
According to SearchCIO (an online platform for IT management strategies)
“systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that
a system’s constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and
within the context of larger systems”. This means that we need to acknowledge
the complexity of the world and face this fact with a set of tools that contains
elements from outside our own box.
56 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

The doughnut is about sustainability and understanding the big picture. It talks
about finding a balance between the earth’s resources and our need to consume
them, so that the distribution of consumption can be in balance among all the
earth’s inhabitants. It also talks about how we need to include other layers in
our economic identities than just our identity as a consumer, worker or capital
owner. These layers can be summed up as constituting a great deal of our daily
lives. The economist Neva Goodwin calls them the core economy, which “comes
first every day, sustaining the essentials of family and social life with universal
human resources of time, knowledge, skill, care, empathy, teaching and reci-
procity” (Coote & Goodwin 2010, p. 3).

How to reach global sustainability is the core question of our lifetime. The mag-
nitude of the question goes beyond one individual’s capacity, and shared wisdom
is needed. Raworth talks about the need for shifting our attitudes. We need fluid
values to be able to act in a more interdependent and reciprocating way. We need
to see our role towards others as dependent partners, and take approximation
instead of calculation as a tool in navigating through global issues (Raworth
2017, pp. 103–116). In this process, the capability of heritage sciences to see
connections between the core issues of different historical eras will be essential.
This insight will help give a perspective for present and future decision-making.
To gain knowledge of things in the past and to learn how these things connect
to our contemporary everyday are fundamental for understanding one’s own
identity. Furthermore, they are building blocks for identity within any given
community. This is precisely one of the points where the humanities, especially
museums, will have a substantial role in carving out our sustainable future. As
historian Tuomas Heikkilä and philosopher Ilkka Niiniluoto wrote in their book
The Value of Humanistic Study, it is time to break the myth of humanistic study
belonging to the margins of contemporary achievements and consider humanists
to be key players in creating sustainable environments (Heikkilä & Niiniluoto
2016, p. 104). On an individual level this challenge becomes more manageable
if one holds the required skills for self-directing.

There are three levels of operators at the core of the Doughnut concept: person-
al impact on planetary boundaries, business branding according to Doughnut
principles and a new design of the global financial system (Raworth 2017, p.
56). From the sustainable heritage point of view, it is easy to fulfil the demands
of the first two. To preserve and to educate have always been at the core of mu-
seum operations. For the third level, museum operations will offer one way of
sustainable thinking, a broader context than monetary metrics has been able
to offer. Again, this is not a new idea, but on a global level the search for more
sustainable ways to think of the globe’s economic growth has already started
(Jackson 1996; Holden 2006; Scott 2013). Museums as tradition-bearing in-
stitutions have the ability and know-how to guide this new kind of thinking
in society. In Robert Putnam’s terms all this is strong social capital (Putnam
2000, p. 290). The scenario drawn with the help of the Doughnut helps us to
understand the bigger economic picture and guide us to include sustainable
heritage into the Doughnut way of thinking. It gives us a global perspective, but
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  57

that alone does not suffice. The adaptability of any given change depends on
the individual’s ability to guide themselves through the change. In general, any
argumentation to move towards solution-seeking methods is more rewarding
than discussions that merely state the fact that something would need to be
done. As we have seen, museum professionals have lived up to this challenge
and continue working toward a sustainable society.

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Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  63

Critical Museology, Social

Museology, Practical Museology
or What? – International
museologies and Scandinavia
Kerstin Smeds

Abstract
Museology in most parts of the world has been, and still is, perceived as a the-
ory of the museum institution itself – the museum as social phenomenon, the
museum’s role in society and learning, museum collections and management,
etc. Parallel to this, particularly in Eastern European and Nordic countries, the
concept has grown larger and has included other institutions and activities in the
field of heritage. Today, the concept of museology might cover almost everything
that has to do with humanity’s dealing with time, history, immaterial and ma-
terial heritage, from large geographical eco-museums and heritage sites to the
smallest private enterprises. The only chair of museology in Sweden (at Umeå
University), defines museology in this very broad sense. There, the theoretical
standpoint is also analytical and critical, and can be seen as a parallel to the
rapidly growing field of critical heritage studies.

In this chapter, I briefly explore the development of museology in Scandinavia

and its early influences from Eastern Europe and France, as well as the different
schools of museology. In conclusion, I draw up some lines for the development
of museology in order to create theoretical resources for museums and heritage
enterprises, which would help them in their work for a more sustainable future.

Keywords: museology, museology definitions, museum definitions, Scandi-

navian museology

Concepts and Early Education

What is museology? First of all, we must make a conceptual distinction. The
concept of museum research (Swedish museiforskning, Finnish museotutki-
mus) adopted by the museum world refers generally to the research, or rather
documentation, that is carried out in museums and their collections. It is con-
ducted within the context of the classic museum disciplines of art, archaeolo-
gy, ethnology and cultural anthropology. Museum science, museum knowledge
or museum studies (German Museumskunde) in a traditional sense, refer to
teaching about the museum institution, the museum’s practical functions and
its activities. Another term for this was museum techniques. Around the turn
64 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

of the 20th century, the concept of museum science appeared in Swedish in the
Nordic Encyclopaedia (Ekström 2000, p. 31). At the time, the word referred to
the acquisition of objects, their preservation and cataloguing. Later the termi-
nology has changed not only in Sweden but all over the world, but unfortunately
not in the same way and at the same pace. The German Museum Science (e.g.,
the Institut für Museumskunde in Berlin) only around 15 years ago changed
to museum research (Museumsforschung), while in France and in many other
countries the term museology has been used for more than a century. In Swe-
den, the term museology was adopted in the 1970s in line with the international
development of the discipline.

Over time, the subject has expanded to cover not only research in the museum,
but also research on the museum – the museum as a political, philosophical
and social phenomenon. “The ‘museum-ness’ of museums, then, is a subject
that needs to be addressed and theorized in its own right” (Fyfe & Macdonald
1996, p. 6). They continue:

Museums are a fertile theoretical field precisely because they can be

tackled from a range of theoretical perspectives which cross many of
the established divisions of the disciplines (e.g., production and con-
sumption, knowledge and practice, sacred and secular). They are like a
kind of theoretical thoroughfare; a place where unexpected meetings and
alignments may take place.

The shift in perspective and the depth of the subject largely follow the changes
that took place in the museum’s social role and position. However, research on
museums is as complex and difficult as the museum’s social and political role
in society. There is a fairly large paradigmatic and terminological confusion re-
garding definitions, contents and research objectives in the field. In fact, much
of the theoretical debate on museology’s objectives since the 1970s has been
about the question of what museology is, and this has by no means been resolved.

The development of museology can be tracked from the museum science/museum

knowledge of the 19th century through many phases, all the way to a philosophy
of museums (Deloche 1999), which theoretically discusses not only the museum’s
institutional whereabouts and the realisation of museums as phenomena and
ideology, but also our existential relationship to time and material heritage.
Compared to modern historiography, which started more than 200 years ago,
museology is much younger, 80–100 years, depending on how you measure it. If
you count from the first statements of Museumskunde in Germany, the subject
is almost 120 years old, but if you start from the coinage of the term museology,
we end up in the 1920s.

The oldest museological school in the world is, as far as I know, the École du
Louvre, founded in 1882 and still operating (Maroevic 1998, p. 93; van Mensch
1992, p. 89). The training was at the beginning of a practical nature, focused
on the skills needed for working in a museum. In the case of the Louvre this
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  65

mainly concerned art museums. Today it is a discipline characterised by a broad

definition of both theoretical and practical museology.

In the early 1900s, debates about museums and the need for education and
research in the area were going on in various parts of Europe. The German
magazine Zeitschrift für Museumskunde was founded in 1905 to promote and
discuss museological issues, and in its first years called for university-level courses
(Leisching 1905, pp. 91–96; Kniescheck 1998, p. 71). Between 1909 and 1912 such
courses took place in Saxony. These dealt with museum discourse in general, but
also with technical, conservation and scientific issues, as well as museum didactics
and pedagogy. As early as 1903, talk of the museum as a popular educational
institution was well established in Germany, and in 1920 the Museumskunde
was established to teach, among other things, museum pedagogy as an academic
discipline at the University of Bonn (Kniescheck 1998, p. 72).

In the years around 1920, a lot happened in this area. In 1921, an academic course
in museology was given at Harvard University under the title Museum Work
and Museum Problems, which some, incorrectly, have counted as the world’s
first museology course (Gob & Drouget 2003, p. 13). The first professorship in
museum science was established at the University of Brno in 1922 and served
with some interruptions until 1948. The same chair was then revived in 1963
by Jiri Neustupný, and has remained as one of the leading museological centres
to this day.

In England, the British Museum Association has organised museological, or

rather museographical courses since 1932 (Maroevic 1998, pp. 93–94). During
the first quarter of the 20th century, the first scientific studies were made on the
museum, its functions, collections and preservation principles. There were also
smaller studies on, for example, the difference between museums’ identities and
functions (Lauffer 1907). In 1934, the first international museological conference
took place in Madrid, organised by the L’Office international des Musées, the
predecessor of the ICOM, International Council of Museums. The topic was
museum architecture and what today is called museum management (Gob &
Drouget 2003, pp. 11–12).

In England, where Museum Studies in the University of Leicester, founded in

1966, is the leading museological centre, the focus of interest has remained on
the museum’s role as a knowledge bank and intermediary of research. The em-
phasis is therefore put on visitors, exhibitions and pedagogy. The same situation
can be seen in the USA, with the Smithsonian Institution at the forefront. In the
German- and French-speaking areas, however, research has increasingly shifted
to theoretical and philosophical studies of the museum as a social phenomenon,
its historical and narrative relevance and the exhibition medium itself.

Is there any agreement, on an international level, as to what kind of museology

there is at different institutions, and whether museology is considered a science
or not? Just as the historiography of the 19th century debated whether history
was a science or an art, and in the end reluctantly acknowledged it as a science
66 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

with scientific methods, many researchers and professionals in the museum and
heritage field question today whether museology is a science at all, and what its
real value might be.

So, What is Museology, Really?

If anyone talked or wrote about museology as a science thirty or twenty
years ago, he would be met with a pitying, disdainful smile from many
persons. Today, the situation is quite different. (Sofka 1992)1

This sounds somehow familiar, doesn’t it? The quotation above is from an ar-
ticle on museology called Die Museologie als Fachwissenschaft (Museology as
a Branch Science), written by a renowned German scholar. There is nothing
special about this, only the fact that it was written one hundred and thirty-eight
years ago, more exactly in 1883. Today, one may ask: have we progressed from
this statement?

Many academic museologists have adopted a strangely defensive attitude when

speaking about the need for museology in the professional field of museums and
heritage. The situation has been improving in the last couple of decades, but
many museum conservatives still keep asking why they would need museology.
The reasons for this peculiar situation are an intriguing epistemological question
indeed. After all, almost every other cultural institution or cultural field has,
at an early stage, developed its own scholarly discipline, such as archival and
library sciences, media science, film science, theatre studies, literary science (or
studies), musicology, etc. with their own theoretical apparatuses. Each of these
field is subject to deep scientific research and teaching, often at their own colleges
or academies. To get a job, e.g., in a library or an archive, requires a degree in
that particular discipline. Only museums have been overlooked – again, at least
in Scandinavia. In Finland, the situation is a bit different. It is interesting to
turn the tables and ask why there has been, and still often is, some opposition
to museology within academies and museums, and why museology still gener-
ates some mistrust within the branch. Just listen to the verdict of a Norwegian
professor (historian) in 1994:

I want to state, here and now, that museology offers training for a practical
job. It is a misunderstanding to believe that it should be possible to be
a “museologist”, one who studies museums in their abstraction without
having a basis and anchorage in the real disciplines which are the gen-
uine roots of museums, the reason for their existence. It is unrealistic,
thoughtless and naïve (Gjestrum 1995, p. 5).

This harsh statement is, however, very specific, and does not concur with the
entire field, or with employment practice in the very country where this state-

1. Dr. T. H. Th Graesse from Dresden published this in the Zeitschrift für Museologie und Anti-
quitätenkunde. Quoted by Sofka in 1992.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  67

ment was made (Norway). In fact, opinions are divided. One fraction of muse-
um professionals has, since the 1970s, enthusiastically thrown themselves into
de facto museological development according to new international, social and
museological trends, whether they are aware of it themselves or not (Hofrén et
al. 1970; Näsman 2014). But many museum professionals are still so stuck in
everyday matters – running the museum, taking care of their collections and
perhaps jealously watching their own particular academic field, that there is no
time or energy to start analysing, let alone letting anybody else in to analyse,
their museum’s doings from a broader, politically-, philosophically- or museo-
logically-relevant point of view.

Deeper reasons for this tacit, and sometimes very loudly outspoken resistance
to museology and museological research can partly be deduced from the Marx-
ist roots of museology, and the fact that it was in the socialist countries that
the theoretical development started in the 1960s, paired with French critical
intellectualism (Neustupný 1968; Maroevic 1998; Desvallées 1989; Desvallées
1991). As late as 2001, one of the fathers of modern museology, Zbynek Stránský,
felt the need to defend museology against conservative detractors in an article
entitled Ist Museologie eine kommunistische Wissenschaft? (Is museology a
communist science? Stránský, 2001, pp. 2758–2761). The museums of the so-
cialist countries were early regarded not only as collecting and research centres,
but also as socio-cultural arenas with strong educational, public and democratic
objectives. Indirectly, perhaps originally, it all started in Soviet Russia. Here,
the museums were already after the Russian Revolution incorporated into the
socialist ideologies and ideals of the state, thus gaining an importance as a tool
for socialist cultural policy and propaganda (Ananiev 2016). Museums shifted
focus to visitors, teaching and learning, all in line with the socialist ideology of
offering education to the masses. Hence, the museums’ political and ideological
role and importance in society also started to be problematised and, in a Soviet
manner, scientified. Already in the post-revolutionary period of the 1920s, there
was a lot of activity among Russian scholars and cultural departments, with the
aim of starting up research not only in museums, but also on museums (Ananiev
2016, pp. 173–175). Whether the museums in, for example, the Soviet Union
really went in for a social dialogue can be debated, but these ambitions have, I
think, repercussions in the activities of the museums today all over the world.
However, this early history is only one line of development, and maybe not even
a very strong argument against the need for museology, since not many in the
West are even aware of these historical socialist roots.

So, where does museology stand today and why are we where we are? What re-
sults has the International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) achieved during
its first forty years of existence and of a theoretical museological discussion? In
what way has this debate had an impact on how we, in Scandinavia and Finland,
conceive museology? Has ICOFOM solved the question of what museology is? A
great deal of books and studies (for example, ISS and the ICOFOM Study Series)
have dealt with the substance of museology, the foundations and definitions
of museology and museums. But before we start scrutinising the schools of
68 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

museology in the Nordic countries, let us trace a bit of the history of defining
museological education and research. What do we conceive of as our object of
study and research? In order to give a background to the statements in Sweden,
I have chosen to mention a couple of international definitions.

Between 1979 and 1989 the foundations of museum theory or museology were
laid in an intense international collaboration (most significantly within ICOFOM).
Today, although the discussion goes on, there is some kind of an agreement
that museology is defined differently and addresses different types of problems
in different parts of the world. Many still focus on the museum as a social and
political phenomenon and institution, while others go for the broader definition
encompassing the totality of heritage and museality, a term used by Zbynek
Stránský. Hence, the object study of museology today could be extended, as
Thereza Scheiner states, to encompass “the global museum as the planet Earth,
the little spaceship on which we live” (Scheiner 2010, p. 98). This would be
transcribed to addressing not only objects and collections, museums and their
communications, but also nature/ecology (eco-museums and nature reserves),
landscapes, the built environment, etc. In short, I would define museology of
today as a philosophy of our existential relationship to material and immaterial
heritage.

The definition of museology varies from country to country, and from univer-
sity to university, even within the same country. In France, the concept of the
term has probably been most profoundly scrutinised (Desvallées 1992; Gob
& Drouguet 2003; Desvallées & Mairesse 2011). There, one still distinguishes
between on the one hand museographie, which is the same as applied, practi-
cal museum knowledge, and on the other hand museologie, which includes a
more theoretical-analytical approach. Museology in the latter sense examines
what is called museality or the relation spécifique that exists between man and
material reality. However, Gob & Drouget (2003, p. 13) interpret museality as
equivalent to the French concept of patrimoine, patrimoine culturel or patri-
monialité. This, in turn, comes closest to the English term national heritage, or
the Swedish cultural heritage.

In Central Europe, as in Eastern Europe, a distinction is made between practi-

cal or applied museology (museography, museum technology) and theoretical
museology. The object of museological study here is not only the museum, but
the aforementioned museum spectrum in the broad sense, that is, the entire
cultural heritage. Tomislav Šola, professor emeritus of museology in Zagreb, has
questioned the usefulness of the word museology. Instead, he introduced a new
international term, heritology or mnemosophy, i.e., heritage science or memory
science. He defines it as a kind of cybernetics of cultural heritage (Šola 1997, p.
26, p. 232). Thus, it was mainly in Eastern Europe and France that the concept
of museology came to cover cultural heritage in its totality. In the USA, the UK
and most of Western Europe, the subject is still defined as museum studies.

The most interesting, and in the long-term, most capable definitions of the
museum’s object of study were presented long ago by Zbynek Stránský (1974,
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  69

1980) and Anna Gregorová (1980). In their footsteps Friedrich Waidacher, who
in his 800-page handbook, Handbuch der Allgemeinen Museologie (1993), tries
to settle the definitions once and for all. Many other theological theorists, such
as Peter van Mensch (1992), Eileen Hooper-Greenhill (1992) and Susan Pearce
(1992) at the University of Leicester follow along these same lines.

Anna Gregorová is perhaps the one who expresses it most distinctively. She first
defines the museum: “A museum is an institute in which the specific relation of
man to reality is naturally applied and realized.” And then museology:

Museology is a science studying the specific relation of man to reality,

consisting of purposeful and systematic collecting and conservation of
selected inanimate, material, mobile, and mainly three-dimensional ob-
jects documenting the development of nature and society, and making
a thorough scientific and cultural-educational use of them (Gregorová
1980, p. 20).

Gregorová finds three problem areas to study:

• The museum’s relation to reality and time (existential and semiotic di-
mension)

• The museum’s relation to society (political and cultural dimension)

• The museum’s practical functions (including the museum’s organisation

and aims).

All three are considered as optional fields of research for museology. Museology
belongs to the humanities, it is a social-scientific discipline, not a discipline
dealing only with practical matters (like classical museography and museum
techniques), Gregorová states. She concludes that there are two main focus fields
for museological studies: the historical sense of man, and material documents
regarding the development of nature and society (Gregorová 1980, p. 20).
The French sociologist and museologist Bernard Deloche complemented some
of Gregorová’s definitions when speaking about museology as our relation spéci-
fique to reality (Deloche 1999). What narrations do we weave into the concept
and what actions do we take in this museal reality for communicative, social,
political and ideological purposes? Museums are processes, with the aim of
making man’s multifaceted relation to reality and history visible. Deloche ends
up in stating that museology is a philosophie du muséal (philosophy of the mu-
seality), which can be compared with such disciplines as the philosophy of law
or political philosophy. As such, it is a metatheory and not a science. In this way
museology is, according to Deloche, also contractuelle, a question of agreement
among stakeholders on its objectives (Deloche 1999).

The great influence in Scandinavia regarding definitions and demarcation lines

was discussed in the initial volumes of two publications series, firstly Museologi-
cal Working Papers 1 (MUWOP 1, 1980), the result of a conference in Stockholm
with Czech museologist Vinoš Sofka as driving force, and secondly Papers in
70 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Museology 1, published at Umeå University with the pioneer of Swedish muse-

ology, Per-Uno Ågren as a driving force (Råberg 1992). Ågren, the founder of
museological courses at Umeå University (in 1981), presents a definition that
covers musealising processes, the heritagisation of built and natural environ-
ments and history:

Museology studies how the museum object is constituted, what values

and decisions guide the museum process from selection and collection to
viewing and mediation and thus what historical image, cultural perception
and natural vision are projected into protected objects and environments:
thus man’s relationship to both his physical environment as its history
(Ågren 1993, p. 63).

Museology in Umeå was rooted in the critical French tradition, where it has
since remained. Museology today, in Umeå University’s definition, is called
cultural heritage science. However, the task of museology may be even wider.
In Friedrich Waidacher’s opinion, museology would be to determine the laws
governing man’s relation to reality and uncover the bearers of museality (die
Träger de Musealität), i.e., to reveal the secrets between man and his (mainly
physical) reality. Waidacher would not have defined museology as a science,
but rather as a methodologisch-aktionale Betrachtung. If it is necessary to call
museology a science, then, he says, it is a science that seeks to understand man
and can contribute to the solution of humanity’s contemporary crisis and par-
ticipate in shaping a future for a more humane society (Waidacher 1993). This is
a formulation very close to the definition of what philosophy is, which, in turn,
brings the objectives of museology perhaps a bit too far.

In my understanding, the definition of museology is a global-diversity problem

that cannot be resolved. There are simply different conceptions and ideas of
museology in different parts of the world. The only thing we globally have in
common is that we all, in one way or another, deal with museums, musealisation
and heritage, and scrutinise the role of all this in society. That should be enough,
as far as definitions are concerned.

New Museology
The path of development of the discipline is, internationally, paved with a peculiar
cyclic amnesia. It seems to me that every generation of museum professionals and
theorists believe that they invent the wheel, implement a paradigm shift, create
something new, develop a dialogue with society or are more integrative, mostly
being unaware that these things were indeed said and done before. The cycles
span about 15–30 years. In spite of this lively theoretical and critical debate,
not much profound change has actually taken place in museums themselves,
if you exclude the truly dynamic 1970s. For example, the term new museology
(neue Museologie, museologie nouvelle), has been coined at least three times
in the last hundred years. The first time this concept emerged was in the 1920s
in Paris, where museological courses started with a series of lectures on the
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  71

theme Conversation à la religion des musées (On the religion of museums)

at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris (Gob & Drouguet 2003,
p. 12; Rivière 1989). The father of modern museology, Georg Henri Rivière
(1897–1985) implemented in Paris very early a critical approach, focusing on the
museum’s ideology and societal role, as well as its ability to contribute to public
education. This first new museology was created parallel to the democratisation
and modernisation of Western society during the first decades of the 20th cen-
tury, when museums were opened to a wider audience. Suddenly, these rather
closed, learned institutions had to relate to society and the public. As a result,
museology also took on educational and communicative tasks and questions.

The second time the concept of new museology was coined was in the mid-70s,
when an intense debate on the museums’ role and social responsibility took
place in Eastern Europe and France. Museological research had by now begun
to encompass increasingly larger parts of the material cultural heritage from a
critical societal perspective. This movement was based on the fact that cultural
heritage is a phenomenon that permeates and is governed by society and its
history culture. The museum was no longer primarily perceived as a scientific
institution, but also as a social institution.

The paradigm shift that occurred in the 1970s can be linked to the new critical
discourse in historiography, which earlier had been addressing national political
and economic history, nationhood and the nation’s cultures of representation.
Hermeneutics experienced a renaissance, history research was broken up into
a variety of sub-areas, microhistory and other approaches. The rejection of the
positivist objective criteria of truth led to the problematisation of science and
of the research process itself. Behind the second wave of the new museology
lurked the eco-museum idea, with the understanding that cultural heritage and
the museum can exist anywhere (museum without walls), and that this consti-
tutes a dynamic source of power for society. In France, the association MNES
(Museologie Nouvelle et Experimentation Sociale) emerged in 1982, and in 1985
MINOM (Movement International pour la Museologie Nouvelle) was formed
(van Mensch 1992, pp. 27–28). The MINOM Rio Declaration (Sociomuseology
in Movement) has, particularly in South America, Spain and Portugal, been a
powerful tool for implementing social responsibilities and integration in the
museum field (Chagas, Assuncão dos Santos & Glas 2014). At the core of soci-
omuseology is the idea of very close collaboration between museums and other
heritage institutions in order to promote local initiatives and entrepreneurs and to
create sustainable environments and activities, especially for small communities.2

2. See MINOM homepage [Link] Based broadly on a concern for social and
cultural change, MINOM brings together individuals who are dedicated to active and interactive
museology. It is open to aIl approaches that make the museum an instrument for identity building
and development within the community. MINOM favours cooperative relationships between users
and professionals, as well as intercultural collaboration. MINOM is an international organization
affiliated with ICOM (International Council of Museums) and still an active forum for discussions
and museum development.
72 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

It is interesting to note that in spite of the fact that a very large body of work
in museology has existed since the 1960s, covering a long period of time and
many countries, this corpus seems to be unknown to many people practically
and theoretically engaged in museum work. It is also well known among muse-
ologists that few, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, give references to earlier,
European museological and theoretical works in the field, and nothing seems to
prevent a repetitive re-invention of the wheel. One striking example is the book
The New Museology edited by Peter Vergo (1989). This was the third time “new
museology” entered the global scene. A group of mainly British and American
researchers thought that a paradigm shift was needed, apparently ignorant of
the intense debate going on in Europe since the 1970s. The editors thought to
come up with new ideas: “a radical re-examination of the role of museums”
(Vergo 1989, p. 6) and present a break with the classic collection- and documen-
tation-based museum research. The book is, however, an involuntary summary
of the European museological debate and discourse development in the 1970s
and early 1980s, to which very little reference is made (Smeds 2007). The book
says it is neo-critical, and wants to analyse the museum phenomenon from a
socio-cultural and societal perspective (see my discussion above on MINOM),
as if this was something entirely new in 1989.

Even more striking is that this very book, The New Museology, somehow raised
itself to the position of great authority; if any reference to new museology has
been made in other books on museums the last couple of decades (at least in
Scandinavia), it is to this. The peculiar gap between references and academic
cultures in different parts of the world is notable when one looks more closely
at museological studies in the Anglo-American versus German-French-Span-
ish-speaking worlds. Firstly, I have noted that both camps rarely refer to theo-
retical publications under the auspices of ICOFOM, the International Committee
for Museology (ISS ICOFOM Study Series and monographs), which makes it
obvious that ICOFOM publications are, for some reason, not read, although
they are freely accessible on the ICOFOM home page.3 Secondly, I have noted,
without having made any deeper survey, that neither camp refers to the other,
almost like an iron curtain was drawn between them. This goes especially for the
Anglo-American writings, where German or French references can very rarely
be found. Whether this is due to cultural reasons or language difficulties is hard
to tell, but it is a pity when this affects the development and implementation of
museological theory and thought.

During the first museological boom in Scandinavia in the 70s and 80s, there was
some significant museological co-operation across the language borders between
the English, French and German speaking worlds (as you can see below). Then
it seems to have disappeared, and museum studies in the Anglo-Saxon world

3. See also Mairesse, Francois, La belle histoire, aux origines de la nouvelle muséologie, Culture
& Musées 17–18/ 2000, pp. 33–56; Mairesse, F, Desvallées, A (eds.) 2007 Vers une redéfinition du
musée Paris: L’Harmattan; Desvallées, A 1992 Vagues: une anthologie de la nouvelle muséologie,
vol. 1, Lyon: PUL.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  73

went ahead on its own, with Leicester taking the lead. Nevertheless, museology
and heritage studies are rapidly growing fields of research in Scandinavia and
elsewhere. But as I said, sources other than those in English are rarely referred
to. The great bulk of this research in Scandinavia is also done in disciplines other
than museology, such as archaeology, ethnology, art history and sociology. This,
of course, is one of the reasons for the widespread suspicion against museology
as a discipline of its own.

As for languages, it really does make a difference in what language sphere re-
search is done and a book is written, since every country seems to have its own
academic culture and traditions. If today you want to make a really interesting
reading of critical museum research, of museum realisations and the exhibition
medium as phenomena in modern society, then you should, in addition to reading
major works in English, refer to the German- and French-speaking research,
and to some extent Spanish. For our purposes here I will mention just a few:
Déotte 1994; Davallon 2000; Deloche 1999; Desvallées & Mairesse 2011; Fehr
1988; Fliedl 1992, 1995; Gesser, Handschin, Jannelli 2012; Gob & Drouguet
2003; Gonseth, Hainard & Kehr 2002; Heinisch 1987; Jannelli 2012; Licht-
ensteiger 2012; Mairesse 2000, 2010; Muttenthaler & Wonisch 2006; Schärer
2006; Vieregg 2006; Waidacher 1993.

Today, museological research covers the entire cultural heritage and conservation
field, comprising in Scandinavia the popular history use (Swedish historiebruk),
as well as heritagisation, national conservation and disposal strategies. This also
includes the museum and museality as phenomena in modernity, as existential,
cultural, political and social problems, as well as the processes and normative
choices that lead to musealisation. Even the more philosophical concepts such as
forgetting, including and excluding are scrutinised themes. We should remember
that the museum, with its collection and representational policy, also constitutes
an ideological and political tool for exclusion (Déotte 1994).

Intangible heritage is of course also highly relevant. Museology examines in-

tangible heritage, for instance when one questions what strategies are used
for preserving, say, certain traditions, customs or storytelling that a society
has made up, or failed to create. Museology also examines the idea-historical
heritage we carry and other foundations for the entire modern conservation
bluster and our view of history as a whole (see Pettersson 2001; Molin 2003;
Widenberg 2006). Museology can and should also naturally scrutinise the nor-
mative values (Pettersson 2003) that govern the choices made when collecting
stories, contexts and object biographies, as well as the choices of classification
systems and taxonomies, or the paradigmatic, personal and other networks that
can exist between museums and academies or other institutions. Museology in
Umeå covers the whole field and encompasses everything from the museum as
an institution to the philosophy of the museum.
74 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Museology in Scandinavia
I have dwelt on these definitions and history for a while, in order to present the
setting and the context in which the museological school in Sweden and particu-
larly at Umeå University developed. Museology at Umeå was founded in 1981 by
Per-Uno Ågren, with the support of Vinoš Sofka, Erik Hofrén and many others
who, in the late 1970s, had started promoting the development of museology in
Sweden. Ågren integrated museological theory and thinking in his courses on
cultural analysis. For some time, he had been closely collaborating with leading
theorists within ICOFOM and with European museologists and related muse-
um professionals, among them Anna Gregorová, Friedrich Waidacher, Zbynek
Stránský, Georges-Henri Rivière, Gaynor Kavanagh, Kenneth Hudson and Vinoš
Sofka, who had come to Sweden as a refugee from Czechoslovakia in 1968.4 The
eco-museum movement of the 1970s and 80s, helped along by the founder of the
concept, Hugues de Varine (Varine 1978)5 and others, was in Scandinavia very
relevant and influential in this development (Hudson 1996; Davis 1999; Varine
2017). Inspired by this international movement, a feverish activity of museum
development started in different parts of Scandinavia. At that turbulent time,
museums were conceived not only as the guardians of our heritage, but also as
social actors with a responsibility to engage ordinary people on the regional level
in museum activities, promoting a collective memory (Näsman 2014).

Of high importance for the Scandinavian development were also several interna-
tional conferences held in Sweden, the first of which, The Role of the Museum in
a Decentralized Cultural Policy, was arranged in 1976 in Umeå by Ågren, under
the umbrella of ICOM/CECA (International Committee for Education and Cul-
tural Action). This was the first major ICOM conference held in Sweden since the
General Assembly of 1959 (Maure 2004). In this same context, an encouraging
sign of museological awakening in Sweden was the publication of a handbook
called Museiteknik (Museum Techniques) for courses at Uppsala University.
Here, Vinoš Sofka wrote an article about museology from an international per-
spective (Sofka 1976, pp. 149–153). The year after, ICOFOM was founded in
Moscow, where both Sofka and Ågren participated. Then, in 1980 and 1981, two
ICOFOM symposia were arranged as a co-operation between Ågren and Sofka
at the National Museum of Antiquities in Stockholm. These workshops resulted
in the aforementioned publication series, MUWOP/Museological Working Pa-
pers: A debate journal on fundamental museological problems (1980, 1981), in
which almost all the leading museologists from Europe published a short paper.
MUWOP was, however, short-lived, and only those two issues ever appeared.
It was then incorporated into ISS, the ICOFOM Study Series. On the other
hand, the book series founded a few years later at Umeå, Papers in Museology,
survives to this day, mainly publishing museological PhD theses. Papers in
Museology emanated from the next two important museology symposia (after
MUWOP 1980–81) arranged by Ågren in Umeå in 1988 and 1989, concurrently

4. He started his career as a curator at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm.

5. One of the creators of the first eco-museum in the world, Le Creusot in France in 1971 (1974).
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  75

with the foundation of the Department of Museology (1988). The themes of the
symposiums were “What is museology” and “Local and global – two aspects of
museum communication”. Here, again, leading international museologists (and
a few leading practitioners) took part: Tomislav Sôla, Vinoš Sofka, André Des-
vallées, Hugues de Varine, Peter van Mensch, Gaynor Kavanagh, Per-Uno Ågren,
Kenneth Hudson and Donald Horne, among others (Råberg & Ågren 1992). The
report from these two workshops, with short articles by all the participants,
became very important for the development of museological teaching at Umeå
and elsewhere Scandinavia.6 Those two symposia were also a result of intense
work and collaboration during the late 1970s and late 80s to develop Swedish
museums towards more socially inclusive institutions. This movement was led by
energetic museologists such as Sofka and Ågren, together with museum profes-
sionals such as Erik Hofrén, Bo Lagerkrantz, Eva Persson, Margareta Ekarv, Ulla
Arnell, Harald Hvarfner and Sten Rentzhog, among others. The two symposia
were also a result of collaboration between museology and the History of Ideas
at Umeå University, with professors Ronny Ambjörnsson and Sverker Sörlin as
the leading figures (Bäckström 2014). Together they had created a very fruitful
and inspiring intellectual milieu where heritage, museums, society, territories,
nature and ecology all came together. Already then, one had incorporated the
protection and preservation of nature into the concept of culture. Ambjörnsson
and Sörlin, as well as many ethnologists and others representing the humani-
ties, wrote their part of the workshop report. In museological courses, human
ecology, and to some extent, human geography, were introduced.

In 1993, Scandinavian museology took a big step forward – coincidentally (or

not) at the same time as Friedrich Waidacher’s extensive Handbuch der Allge-
meinen Museologie appeared. First, the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen
arranged (curated by Annesofie Becker) a major and very influential exhibition
named Museum Europa, which museologically, and with a very philosophical
eye, scrutinised the history of museums and collecting. That same year, three
theoretically oriented museum practitioners, Ågren, John Aage Gjestrum and
Ole Strandgaard, from Sweden, Norway and Denmark respectively, arranged
a series of lectures at the Danish Museumshojskolen (Museum Academy) on
the initiative of Strandgaard, the leader of this Academy. The topic of the se-
ries was “The museum in its time – on the trail of Danish museology” (Ågren
1993). I do not know whether any museologists from Iceland attended to give
a lecture, but from Finland, the future professor of museology (from 1997 on),
Janne Vilkuna, took part. Thus, four Nordic countries set the scene for muse-
ological development. The outcome of these lectures was the foundation of the
well-known journal Nordisk Museologi – in both Scandinavian languages and
English, the first issue of which appeared in Umeå a few months later, in 1993,
with Ågren as the editor. The ambition of the journal was to constitute a link
between the universities and the practical museum field, and to promote critical

6. Papers in Museology 1. WHAT IS MUSEOLOGY? (1988) and LOCAL AND GLOBAL – Two aspects
of museum communication (1989). Report from two symposia at the Department of museology, Umeå
University. Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 108/1992.
76 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

analysis of the phenomenon called museum. Another ambition was to convey

museologically interesting texts from other countries and languages, particularly
from Germany and France (also in translation), and the other way around, to
make the Nordic museological discussion known in other countries, by means
of English summaries of Scandinavian texts.

At this point, it was already clear that museology should not deal with the mu-
seum only, but also with ideas and values concerning the broader field. In the
following years, there was intense co-operation between these above-mentioned
close friends and other museological actors in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and
Norway, with the Museum Academy in Denmark and Umeå University as centres
of activity. Very important were the International Museum Days, arranged for
some time nearly every year by Ågren, Strandgaard and Gjestrum, mostly in
Umeå, but also in Copenhagen and elsewhere. Many international museologists
and museum directors participated and presented papers and ideas on museum
development. Those Museum Days were highly appreciated among professionals
and practitioners as a deep source of inspiration.

Apart from the international influences and collaborations, the broader definition
of museology in Sweden has national roots.7 In Sweden, there is an established
tradition of seeing museums, their collections, etc., as closely interwoven with
material and cultural heritage in general, forming a total heritage. The material
remains of history, whether ancient relics, buildings or objects, are perceived as
intertwined, from a preservation perspective; heritage is coherent and undivided,
as Ågren would say (Ågren 1992, p. 111). The term environmental heritage (also
used by Vilkuna in Finland) embraces it all, and museology will cover it all. The
concept is social- and value-based, says Ågren, and he continues:

Museology studies the apprehension of nature and the view of culture

and history projected by that legacy: the relationship of man to his sur-
roundings as life environment and history. What in material culture has
been imbued with so much meaning that it has been selected as an en-
vironmental heritage, protected by society … ? What have the criteria
been … ? What role has nature, cultural heritage and history played in
different eras? (Ågren 1992, p.111)

My own conception comes close to Ågren’s. This is my short definition as head

of museological research at Umeå:

Museology is a theoretical platform for our exploration of industrial man’s

(traumatic) relationship to time and the material world, and how this
is expressed in musealisation and the preservation of objects, environ-
ments, the material and the immaterial, and calling it heritage. The task
of museology is to explore what kind of phenomena the museum and

7. Here it is important to note that not all universities in Sweden that offer museological courses
necessarily share these definitions.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  77

heritage are in modernity; what are we actually doing, and why, when
preserving reality?8

Furthermore, Ågren underlines that in order to understand the meaning and

significance of heritage, we (museologists) must also study the world and social
views that determine social values. Museology is, thus, a kind of philosophy and
sociology of museums. Hence, he views museology from three main perspectives:

• A historical perspective, which seeks to describe and understand the en-

vironmental heritage of a certain era and a certain place

• A sociological perspective, which studies the institutions and activities

which have come into being as the result of a notion of cultural and
natural heritage

• A communicative perspective, which applies to the attempts to mediate

the environmental heritage in time and space (e.g., exhibitions). (Ågren
1992, p.112)

Here, Ågren reveals his close connections and collaboration with the interna-
tional museological community. The introduction of museology as a specific
discipline elsewhere (other than at Umeå and Jyväskylä) was a slow process,
no matter how early and intensely the aforementioned actors of the 1970s and
80s acted as missionaries. Sweden and Finland were, for a long time, the only
Nordic countries where professorships in museology were founded (in 1997) and
museological education has been going on since the early 1980s. By contrast,
in Norway a professorship was established only in 2011, in Iceland in 2009 and
Denmark there still isn’t one.

The University of Iceland offers, as Umeå has done since the 1990s, a course
package from undergraduate to the PhD level in museology. Iceland boarded
the train of museology quite late; master’s and PhD programmes started in
Reykjavik in 2009. Icelandic museology defines its object of study in the nar-
rower sense – it is strictly about museums – but, as professor Sigurjón Baldur
Hafsteinsson remarks: “It is of course inevitable that heritage comes in the
picture, e.g., via other courses that our students take in archaeology or folklore
(as part of their choices)”.9

In Denmark, research in museology started in the mid-70s. When it comes to the

rate of completed projects and published books with purely museological titles,
Denmark stands at the forefront in Scandinavia, and always has. In fact, during
the first years of the journal Nordisk Museologi, the bulk of published articles
came from Denmark. The same goes for other museological research and publi-
cations today (depending, of course, on how museology is conceived, whether it
embraces other heritage matters or only museums). There is no professorship of

8. This definition is not published. I have presented it in my papers at conferences and in my teaching
for first-year students at Umeå University.
9. Information e-mail to the author 12.07.2016.
78 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

museology in Denmark, but teaching is conducted at many universities: Aarhus,

Copenhagen, Roskilde and Aalborg, to mention a few. For a long time now, the
main centre for studies and research has been the Department of Art History,
Aesthetics & Culture & Museology at Aarhus University. There, museology is,
at least in principle, defined in the same large sense as in Sweden and Finland:

Museology is a broad, cross-disciplinary field of study comprising research

into theoretical and practical questions about cultural heritage, natural
heritage and art and their institutions, particularly museums and their
significance and role in society. The museological research environment
at Aarhus University explores processes of musealisation, which means
the way in which a society selects, exhibits, interprets and administers
the tangible and intangible products of culture with a view to preserving
them for posterity.10

At Århus University, there is a so-called supplementary course and a master’s

course in museology – the Supplementary course requires Bachelor studies in
some other subject.11 The study of museology is structured around five perspec-
tives that come very close to those of Ågren, and are probably influenced by
him and the Strandgaard school of museology at the Danish Museum Academy
(Museumshojskolen). Museology, they say, has the following:

• A historical-institutional perspective, including research into the history,

collections, exhibitions and artefact concepts of Danish museums

• A didactic perspective, focusing on young people and communication at

museums, among other things

• A communicative perspective, with a strong profile with regard to strategic

communication in the museum world

• A social-economic perspective, including research into museum economy

and cultural heritage as policy

• A technological perspective, with years of research into digital museology.12

In Norway, museology had faced a constant uphill struggle until just about a
decade ago (despite the efforts by the Norwegian driving spirit of museology,
the late John Aage Gjestrum). The implementation of museological education
and research has been much slower than in other Scandinavian countries – to
my understanding mainly due to a conservative attitude in the museum field
itself and among professionals in related disciplines. Still, some museological

10. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 8 October

2019]
11. See the program for Supplementary course in Museology [Link]
tary-subject/museological-studies/?amp%3BorgUrl=http%3A%2F%[Link]%2Fmuseologis-
ke-studier%2F [Last accessed 8 October 2019]
12. As for Norway [Link]
[Last accessed 8 October 2019]
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  79

short courses have been, since the 80s, offered at various universities scattered
throughout the country. One of the first was given at the University of Bergen,
taught by Anders Johansen and others, as well as some ground-level courses in
Oslo and Tromsø. These were shorter museological courses from around 1995
onwards. During the last fifteen years, the situation has improved considerably.

Today, the negative attitude towards museology has faded away, particularly
in the museum field itself, where people with a degree in museology are direly
needed and employed. Today, the heart of museology is located at the Univer-
sity of Oslo in the Department of Cultural Studies & Oriental Languages, where
teaching at advanced levels began in 2008 and a Professor of Museology was
appointed in 2011, a position still held by Brita Brenna. The ambition of criti-
cal museology in Norway is to incorporate and strengthen the critical heritage
aspect in teaching as well as research (Brenna 2015). However, what in the
critical aspect would be more critical than the general theoretical museological
perspective, has not been clarified.

Research in Scandinavia – Some concluding notes

Are there any special trends or common fields of research in the Nordic coun-
tries? In spite of the many definitions of museology encompassing the heritage
total, natural heritage and whatever else, research in the discipline of museology
focuses to an astonishing degree purely on museums, their collections, collect-
ing, management, exhibitions and visitor studies. In other words, it focuses on
traditional topics, and leaves the other part, heritage in general, not to mention
natural heritage, to other disciplines, such as sociology, archaeology, history,
ethnology, art history, etc. Together they form a common platform for museum/
heritage studies. Generally, some confusion still prevails as to the objectives of
museology. Other disciplines seem to carry on their business with heritage and
museums and do not really bother about what the science of museology really is,
or does, or has done. References to monographs and articles in French, German
or Spanish are, as I noted earlier, extremely rare (in Scandinavia and Finland).
Still, more and more research has been conducted in the field, parallel to the
immense growth of the museum/heritage field itself. In my view, there would
now be an opportunity to join forces and establish some intercommunication
between different international schools and research groups. Museology could
perfectly well be the umbrella discipline for all of these entities.

These developments include the centres I have mentioned. One of them is

the Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity (Nordiskt centrum för
kulturarvspedagogik, NCK) in Östersund, Sweden, a Nordic-Baltic centre for
learning through cultural heritage, which also conducts research in the field.
For NCK heritage is seen as a resource in the work towards a sustainable and
inclusive society, where learning is a life-long process.13 Their research aims

13. Available at [Link]

tivity/ [Last accessed autumn 2019]
80 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

at understanding how cultural heritage can be utilised for social purposes and
development. They also combine cultural heritage pedagogy with the outlining
of a vision for the future and for engaging the ageing population. This, in my
opinion, is a very important statement.

I would also like to mention two important research centres, the Danish Centre
for Museum Research (2009, University of Copenhagen), a kind of umbrella
organisation for Danish museological research,14 and the Norwegian Centre for
Museum Studies (2011, University of Oslo).15 It was at Århus University, in the
Department of Arts and Museology, where the very first official Danish Muse-
ology Research Programme was inaugurated in the autumn of 2016.16 Danish
museum and museological research has always been vivid. It is worth noting
that one third of the projects in Denmark (not only at this centre) have dealt
with visitors, pedagogy or communication and only one quarter with collecting,
preservation and other tacit parts of museum work. And (only) seven were part of
some international project (Gransgaard, Jensen, & Hejlskov Larsen 2014, p. 7).

The Norwegian Centre’s mission is also interdisciplinary, and it “wants to es-

tablish a network between institutions and departments and start negotiating
and opening up the boundaries between art and natural sciences, ethnology
and anthropology”.17

Coda
My ambition in this paper has been not only to tell the (brief) history of museol-
ogy and the development of museological education and research in the Nordic
countries, but also to emphasise that museology, today, should be conceived of
and defined in a much broader sense than before. I would conclude – and this is
my personal conclusion based on exploring a variety of museums, museological
and heritage study centres – that museology, heritology, museum studies and
critical heritage studies all have a joint scope of research which encompasses
museums, the concept of museality, material studies, cultural heritage, heritage
total and preservation strategies.

Heritage institutions will, I think, be more and more at the core of the action,
trying to change things and make an impact in society when needed. Museums,
as the preservation strategies and institutions of society, can no longer go on
just collecting the leftovers of our destructive society, without participating in
the reasons for this destruction. Cultural heritage (as ICOM states) and critical

14. Available at [Link] [Last accessed autumn 2019]

15. Available at [Link]
logi/ [Last accessed spring 2016]. Since then, the text has been slightly changed on their web site.
16. See the program for Supplementary course in Museology [Link]
mentary-subject/museological-studies/?amp%3BorgUrl=http%3A%2F%[Link]%2Fmu-
seologiske-studier%2F
17. [Link] [Last
accessed autumn 2019]
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  81

museology should be a key element in a new model of sustainable development

that sees heritage, within or outside museums, as important in the fight against
poverty, in the protection of the environment and a source of capital for local
populations, as well as a source of pride, social cohesion and collective identity.

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The Genesis of Finnish Museology

Janne Vilkuna

Abstract
My chapter describes the history of Finnish museology. I use an archival ap-
proach to show how museology became a university discipline, as well as to
show the efforts made to enhance professionalism in this area. Museology is
a young science in Finland, and its development stems from a knowledge of
collection care. I introduce the role of such terms as museography, museology
and heritology as part of the Finnish museology field.

Keywords: museology, heritage, university education, museography, heritology

Introduction
In Sweden, those in the field were very knowledgeable about museum sciences
already at the beginning of the 20th century. In Finland, the Archaeological
Commission was established in 1883 and the Finnish Museums Association
was established, in connection with this commission, in 1923. These two insti-
tutions have had a major impact on the development of museum sciences in
this country. The Finnish Museums Association organised the first courses for
part-time museum directors in the 1920s and the first university-based course
on technical aspects of museum work for University of Helsinki students in 1964.
Internationally, two organisations have had a strong effect on the development
of museology – ICOM’s Personnel Training Committee (ICTOP), established in
1968, and the Committee for Museology (ICOFOM), established in 1976.

In Finland, the Ministry of Education started to develop the museum field in the
1970s. The Regional Museum Committee stated in 1973, “All questions relating
to professional training in the field of museums have to be clarified without
delay” (Report of the Regional committee of the Museums Branch 1973, p. 92).1
The Finnish Museums Association concurred with this sentiment, since the
number and variety of professions in museums was increasing at the time. The
state subsidy system started in Finland in 1979, which required at least two
professionally-trained workers to work in all regional cultural and art museums.
The Ministry of Education urged the Higher Education Council to ascertain the
specific needs for education in the museum field in 1981. They submitted their
study in May 1983, which included a recommendation for basic-level studies
in museology. The official degree programme of museology, as outlined in the
study, started in autumn 1983, with the first post related to it being established

1. All quotations that appear in Finnish in the original sources are translated into English by Nina
Robbins.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  87

in 1989. The Museums Decree, adopted in 2005, declared that basic-level studies
in museology officially qualify students completing them to work in the field.

When museology first became a university discipline, there was already a division
into practical and theoretical lines of thinking. The practical line attempted to
answer the question: How is museum work done? It sought various concrete
methods to accomplish this. The theoretical line looked for answers to questions
such as: Why do we do museum work in first place? Why do individuals collect
artefacts? Why do communities establish museums and pass legislation to protect
our cultural heritage? The latest development in this line of thinking is known as
the concept of heritology. This concept covers all of the various memory organ-
isations, along with their duties, processes and unifying heritological theories.2

The Roots of Finnish Museology

The roots of practical museology, i.e., museography, can be traced back to the
time of the Renaissance, the cabinets of curiosities and the great courts of the 17th
century. Early thoughts on collecting, documenting, preserving and displaying
were recorded and published in the encyclopedias of the time. Through muse-
ography, one understood the practical know-how that aims to answer questions
such as: How can museum work be done? What are the safest, most efficient
and most economical methods to implement it? This is different from modern,
theoretical museology, which aims more to find answers to the question: Why
is museum work done? Already in 1913, the curator of the Swedish Nordic Mu-
seum, Sune Ambrosiani (1874–1950), wrote an article Museum in the Nordisk
Familjebok and distinguished the area of museum science (museivetenskap)
from that of museum techniques (museiteknik).

In Finland they were very knowledgeable of the same developments; this became
obvious in the definition of museology made by the curator of the ethnographic
collection of the National Museum, U.T. Sirelius3 (1872–1929). This was stated in
the Finnish Encyclopedia in 1914 as follows: “Museum science and research aims
to discover the best methods for cleaning, preserving, cataloging and displaying,
as well as the most practical display structures” (Vilkuna 2003).

The Finnish Museums Association was established in 1923 as an aid organisation

to the Archaeological Commission, which name was changed to the National
Board of Antiquities (NBA) in 1972 and subsequently to The Finnish Heritage
Agency in 2018 (Vilkuna 1998). The regulations of the association confirmed
courses and counselling as the best methods for educating new professionals.
National Museum Days (educational seminars for museum professionals) were
started already in 1923. Furthermore, the Museums Association organised three
practical courses for part-time museum directors in the National Museum 1928–

2. See Desvallées & Mairesse 2010 on concepts of museography and museology.

3. Sirelius later became a senior curator and department director. From 1921 onward, he was the
first professor of Finno-Ugric ethnography at the University of Helsinki.
88 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

1930. The unified programme of the courses strengthened the coherent line of
thinking among those working within the field of cultural heritage. This certainly
was an asset, which later developed into a unified museum profession in Finland.4

The Start of Museology Elsewhere in Europe

After the Second World War, there was a focus on the societal meaning of mu-
seums. There was a lecturer post in Czechoslovakia already before the war. In
addition, the director of the Brno Moravian Museum, Jan Jelinek (1926–2004),
established a museological department in his museum in 1962 and one at Brno
University the following year. He was in charge of teaching until Zbynek Stránský
(1926–2016) started as a lecturer.5 In addition, in 1950 Czech museologist Jiri
Neustupný (1905–1981) defended his doctoral thesis on contemporary issues
in museology. In 1968, he was the first to write about museological theory in
his book Museum and Research.

In England, a museum studies programme was started at the University of

Leicester in 1966 and extended to a master’s level programme in 1975. Around
the same time, in 1976, courses on museology started to be organised in the
Netherlands by the Reinwardt Academy.

Museums worked actively to become more visitor-, society- and environmen-

tally-oriented institutions; this created a demand for new professional skills.6
ICOM’s sixth General Assembly, organised in the USA in 1965, was the first
to have the theme Training of Museum Personnel. Two years later an expert
meeting was organised in Brno. This meeting aimed to achieve museology as
a university discipline. Eventually the 1965 General Assembly resulted in the
founding of ICTOP in 1968.

Jan Jelinek was selected as the president of ICOM in 1971, and after his term,
he worked actively towards the founding of a museological committee. ICOFOM
was founded in 1976, and Jelinek was selected as the first chair. During his term
he started the discussion about theoretical museology, with the aim of making
it a university discipline (van Mensch 1992).

In the 1970s, museum-centred museology advanced in a relatively speedy

manner, encompassing the entire cultural environment. Museologists Peter
van Mensch, Piet Pouw and Frans Schouten (1983, p. 81), who worked at the
Reinwardt Academy, defined museology as follows: “Museology encompasses
the whole complex of theory and practice, involving the caring for and the using
of cultural and natural heritage.” The same development can be seen in relation
to museum objects. These were no longer seen as having intrinsic value, but their
value was now seen in relation to the contextual information attached to them.

4. In Sweden, these museum courses were first organized only in 1951.

5. Stránský organised the teaching for ICOM’s international summer school ISSOM in 1987.
6. These efforts become clear in the theme of the 1971 ICOM General Assembly, Museum in Service
of Man, Today and Tomorrow.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  89

Following a similar line of thinking, museologist Tomislav Šola formulated a

general theory of heritage (Šola 2005, pp. 8–10): “[The concept of] heritage
consists of an entirety of principles, theses and theorems used in elucidating
the concept of heritage institutions, their practice and their mission, as well as
their role in society.” According to him, heritology belongs to the discipline of
the information sciences, because it is an inclusive, interdisciplinary and soci-
ety-focused theory, including both our cultural and natural heritages.7

Teaching Starts in the Scandinavian Countries

Umeå University in Sweden started courses on cultural studies, which included
studies of museology, in the academic year 1981–1982. This expanded into the
Department of Museology in 1988. The department received a full professorship
in 2003. In addition to Umeå, there are two universities in Sweden that offer
studies in museology, but museology can be studied as a major subject only
in Umeå. In Uppsala University, museology started at the Institution of ABM
(Arkivvetenskap, Biblioteks- och Informationsvetenskap Samt Musei- och Kul-
turarvsvetenskap) in 1999 and in Göteborg (Gothenburg) University in 2001.
In addition to these university courses, there are several institutions in Sweden
offering museum studies at lower levels (Smeds 2006; Silvén 2018, pp. 120–122;
Ågren 1992, 1993).

In Norway, an MA-programme for museology started in the Department of

Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo in 2010. This
was changed to an MA programme in Museology and Heritage Studies, which
at the moment is the only such MA-programme in Norway (Brenna 2018, pp.
117–118). Brita Brenna was nominated for professor of museology in 2011.8
BA-level studies, which also include museology, started in Denmark at the Århus
Centre of Museology in 2001.9 In addition, there has been the possibility to
include studies of museology in a BA degree, but none of the universities offer
a full degree (Nørskov 2018, pp. 93–94). BA-level studies of museology have
also been offered in Iceland since 2005, and in 2019 it also became possible to
conclude MA-level studies and even PhD degrees in museology (Whitehead &
Hafsteinsson 2018).

As of 2019, there are no degree programmes of museology in the Baltic countries.

Since 2004 there have been summer school activities organised by the Promo-
tional Society of Museology in the Baltics, which is an organisation supported
by the Estonian Ministry of Education. These schools have annually invited
international lecturers and organised courses on museology.10

7. Professor of Information Sciences from Zagreb University, Ivo Maroeviç, shared Šola’s opinion
(Maroeviç 1997).
8. See Gjestrum 1995 for developments before 1995.
9. In 2004–2006 it was also possible to complete an MA degree in conjunction with museum work.
10. Assistant Professor Janne Vilkuna held the first museology courses in Estonia in 1994. At that
time, the organizers were the Estonian and Finnish Museums Associations; the course had 73 par-
90 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

In the autumn of 1989, the first meeting involving all educational institutions
in the field of museology in the Nordic countries was organised in Lillehammer,
Norway. By the end of the same year, a study on the educational levels and needs
in this area was published by the Norwegian Museums Association (Rosander
Aarsland & Rosander 1989). As a result of this study, the Cooperative Commit-
tee of Nordic Education was established, which started to organise museology
course at Nordic universities. Eventually, and because there was a general need
for teaching material and for a discussion forum, the scientific journal Nordisk
Museologi was established in 1993. This journal was to have two issues yearly and
was intended to operate as a cooperative vehicle between the Nordic countries.

The Status of Museology Becoming Established in

Finland
The first university-based museographical course for students of ethnology from
the University of Helsinki was held in the National Museum of Finland, with the
help of the Finnish Museums Association, in 1964. The connection to ethnology
was evident, because the professor of ethnology, Niilo Valonen (1913–1983),
was also at the time the chair of the Finnish Museums Association (1960–1970).
The contact person in the association was Jorma Heinonen (1918–1988), who
also held lectures on general museology. This was a subject area that he had
familiarised himself with during his various travels to museums and universities
abroad, as well as in ICOM’s General Assemblies. His one-month excursion to
the United States in 1965 was especially important for the development of his
museological views. In 1973 and 1974, these museological lectures belonged to
the programmes of ethnology, art history and archaeology at the University of
Helsinki, and in 1974 they were also held at the University of Jyväskylä.

During the 1970s, the word museology started to appear in the conversations
of museum professionals. According to the pioneer of university-based muse-
ology in Sweden, Per-Uno Ågren (1919–2008), museology first appeared in a
published text in Sweden only in 1976 (Ågren 1992, p.105).11 In relation to this
development in Sweden, it is surprising that the word museology appeared
relatively early in Finland, even though it had a pre-scientific and pre-Sirelian
meaning at the time. The term was used by the state archaeologist, professor
Hjalmar Appelgren-Kivalo (1853–1937) in January 1923, when he had the honour
of opening the first Museum Days event organised in the National Museum by
the Finnish Museums Association. In his opening speech, he stated: “When it
comes to all of the questions present these days, it is natural that they will this
time focus on special museological issues, but will also focus on such questions,
where purely scientific views are determinative.”12 Despite his speech, the term

ticipants from all over Estonia.

11. The word appeared in a collection of articles called Museiteknik in an article named Museologin
i internationellt perpektiv by Vinoš Sofka (1976), who was the department director at the Historical
Museum.
12. The first museum days in Helsinki. Report and presentations 1923, 8.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  91

was subsequently forgotten, and only appeared again almost fifty years later.
By that time, the meaning of the term had changed substantially.

The Ministry of Education started to develop the museum field in the 1970s.
In addition to a reorganizing of the Archaeological Commission, the important
question was how to organize the state subsidy system that was in use for libraries,
as well as for private and communal museums. One of the offices responsible for
organising this was the Regional Museum Committee, established in 1972. Their
report was ready in 1973 (Committee Report 1973, p. 13).13 The report outlined
the following duties to be accomplished: “Draft a suggestion of the regional
governing system connected to the NBA, draft a suggestion of the state subsidy
system directed to private museums and, finally, draft a suggestion of the required
statutes.” The need for specialty education was well understood. In addition,
because the committee report included statutes for the state subsidy system,
they also suggested that “All questions relating to professional training in the
field of museums have to be clarified without delay” (Committee Report 1973).14

The Secretary of Museum Affairs of the Finnish Museums Association, Jorma

Heinonen, described in the first editorial of the association’s bulletin in 1973
the concept of “museology as a university discipline” and stated:

The goal in the future should be to ensure that a permanent chair be

established for general museology that is related to different humanistic
disciplines. In addition, the various departments would finance the needed
studies in museology in their own areas. … Based on the great number
of museums in our country and general interest towards museum work,
it is necessary that we develop the field in the direction of systematic
scientific research. This is the only way we can guarantee that museum
work is able to keep up with our rapidly-developing and changing society
(Heinonen 1973, Editorial).

This current theme was also brought up in a discussion session on educational

issues in 1973, when the Finnish Museums Association celebrated its 50th an-
niversary in Helsinki. Jorma Heinonen was invited as an expert to a committee
that aimed to develop the programme for museum studies in 1974. The chair
of this committee was Niilo Valonen. All this led to a statement in a museum
policy published in 1975 by the Finnish Museums Association, which declared
that museological research needs to be considered when drafting any scientific
policies, and that it also needs to be included in university programs.

At the University of Turku, students of archaeology organised a Nordic meeting

in 1975, where one of the agendas was museum training. Jorma Heinonen drafted
a report for the department of cultural studies at the University of Turku of the

13. The chair of the committee was councillor of higher education Markku Linna, from the Ministry
of Education.
14. Report of the Regional Committee of the Museums Branch 1973.
92 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

content of the training, but matters did not proceed as well as hoped – either
in Turku or in Helsinki.

University Studies Commence

A general updating of university curricula started in Finland in the 1970s. This
was accelerated by a report made by the University Degree Committee (FYTT
1972). This report aimed for multidisciplinary degrees, which would include
general studies and also show connections to the professional and practical needs
of society. Previous subjects were now organised into study programmes. This
updating took place at University of Jyväskylä in 1980, leading to the establish-
ment of the degree programme of Art and Culture Studies. At the same time, it
was noted that many students went on to work in museums, and a committee
was established to plan the degree programme for museum studies. This com-
mittee included experts from the museum field, as well as from the university.

The short museum courses common to some of the humanities disciplines formed
the basis of the planned teaching. These courses covered areas such as collection
care, but also introduced historical periods, as well as offering excursions and
internships. In addition, the earlier museum courses that had already started in
1974 offered sufficient background information. The continuous expansion of the
museum field throughout the 1970s also accelerated the process and ultimately
the state subsidy system was implemented in 1979 (State Subsidy 1979).15 Accord-
ing to this decision, regional museums were granted state subsidies for regional
museum work. These museums included both cultural historical museums and
art museums. Eventually there were to be 20 regional historical museums and
16 regional art museums. This took place between 1980 and 2008, in the form of
22 regional historical museums and 16 regional art museums.16 It was required
for these museums to have a minimum of two professionals who had completed
studies in museology, or who had otherwise gained the required skills. During
the term 1980–1981 a museum programme was established, which was con-
nected to the Department of Art and Culture Studies. This programme included
general studies (30 cr.), major studies (70 cr.) and two minor subjects (60 cr.),
out of which 20 credits could be in museology. A similar option for museology
was also offered at the University of Oulu in the Department of History.17 In
Jyväskylä, the major studies and the first minor subject were so-called museum
subjects, which included archaeology, ethnology, art history and Finnish history.
The first courses based on this new curriculum were held during the summers
of 1981 through 1983 in connection with the Jyväskylä Summer University.
All participants were either university students or professionals who had been
working in the field for a while.

15. Government decision on the basis of state subsidies (404/79).

16. The system was renewed between 2019–2020.
17. Interview with Pentti Koivunen 21.11.2006.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  93

Figure 1. A joint excursion of students from University of Jyväskylä art history and museology to St.
Petersburg April 2000 in front the battleship Aurora. Photo: Janne Vilkuna.

The Advisory Board of Museums, the Finnish Museums

Association and the Higher Education Council of
Ministry of Education are Active
The Advisory Board of Museums pointed out in their letter (21.11.1980) to the
Ministry of Education that the museum field had remained somewhat unorgan-
ised and recommended that this matter should be looked into. The Advisory
Board was initially assembled upon request of the Ministry of Education, and
Jorma Heinonen, who was the director of the Lahti Museum at the time, was
the board chair. It was noted in the letter that the new curriculum had dispersed
traditional museum disciplines under various programmes, and that this would
endanger the recruitment of professionals with diverse cultural historical back-
grounds. In addition, it was stated that advanced studies in museology would
start, even though that matter had not been thoroughly studied. The board
estimated that the need for museum professionals would increase by from 200
to 250 people in ten years. This estimate proved to be too conservative, as there
were around 200 museum professionals in 1980, but around 600 in 1990, around
850 in 2000 and around 1000 in 2010.

The qualification standards, created by the NBA, were also applied to other
museum posts. This led to a situation where one needed one to two years of
practical experience in museum work before one could apply for any post. As the
field grew, this demand was extremely difficult to fulfil. This is why the Finnish
Museums Association argued for the need of a university degree programme.
94 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

They explained that more relevant and specific internships, as part of museology
studies, could replace the former strenuous internships.18

The Ministry did not hesitate, requesting that its own Higher Education Council
(1966–1995) investigate “the overall situation and future plans regarding the
education of museum professionals in Finnish universities, the need for museol-
ogy and internships in museums and finally that it carry out the needed actions
regarding such education.” The Higher Education Council was advised to be in
contact with the NBA and the Advisory Board of Museums, but not specifically
with the Finnish Museums Association.19

The arts and theology sector of the Higher Education Council addressed the
Ministry’s letter in February 1981.20 The Secretary of Scientific Affairs from the
Ministry of Education, Kari Poutasuo, was invited as an expert to the meeting.
He presented the work done by the Regional Museum Committee and the devel-
oping network of regional museums. In his report, he stated that the organising
of the nation-wide educational and internship needs of museums is an important
step in regard to future investments in museums, as well as to the state sub-
sidy system. It was noted in the meeting that an hourly-paid person from the
museum field is needed to conduct the investigation further. Professor Kalevi
Pöykkö (1933–2016) and the chair, professor Asko Vilkuna (1929–2014), were
appointed to search for the right person. The amanuensis of the Department of
Art History, Tellervo Helin, was selected, and she was appointed to the post in
September 1981.21 It was clear to all of the members that organising the university
degree studies of museology was also a very topical issue at the time in Sweden.

Tellervo Helin had anticipated the task at hand and the report was declared ready
at the council’s meeting in October 1981. The Finnish Museums Association had
worked on their investigation simultaneously, and their report was ready at the

18. In 1986 the Ministry of Education established a working group to study the needed level and
scope of internships in museums. Their report was ready the following year, and it stated that museum
and museology studies would include a three-month internship and that certain museums would
reserve fifty posts for these internships. These internships would be financed by the state and the
selected museums. These internships would be included in the study programmes of Helsinki, Turku,
Jyväskylä, Oulu, Tampere and Joensuu universities, as well as in the Åbo Akademi. These suggestions
did not actualize, and as for now, the financing of these student internships is organized in various
ways in Finland.
19. Ministry’s letter to the Higher Education Council 21.1.1981. Higher Education Council archives.
Ministry of Education, Helsinki.
20. Professor Asko Vilkuna from the University of Jyväskylä was the chair of the Higher Education
Council. The chair of the sector of arts and theology was professor Pentti Karkama from the University
of Oulu. The members of the sector were professor Karl-Johan Illman from the Åbo Akademi, profes-
sor Kalevi Pöykkö from University of Jyväskylä, professor Viljo Rasila from University of Tampere,
professor Kaj Wikström from Jouensuu University, licentiate of philosophy Pekka Pesonen from
the University of Helsinki, starting in April 1981 professor Alho Alhoniemi from the University of
Turku, docent Eero Huovinen from the University of Helsinki and presenter Matti Hänninen from
the Ministry of Education (Hosia 2009, p. 319).
21. Ministry of Education. Archive of the Higher Education Council (proceedings 6/81 24.9.1981).
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  95

same time. The analysis of the council’s report was left on the table, and more
time was allowed in order to compare the two reports.22

The board of the Finnish Museums Association put together their own working
group already in May 1980. The chair of the working group was professor of
archaeology Unto Salo from the University of Turku. Other members were di-
rector Sven-Erik Krooks from the Pohjanmaa Museum, docent Veijo Saloheimo,
Secretary General Jorma Heinonen and Secretary of Museum Affairs Anja-Tuu-
likki Huovinen from the Finnish Museums Association. Since the association
wanted to work in collaboration with the Higher Education Council in such an
important matter, they also invited professor Kalevi Pöykkiö as a representative
of the art and theology sector in 1982. After investigating the teaching taking
place in Finland and abroad, the working group planned a 15-credit basic-level
proposal for museology. The proposal was sent in conjunction with a letter to
the Higher Education Council. This letter included an invitation to a meeting
with the Finnish Museums Association for the art and theology sector to get ac-
quainted with the museum field and museology.23 After the visit in March, both
the sector and the council accepted the report, and it was sent to the Ministry
of Education on 26.5.1983.24

The report consisted of nine suggestions for action. The first suggestion was to
make museology part of the curriculum: “Studies in museology can be included
as part of the degree in those educational programmes that give courses on mu-
seum subjects. Museology can be included in these programmes as an individual
minor subject. Studies in museology can be also concluded after or outside of
bachelor’s-level studies.” The fifth suggestion included the professorship: “After
receiving more information as to the teaching of museology, the possibility for
an independent professorship should be introduced in one of our universities.
The high-level teaching and research of museology could compensate for any
shortcomings that the museum field has experienced due to the previous lack
of higher theoretical education.” Internships were also addressed, as they had
become a practical procedure intended to be used to qualify for permanent
positions, and this area was one that needed transformation. It was suggested
to partially replace these prior internships with studies in museology.25

At the beginning of 1983 the Secretary General of the Finnish Museums Associ-
ation, Jorma Heinonen, educated and prepared the museum field for upcoming

22. Ministry of Education. Archive of the Higher Education Council, arts and theology sector (procee-
dings 4/81 19.10.1981).
23. Ministry of Education. Archive of the Higher Education Council, arts and theology sector (procee-
dings 1/83 14.2.1983).
24. Ministry of Education. Archive of the Higher Education Council, arts and theology sector
(proceedings 3/83 16.5.1983) and proceedings 4/83 26.5.1983 by the Higher Education Council.
This important event in the museum field was relatively small in the entire history of the Council’s
history (Hosia 2009: 143).
25. Ministry of Education. Archive of the Higher Education Council, arts and theology sector (procee-
dings 3/83 16.5.1983) and proceedings 4/83 26.5.1983 by the Higher Education Council.
96 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

changes in an editorial appearing in the association’s journal, Museology – Is

it science or practical skills? In the text, he emphasised the theoretical nature
of museology as follows (Heinonen 1983, Editorial):

Museology is the only science, in addition to library and information

sciences, that is so profoundly connected to an institution. If we consider
this connection to museums and to their concrete and current tasks as
our only basis to design the teaching in this field, the result will be lacking
and detrimental to future developments in our field. If we only are trying
to solve the current challenges of the museum field and apply them to
the current tasks at hand, we are forcing ourselves into a cul-de-sac in a
long run. The museum field needs a theoretical distinction based on its
character, duties and methodological development in order to progress.
This is why we need a professorship under which postgraduate studies
and scientific research will be possible.

The successor to Jorma Heinonen as Secretary Seneral, Anja-Tuulikki Huovinen,

also strongly advocated for university-level museology studies, with good results.

The Beginning of Basic-level Studies

Professor Unto Salo, who worked as director at the Satakunta Museum, later
transferring to professor of Archaeology in University of Turku, started teaching
museology during the academic year 1982–1983. This teaching was arranged
as an additional programme, in connection with the Department of Cultural
Studies. It was upgraded from hourly-based teaching during this time up to
approbatory-level (current basic studies), with the help of financial support from
the university. The funds were granted by the university’s governing board from
the general employment funds, because the faculty did not fund the teaching.
The teaching became official26 during the academic year 1984–1985. The cours-
es were printed in the teaching guidebook and it became possible to include
approbatory-level courses as an additional minor subject of the degree (Salo
1982, p. 38).27

The Faculty of Arts of University of Jyväskylä accepted the framework for mu-
seology studies in spring 1982. This framework was drafted by the Departments
of Ethnology and Art History. The final curriculum was accepted in December
1982, with teaching starting in autumn 1983. Five study credits were added at
the suggestion of the Finnish Museums Association. These were the Museum as a

26. The teaching in Turku was not mentioned in the 16.5.1983 proceedings of the arts and theology
sector of the Higher Education Council. In these proceeding teaching at Jyväskylä was mentioned:
“Teaching in museology has been started as part of the so-called museology study module.” In addition,
the University of Turku arranged a course called Museum Branch as part of employment education
during the spring and summer of 1984.
27. Interview with Unto Salo 15.10.2009 (Sirkku Pihlman as the interviewer) and the proceedings
(12.10.1982) of University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Art and, the Planning Committee on Education.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  97

Cultural Institution (1 cr.) and Internship in Museology (4 cr.).28 Many students

complained about the six-week internship, because it was mainly organised on a
pro-bono basis. These complaints eventually ended when students noticed that
the internship led to part-time jobs and eventually to more permanent positions.
In 1991, a course on contemporary documentation was added. This was realised
in co-operation with University of Jyväskylä Museum and the Jyväskylä city
museums.29 By the end of September 2019, 827 basic-level modules had been
carried out. In addition, 124 had been carried out through the open university
and 155 through the courses offered by the Finnish Museums Association.

These were the first steps as to how official degree teaching, according to the
suggestions made by the Higher Education Council, started at the Universities
of Turku and Jyväskylä. In Turku it was first started in co-operation with Åbo
Akademi.30 The major difference was that museology studies could be included
as part of MA studies in Jyväskylä, whereas in Turku they were added only as
an additional subject.

The Society of Museum Policy arranged a seminar in the National Museum called
Museology – Useless or necessary? in January 1984. In addition to the opening
speech, there were nine commentaries. The official opinion of the NBA was
not heard, because the Director-General [Link] (1926–2010), could not
attend the seminar and the commentary of the Board was given by the director
of the National Museum, Osmo Vuoristo (1929–2011). It was surprising that
Mr. Vuoristo did not share Jorma Heinonen’s enthusiastic attitude towards the
possibilities of museology, even though the two had worked together for several
years. In contrast, he was concerned that practical working experience would
be negatively impacted if more theoretical aspects were introduced into the
curriculum (Vuoristo 1984, p. 36): “Many of us who seek conundrums, could
raise questions, create theorems and drift in their chamber even further from
the everyday, dirty museum work. Fewer and fewer would need to clean their
fingernails.” Behind this attitude could have been the shift in paradigm that
was taking place in ethnography, where there was a concern that the focus
toward the teaching of object research and folk traditions would shift towards
a more theoretical approach. Apparently, many leading officials from the NBA
shared Vuoristo’s views, and this line of thinking was common among many
older museum professionals. The Museum Union representative at the seminar

28. Proceedings of the University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Arts, Faculty Council 14.12.1982. At the
University of Jyväskylä the study units for museology were as follows: MSL. 001 Introduction to
Museology (2 cr.), MSL. 002. Organisation and Administration of Museums (1 cr.), MSL. 003. Museum
Building (1 cr.), MSL. 004. Collections (2.5 cr.), MSL. 005. Library and Archives (1 cr.), MSL. 006.
Museum and Research (2.5 cr.), MSL. 007. Exhibitions (2.5 cr.), MSL. 008. Museum Pedagogy (2.5
cr.), MSL. 009. Museums as Cultural Institutions (1 cr.) and MSL. 010. Internships (4 cr.).
29. In cultural historical museums, the focus had been in history, especially on the history of agri-
culture. With the new documentation course, the various contemporary issues were brought into
focus. In Sweden, the SAMDOK documentation had been already established in 1977.
30. See also Vilkuna 1993a (Museology in Finland at the beginning of the 1990s) and Vilkuna 2018,
pp. 98–100.
98 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

was the chair of the union and researcher on the NBA, Leena Söyrinki-Harmo,
who demanded more vocational education and internships. She also stated that
studies in museology should be concentrated on only one or two universities
(Söyrinki-Harmo 1984).

The position of museology became stronger when the first ICOFOM meeting
was held in Espoo in September 1987. This was the first international meeting of
museology in Finland, and it was attended by many internationally recognised
museologists. The following spring the Dutch museologist Peter van Mensch
gave a three-day course in Helsinki. Students and museum professionals were
encouraged to take part in ICOM’s international summer school ISSOM, which
took place in Brno.

The experienced museum directors Jouko Heinonen (1946–2010) and Mark-

ku Lahti advanced museology by writing a book called Museologian perusteet
(Basic Museology). The book was published by the Finnish Museums Associ-
ation in 1988 and functioned as a study book. It was updated in 2007 into the
reader-type volume Museologia tänään (Museology Today), which was edited
by Pauliina Kinanen.

Figure 2. Peter van Mensch lecturing at the University of Jyväskylä 5th March 1992. Photo: Janne
Vilkuna.

Teaching Becoming Nationwide

After Jyväskylä and Turku, basic studies in museology started in 1992 at Uni-
versity of Helsinki, 1996 at the University of Oulu and 2002 at the University of
Tampere. Teaching was expanded to cover subject studies in 1993 at the Uni-
versity of Jyväskylä, 1997 at the University of Turku and 2005 at the University
of Helsinki. At the same time, basic studies of museology were opened to all
university students in Jyväskylä, not just those studying museum-related subjects
at the Faculty of Arts. This was also the case in Helsinki in 2004. Co-operation
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  99

with the Open University started in Jyväskylä in 2001. This co-operation made
it possible to receive a degree in basic studies in museology through distance
learning.31

The first permanent posts in the field were established 1988 at the University
of Turku (researcher), 1989 at the University of Jyväskylä (assistant profes-
sor, transferring into a full professorship in 1999) and 2003 at the University
of Helsinki (lecturer). The critical mass of museology was, and still is, rather
small. All the appointed docents are trying to compensate for this32, as are all
the postgraduate students and doctorates, as well as the Memornet Research
Network (est. 2004), other research schools, activists in the field and various
Nordic co-operative projects.

Several Finnish universities reorganised their structures throughout the 2010s,

and in many cases, traditional departments were eliminated. In 2019, the study
programme of museology at Jyväskylä was transferred to the faculty of Hu-
manities and Social Sciences, belonging to the Department of Music, Art and
Culture Studies. In Turku, museology was transferred to the Faculty of Human-
ities, belonging to the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies. In Helsinki,
museology was transferred to the Faculty of Arts, belonging to the Department
of Cultures. In Oulu, museology was transferred to the Faculty of Humanities,
belonging to the Research Unit of History, Culture and Communications. In
Tampere, museology was transferred to the Faculty of Education and Culture,
belonging to the Degree Programme in History.

At Pori (part of the University of Turku), the Faculty of Humanities, Degree

Programme in Cultural Production and Landscape Studies started giving courses
in museology in 2003. These were transferred to the Museology Programme
in 2009. As a result, there is only one degree programme at the University of
Turku, but two separate locations where the courses are held.

At Jyväskylä, the representative of museology was also appointed as deputy di-

rector of the University Museum in 1992 and as director the following year.33 The
University Museum was established in 1900. It houses both cultural historical
material and material of natural history. The museum functions as a museolog-
ical laboratory and one location of many for internships. This relationship has
been mutually beneficial, which helps keep new museologists grounded in the
everyday challenges of museums, and also helps students explore and experience
new innovations in the field.

31. MA Anne-Maija Malmisalo-Lensu was hired as the coordinator of the studies; she also gave
lectures on museum pedagogy.
32. Adjunct professors of museology in the University of Jyväskylä are: 1996 Janne Vilkuna, 2004
Anne Aurasmaa and Solveig Sjöberg-Pietarinen, 2012 Susanna Pettersson, 2013 Ulla Knuutinen
and 2021 Nina Robbins.
33. This post was held 1993–2016. In 2017, with the establishment of the Open Science Centre,
which joined the library and the museum, the post was transferred to the Centre.
100 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Figure 3. University Museum personnel after the opening of the new permanent exhibition, Oi ku-
vatuksia ja mielijuohteita at the University Museum in 2013. Photo: Jyväskylä University Museum.

Rights for Major Studies – First MAs and doctors

Museology could be studied as a minor subject at all universities mentioned in
the previous section until the turn of the millennium. In summer 2001, the Min-
istry of Education granted the right for University of Jyväskylä to give advanced
and postgraduate studies in museology. This meant that students could major
in museology up to the MA and PhD levels. At the University of Jyväskylä, the
Faculty of Humanities accepted the degree requirements for advanced studies
at their 12.2.2002 meeting. The new major became available for postgraduate
studies at the same time. In order to accomplish this, some degree-technical
manoeuvring was needed. This was done by Dr. Ossi Päärnilä, who worked
as the Chief Student Counsellor at the Faculty of Humanities, and who had a
positive attitude toward the new major. This manoeuvring intended to interpret
the appendix of the degree statute in a broader context.34 In general, major-level
degrees had been defined in the appendixes of the degree statutes, and new ma-
jors could not be established without changing these appendixes. The Ministry
of Education was reluctant to change these appendixes in individual cases, but
was not opposed to a broader interpretation. This worked in museology’s fa-
vour, as the 18th clause of the appendix offered a loophole. The appendix was not
considered changed if a new major is multidisciplinary, including a major that
has already been listed in the appendix. In the appendix all traditional museum
branches of the faculty were listed (ethnology, Finnish history, art history) and
all these were considered as part of museology. With this interpretation, there

34. Collection of statutes 221/94.

Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  101

were no hindrances to establishing the new major. These odd divisions into
singular or multidisciplinary subjects did not appear in the later degree statutes
(Information given by Ossi Päärnilä 5.3.2009).

Despite its status as a major subject, museology remained a minor subject. This
was largely due to employment reasons. Only after the turn of the millennium,
along with the master’s-level programmes, has the subject gained popularity
as a major subject.

The popularity of museology in Finland has steadily increased over the years. The
Finnish Museums Association has regularly conducted Museoväki surveys among
museum professionals throughout the first decades of the new millennium.35
These surveys, among other things, ascertained the number of professionals
who had studied museology. In 2003, 26% of professionals had completed the
basic studies. In 2008 this percentage was 29%, in 2013 35% and in 2018 already
40%. In 2003, 47% of professionals in the field had not studied museology at
all; the equivalent percentage in 2018 was 35%.

The first MA in museology was granted at the University of Jyväskylä in 200436

and the first PhD in 2006. The University of Jyväskylä started a multidisciplinary
master’s-level programme in the management of archival information (AHMO)
in 2008. In this programme, museology was one of the subjects offered. In
2014, the master’s-level programme Research of Cultural Environment (KUO-
MA) was established. By the end of the year 2019, 30 students of museology
have graduated, and seven postgraduate students have defended their doctoral
theses.37 The unified degree structure and European-wide Bologna Agreement

35. See also Kallio & Välisalo 2006 about the Museoväki 2003 survey and Diaario survey of employ-
ment after the studies of museology.
36. Lonkila, H 2005. Peilikäs peilinä. The University of Jyväskylä.
37. Valtonen, H 2006. Tavallisesta kuriositeetiksi – Kahden Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseon Mes-
serschmitt Bf 109 -lentokoneen museoarvo (From Commonplace to Curiosity – The Museum Value
of two Messerschmitt Bf 109 Aircraft at the Central Finland Aviation Museum); Kecskeméti, I 2008:
Papyruksesta megabitteihin – Arkisto- ja valokuvakokoelmien konservoinnin prosessin hallinta
(From Papyrus to Megabytes – Conservation management of archival and photographic collections);
Knuutinen, U 2009: Kulttuurihistoriallisten materiaalien menneisyys ja tulevaisuus – Konservoinnin
materiaalitutkimuksen heritologiset funktiot (The Heritological Functions of Materials Research of
Conservation); Lonkila, H 2016: Syvällä sydänmaassa – Yrjö Blomstedtin ja Victor Sucksdorffin
Kainuu (Deep in the Heartland – The Kainuu of Yrjö Blomstedt and Victor Sucksdorff); Robbins, N
2016: Poisto museokokoelmasta – museologinen arvokeskustelu kokoelmanhallinnan määrittäjänä
(Museum Collection Disposal – Role of museological value discussion in collection management);
Laine-Zamojska, M 2017: The Role of Small, Local History Museums in Creating Digital Heritage:
The Finnish Case; Hannula, L 2019: Kävijät, kokijat, kokemukset – Museologinen tutkimus Siffin
senioriklubista taidemuseon keskiössä (Visitors and experiences – Museological research concer-
ning the Senior Citizen Club of the Sinebrychoff Art Museum). There are several other dissertations
done at other universities where the subject area is close to museology, such as: Auer, T 2000:
Konservointityön professionalisaatio (Professionalisation of conservation) and Hänninen, K 2010:
Visiosta toimintaan: museoiden ympäristökasvatus sosiokulttuurisena jatkumona, säätelymeka-
nismina ja innovatiivisena viestintänä (From vision to action: Museum’s environmental education
as socio-cultural continuum, regulatory mechanism and innovative communication).
102 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

was carried out in Finland in 2005. Even though this agreement did not require
the so-called pro-seminar thesis to be written as part of one’s major studies, the
writing of these museologically important theses continued as minor subjects
at Jyväskylä and Turku. At the University of Helsinki, museology was granted
major status in 2018.

University-educated museum professionals were by no means the only experts

working in the field of cultural or natural heritage. Just as important as these
were conservators working in the field, who had received their education in
Finland or abroad from conservation institutes, or from working as an appren-
tice. The Ministry of Education wanted to improve the work done within the
heritage sector; as a result, the work of conservators also gained attention. The
Ministry established a Committee for Conservation Training, which gave their
report in 1974 (Km 1974, p. 122). The governing board for vocational educa-
tion suggested in their 1979 report that conservation training consists of eight
specialised sectors. The courses began at the Vantaa Design Institute in 1984.
They started as polytechnic-level courses in 1994. In 2000, the institute merged
with Espoo-Vantaa Technical Polytechnic (EVTEK) and eventually EVTEK and
another polytechnic, Stadia, merged into Metropolia Polytechnic in 2008. During
this time, it became possible to conclude advanced polytechnic studies and the
four-year, 240-credit degree programme was expanded, with the possibility for
an additional two years of study and 60 credits.

In addition to the educational advancements of conservators, the conservation

training of museums of natural history was also established in 1987. These
courses were arranged according to suggestions made by the governing board for
vocational education, and apprentice-based teaching started in 1988. Building
conservators were trained at Seinäjoki Polytechnic from 1995 to 2015. A sep-
arate restoration programme for building and furniture conservation started
at Kymenlaakso Polytechnic in Kouvola in 2001. After 2007, the restauration
programme was transferred to the interior restauration programme (Lemme-
tyinen 2016, p. 24).

The Ministry of Education had interest in developing conservation education

towards a university degree programme. This is why the ministry invited the
Councillor for Education, Seppo Liljeström, as the investigator. He had to draft
an estimate of the development needs of university-level conservation education,
research and services. His report was ready in 1993, just when the economic crisis
was at its deepest in Finland (Liljeström 1993). Soon it became clear that the
suggestions listed in his report as to university degree education for conservators
would not be realised. At the same time, the University of Jyväskylä encouraged
conservators to start studies in MA-level museology, something that the field
welcomed. From the museology perspective, a person who has degrees in both
conservation and museology would be a welcomed professional to work with
museum collections (Vilkuna 1993b). The first two master’s degrees of museology
were professionals, trained as conservators. Since conservation cannot be studied
at the university level in Finland, and since the field is so tightly connected to
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  103

our cultural heritage, by combining the various humanities fields and natural
sciences, conservators were encouraged to start postgraduate studies. This is
how heritologically-oriented museology studies at the University of Jyväskylä
try to create possibilities for a comprehensive heritology, which would also in-
clude conservation. Their second and third PhD theses came from the field of
conservation and material sciences.

Lucky Start at a Bad Time

The transition of museology into a university degree subject and eventually into
a major happened too late from a comprehensive progress point of view. This
had a negative impact on timely development regarding the establishment of
permanent posts and the planning of research schools.

Before the 1990s, universities in Finland used a budgeting system in which

departments suggested new posts for their faculties. These suggestions were
evaluated and prioritised, and eventually taken to the Ministry of Education for
a decision by the university administration. New posts were granted according
to state budget decisions. For a long time, this system worked in favour of such
posts. The financial crisis of the 1990s changed all this and led to vast public
sector budget cuts. State institutions were given strict fiscal guidelines. During
this time, i.e., 1991–1995, universities transferred to a system in which profit
and loss were the main considerations. In addition, universities started to more
strictly implement various quality systems. At the same time, the old budgeting
system changed to one that allowed universities to regulate their own resources
and budgets.

The first museology post in Finland was an assistant professorship, which was
established at the University of Jyväskylä in 1989, eventually becoming a full
professorship in 1999. At the University of Turku a museology researcher post
was established in 1998, and a university lecturer position was established in
2003 at the University of Helsinki. These first posts were established at a time
when the development of such university posts had already reached somewhat
of a plateau. This is why individual universities were left somewhat isolated,
with overall too few permanent posts. The poor economic state of the nation
did not allow optimum growth at a time when progress was still being made,
despite a lack of funding. It was only in 2014 that the University of Jyväskylä got
additional teaching resources, with a university lecturer, teaching in the areas
of both museology and ethnography.38

The status as a major subject was also granted quite late, only in 2002, be-
cause the Ministry of Education and Finnish Academy had already started the
financing of research schools with salary-based researcher posts in 1995. In
this environment, it was practically impossible for a small subject to establish
a new research school, either alone or with other potential partners. This had

38. MA Minna Mäkinen.

104 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

two outcomes. Firstly, students sometimes had to provide their own financing
in order to complete their postgraduate studies. Secondly, various memory or-
ganisations (libraries, archives and museums) established co-operative projects
to promote postgraduate studies.

The Treasury of Finland produced the first National Information Strategy in

1995. The Ministry of Education added a co-operative project called MUISTI
(Memory) to the strategy from 1995 to 1998. The purpose of this was to utilize
new technology in order to increase accessibility to cultural heritage. At the same
time the Committee of Information Services from the Ministry of Education
appointed a working group to investigate and present concrete outcomes, in
order to advance joint projects done in the various memory organisations, i.e.,
libraries, archives and museums. Their report was issued in 1996, and it led to
the published report Kamut-tietorakenne: Kirjastojen, arkistojen ja taide- sekä
kulttuurihistoriallisten museoiden yhteiskäyttöiset luettelointitiedot (Kamut
information structure: The joint registration system for libraries, archives, art
and cultural historical museums).

The ongoing discussion about memory organisations at the beginning of the 21st
century put the focus on higher education and research in the branch. At the
University of Tampere a professorship of Library and Information Science39 had
already been established in 1971 and filled in 1977 (Mäkinen 2007a, pp. 36–37,
p. 40; 2007b, pp. 157–158, p. 163) and a full professorship of museology in
Jyväskylä was granted in 1999. But archival sciences did not have a professor-
ship in Finland, even though memory organisations were aligning theoretical
and practical interests at the time. This is why the State Archives, the NBA, the
National Library and departments involving higher education in these branches
decided at their meeting in the State Archives in 2004 to enhance and advance
the establishment of a mutual research school. The Department of Library and In-
formation Science at the University of Tampere took leadership of this initiative.

Various aspects regarding digitalisation were seen as a special challenge, and

this is why it became the first theme of the research school. The initiative was
named KAMUDI, but later changed to MEMORNET (a research school of the
society’s memory functions). At the beginning stage the collaborators were the
State Archives, the NBA, the University of Helsinki Library, the Universities of
Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere, Turku and Oulu, Åbo Akademi and the University
of Technology.40 In the 2005 application process, it was noted that the goals
of MEMORNET were to “strengthen the education of researchers by unifying
co-operation between universities and memory organisations. This work would
also advance basic research. In the research themes, special attention should be

39. The name of the department changed to Information Studies in the 1990s when the word
“library” was dropped. Furthermore, in 2001 the Faculty of Social Sciences was changed to the
Faculty of Information Sciences. Tampere Research Center for Information and Media (TRIM) works
in connection with this faculty.
40. Professor Janne Vilkuna functioned as the representative of the University of Jyväskylä from
the outset.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  105

given to various fundamental and practical changes that digitalisation brings in

the functions of society’s memory organisations.”

Despite the societal relevance of this initiative, the research school system, once
established, proved to be impenetrable.41 The application process of 2005 did not
lead to funding, nor did it in the following year. This led to a situation where the
research school continued as a network for research without outside funding.
This network was established in November 2007. Once again, the application
process in 2008 did not lead to any funding, but the fourth application process
was granted funding for six doctoral candidates for 2012–2015. Out of these six
grants, one was awarded to museology, with Magdalena Laine-Zamojska using
this to advance her doctoral studies. After this period the Ministry ended the
grant system and allocated the funds for universities to use at their discretion.
This meant that small subjects had to return to the starting point.

The lack of doctoral schools is one of the reasons why the museology programme
at the University of Jyväskylä sought out heritage professionals to start post-
graduate studies, and there were other reasons. Firstly, the increase of doctoral
schools since the 1990s led to doctoral unemployment at the beginning of the
new millennium. To grant heritage professionals the right to start their post-
graduate studies minimised this unfortunate situation, both on the individual
and societal levels. Secondly, large numbers of heritage professionals were facing
retirement at that time, taking a lot of professional know-how with them. It’s
often the case that there is working life relevance in the doctoral dissertations
made by heritage professionals, or even retired professionals. In the best scenario,
the knowledge gained throughout decades of working life can be utilized in the
fields of these doctoral studies. In addition, there was hope that postgraduate
studies and dissertations would lead to a situation where overall appreciation
of the field would increase, something that would eventually manifest itself in
higher salaries. It is somewhat unusual that the doctoral degree is still not a re-
quirement in museums or at the Finnish Heritage Agency, except at the Natural
History Museum, for various permanent posts. Once I, a member of the Museo
2000 Committee, suggested that the doctoral degree be a requirement, at least
for director posts, in the various national museums in Finland. One member of
the committee was opposed to this suggestion and said: “An experienced MA
will always win out over a young PhD.” I responded thus: “How about between
a young MA and a young PhD?”

The requirement for a doctoral degree was not included in the report or the
Museum Act, when these were updated in 2005, or in the updated Museum
Act of 2019. In practice, many of the directors of central museums in Finland
have, in fact, been PhDs.

41. The research schools were given their funding according to their results. This meant that esta-
blished research schools, which already had ongoing results to present, were granted funding easier
than newcomers, which did not have this, due to a lack of funding.
106 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

It is the central duty for museums, archives and libraries to help both society and
individuals build their identities. Focusing on these duties had left the histories
of these individual institutions somewhat in the dark, without relevant research
having been carried out. This situation was addressed and improved during the
first two decades of the new millennium. A new publication was published in
the field of libraries in 2009, which reflected, with the help of ten authors, upon
the history of Finnish public libraries (Mäkinen 2009). In 1998 the Finnish
Museums Association published the 75-year history of the association (Vilkuna
1998). In addition, several individual museum histories were published, but
an overall history of Finnish museums was still lacking. This is why museology
studies at Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Turku Universities, as well as at some main
institutions in the museum field, such as the Finnish Museums Association, the
Finnish Heritage Agency, the National Gallery and the Natural History Museum,
agreed in 2005 to launch a national history project to research and publish the
history of Finnish museums. As a result of this work, the Finnish Literature
Society published a collection of articles entitled Finnish Museum History in
2010 (Pettersson & Kinanen 2010). The history of the management of Finnish
antiquities was published in 1984 (Härö 1984) and a continuation of this was
published in 2016 (Immonen 2016). This continuation consisted of the time
period up to 1972, when the Archaeological Commission was changed to the
NBA, later the Finnish Heritage Agency. The history of the State Archives was
also published in 2016 (Nuorteva & Happonen 2016).

Seminars and Publications

Even though personnel resources in museology on the national level were scarce,
the communal support of the museum branch, the work done by individual
activists, Nordic co-operation and especially the work done by active students
helped strengthen museology’s identity. At Jyväskylä, students of the secondary
subject of museology founded in 1994 a student organisation, which was at first
called Diaario; it later merged with another three student organisations from the
same department and became Corpus. They arranged thematic two-day open-
to-all national Museological Days already in 1996, which eventually developed
into an annual event. Students at the University of Turku and the Åbo Akademi
founded their joint association Museion in 2002. Museion then started to publish
its e-journal, [Link] ([Link]).

The Finnish museology study book, Museologian perusteet was published in

1988 by the Finnish Museums Association. The authors of the volume were
museum directors Jouko Heinonen and Markku Lahti. The university programs
of museology in Finland agreed already in 1989 that all study material should
be jointly published with the help of the Finnish Museums Association. In 1997
the association got the possibility to publish a collection of articles by Croatian
museologist Tomislav Šola, Essays on Museums and Their Theory – Towards a
cybernetic museum. This was due to the approaching crises in the Balkan area.
In 2000 the Finnish Association of Ethnologists, Ethnos, published a collection
of articles, Näkökulmia museoihin ja museologiaan (Perspectives on Museums
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  107

and Museology) (Vilkuna 2000a), which functioned as a study book at the time.
In 2007 the Finnish Museums Association published the reader Museologia
tänään (Museology Today), which consisted of 13 articles and updated the former
publication Museologian perusteet (Kinanen 2007).

Parliament Ratifies Museology

Before the year 1979 there were no institutions that could coordinate the devel-
opment of Finnish museums with sanctions. The regional museum sector that
was based on the state subsidy system and created in 1979 was the first step
towards increasing state supervision.

After this government decision Parliament ratified the Museums Act on

29.12.1988, i.e. the Act as to the division of state subsidies (1146/1988). A Decree
(625/1989) was incorporated into the Act in 1989, defining the duties of regional
and specialty museums. There was also a flexible statement about personnel
requirements: “Museums should have a required amount of permanent and full-
time museum professionals who meet the qualifications stated in this decree.”
The Decree also declared the requirements for museum directors, curators and
researchers as follows: “An applicable academic degree is required for the post.”

At this stage the state subsidy system was only applied to regional museums,
in both the art and cultural history areas. There were altogether 35 of them.
The Museums Act also mentioned national specialty museums, although none
had been approved at that time. The entire state subsidy system was renewed
in 1992, and the Museums Act and Decree also went through revisions. After
this renewal, the state subsidy system covered all museums that had at least
one permanent post. This meant that the system expanded to cover over 100
museums, instead of just 35.

The Parliament Committee for the Advancement of Civilization stated in fall

1993, while focusing on the cultural policy report: “The funding of museums has
been regulated by the Museums Act, but the law does not regulate the status of
museums in society in general, nor does it regulate their partial responsibility
for society’s information services, together with such institutions as archives
and libraries. The lack of a law that would regulate museum functions hinders
co-operation regarding information among these institutions” (Policy Report
1993, p. 2822). The Parliament Committee for the Advancement of Civilization
ordered a report in December 1993 from the Ministry of Education, the latter
of which established a working group, Lex Museorum, to investigate renewal
of the Museums Act; their report was ready in 1994. The working group came
to the conclusion that the speediest way to expedite matters was to update the
current Museums Act and rely on the recently-written Museums Act regarding
changes to the Finnish constitution, especially Clause 14a. Parliament ratified this
change of the Museums Act, in accordance with the working group’s report. This
new Museums Act was implemented at the beginning of the following year. The
first clause of the new Act spelled out the societal duties of museums, hoping to
108 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

achieve the following: “The aim of museum functions is to sustain and advance
people’s understanding of their culture, history and environment. Museums need
to practice and advance research in the field, education and the transmission
of information by documenting, researching, preserving and displaying objects
and other specimens of humans and their environment” (Vilkuna 2010, p. 43).
The 1992 Museums Act required at least one permanent post in order to qualify
for a state subsidy, but this post was not specifically defined. This is why the
new Act defined in its updated Clause Two, Paragraph Four: “There has to be
at least one permanent post in a museum, and this post requires a professional
background from the field of museums” (Vilkuna 2010, p. 43).

This meant that traditional museum subjects were not by themselves relevant,
because the needed professional requirements were up to the research and pres-
ervation responsibilities of the individual museum. Museology became de facto
the unifying subject common to all traditional museum subjects and all profes-
sionals in the field, although this was not yet recognised in the Museums Decree.

The Higher Education Council stated already in 1983, in their report to the Min-
istry of Education, that “Some one- to two-year internships should be replaced
by studies in museology. A degree in museology has to be set as the qualification
requirement for permanent posts in the museum field, after museology studies
have been organised on a national level.” The Ministry of Education established
a Committee for Museum Policy in November 1998, which named itself Muse-
um 2000. One of the duties of the committee was (1999, p. 4): “to observe the
research relationship between museums and universities and make suggestions
as to the organisation of basic and advanced studies in the field.” Their report
from 1999 stated the following (1999, p. 72):

The qualification requirements demand a specialised education in the

museum field. The Museums Decree should reflect this and demand that,
in the future and after a transition period, studies in museology, as well
as in other related subjects, are a basic requirement in the field. Those
chosen for posts such as museum director, senior curator, researcher,
curator or pedagogue should have accomplished basic studies in muse-
ology. Others should have studies in museology, if applicable.

The Museums Act was updated in 2005 and requirements regarding state sub-
sidies on education in the decree of the Museums Act were updated as well:

1§ Requirements for State Subsidy: In addition to what has been stated

in the Museums Act (729/1992), section 2§, the requirements for state
subsidy are as follows: … 2) Every Museum needs to have a director and
at least one full-time employee. One of these two has to have a higher
academic degree, and one an academic degree, a polytechnic degree or the
equivalent of the previous vocational-college level degrees. In addition,
both the director and the employee are required to have an adequate level
of knowledge in the field that the museum represents, as well as basic
studies in museology or working experience in museums.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  109

The new Museums Act and Museums Decree came into effect on 1.1.2006, and
Finland became one of the first countries where museology was given official
status as a professionally qualified subject. Rarely do university subjects have
such a mandate from the state. Tomislav Šola had stated already in 1997 the
following: “The museological profession is probably one of the last to be rec-
ognised by legislation.” (Šola 1997, p. 290). This was not the case in Finland.
The Museums Decree was further revised in 2013, and this time the entire basic
studies of museology were set as the requirement. The vague expression referring
to just some studies of museology was taken out the decree.

Museum director Kalle Kallio wrote in the Finnish Museums Association’s blog
post about the status of museology being standardised:

The status and future of museology were analysed when the new museum
policy and Museums Act were under consideration. The strengthening of
professional knowledge and the growing popularity of museology have
been acknowledged as factors behind the success of museums. In the
proposed new Museums Act, it is written that in order for museums to
receive state subsidies they have to have at least two employees who
have done basic studies in museology. These studies could no longer be
replaced with working experience, but such studies would not be required
for the museum director. … Museology has become the new normal, a
basic requirement for our profession. (Kallio 2018)

His post More Educated than Ever was published on 18.9.2018 under the featured
section. In his post he was reflecting on the new museum policy Mahdollisuuk-
sien museo – Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön museopoliittinen ohjelma 2030
(Museum of Possibilities – Museum Policy 2030 by the Ministry of Education)
that had been published that spring.

From a museological point of view a backlash was experienced with the new
Museum Act 2019, since it did not demand any more basic studies in museology
of the museum director.

The Finnish Museums Association also wanted to ensure a path to museological

thinking for those professionals who had not studied museology. This was done
by establishing the web-course Verso in 2005. The Association produced and
administered the course; it consisted of ten credits that were also accepted by
universities. The Verso 2.0 course was started in 2007. This added another 15
credits, in order to advance the basic studies up to the universities’ 25 credit
level. The last Verso courses were held in 2016, by which time 155 museum
professionals had passed the course.

The effect of museology in the field of cultural heritage has happened and will
continue to happen in four ways. These are classified as follows:

1. research done by the representatives of the study branch

2. basic, post and supplementary education, based on research outcomes
110 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

3. professionals conducting expert and entrusted duties42

4. raising discussion about important and current matters.
(Vilkuna 2000b, 2000c).

Toward Heritology
In order for museology to be granted status as a major subject at the University
of Jyväskylä, a definition of museology was required, and I was asked to rely on
internationally accepted definitions. Luckily, no official definition of museology
existed then, nor is there one now. Other disciplines do not favour these kinds
of official definitions either, because they would only produce consensus, and
therefore hinder the dialogue and debate that is necessary for research. This is
why I, as a professor of museology, wrote a heritological definition according to
the principles of new museology, as follows: “Museology (heritology) is a science
that explores the way the individual and the community perceive and control
the temporal and regional environment, by taking into possession pieces of
evidence from the past and the present.” The concept of environment includes
both the tangible and intangible, i.e., spiritual environment. These pieces of
evidence are taken into possession by selecting and demarcating areas of reality
and incorporating them as cultural reality.

This definition was left on the table at the faculty meeting in August 1999, be-
cause the representatives of other, more traditional museum disciplines did not
understand such a heritologically-oriented and museumless perspective. The
professor did not change the definition, and it was eventually accepted at the
next faculty meeting.

The museological views that were incorporated into the teaching of the Uni-
versity of Jyväskylä were influenced by four museologists: the Czech Zbynek
Stránský, the Swede Per-Uno Ågren, the Croat Tomislav Šola and the Dutch
Peter van Mensch. Museologists from Leicester University, Susan Pearce and
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, had an influence through their literature. In addition,
Kenneth Hudson’s concept of the Great Museum had a large impact.

The heritological aspect of the University of Jyväskylä museology was strength-

ened in 1993 when the discipline’s representative took part in the international
symposium Till museets genealogi in Copenhagen, which was organised by the
National Museum of Denmark and Umeå University. One of the speakers was
the British museologist Kenneth Hudson, who in his presentation The Great

42. Professor Janne Vilkuna has been elected twice to the board of the Museums Association (1988–
1994 and 2009–2014). In addition, he served for one year as the temporary chair in 2015. Professor
Vilkuna has held memberships in various committees organised by the Ministry of Education: Lex
Museorum (1993), Museo 2000 (1998), the Finnish representative in the EU expert group in Stras-
bourg for preparation of the Faro Agreement (Faro 2005), the Development Committee for Local
Museums (2014–2018), the Expert Group of Intangible Heritage (2015–2017) and the Working
Group for Museum Policy (2015–2017). He is also since 2013 the chair of the Finnish Local Heritage
Federation, which, e.g., promotes the non-professionally run local history museums.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  111

European Museum presented a comprehensive pedagogical view called the Great

Museum. According to this view, the entire cultural and natural environment is
seen as a great museum. The duty of museums is to look outward, not inward,
and to explain the traces of time that are present in our environment.43

The basis for this new, museumless museology was that the museum is just a tool
with which we observe our environment. Museology is interested in this process.
This means that the so-called end-product of the museum is not the museum
itself, but rather using the museum as a tool for expression by individuals and
society regarding their views about heritage. The old or practical museology,
i.e., museography, aimed to answer the question How? The new theoretical
museology aims to answer the question Why? This attempts to ascertain the
following: Why do we collect? Why do we establish museums and other heritage
institutions? Why do we legislate our heritage? As a starting point, there is an
assumption that the selection process in the field of heritage is based on a cul-
tural interpretation of the object, and not on the object itself. Because we cannot
preserve or remember everything, we must relegate some things to oblivion,
and even allow some of them to be destroyed. This is why our conception of our
past, and the heritage that we have created, are both results of our own choices.
The interpretation that is the result of this selection can be called museality. It
is only after such a selection that, in accepted cases, the musealisation process
will take place. To analyse these processes that accumulate our heritage is one
of the main research focuses of theoretical museology.

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118 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Museum Leadership – New

competencies and the cycle of
change
Susanna Pettersson
Abstract
Museums of today are more proactive, more dynamic and more courageous
than ever before. They have changed from monolithic institutions to masters
of several plays and have changed from keepers to doers. They are also facing
economic, political, social, technological and legal challenges that are very di-
verse and complicated. Consequently, this requires new leadership and new
competencies. What lies behind the change, how can that be analysed and how
can we respond to the future needs of museums? How have museums responded
to the requirements of change in leadership from a historic perspective? How
should organisations be led from today’s point of view, and how should they be
further developed?

Key words: history, future, collections, competencies, society, a way forward

Introduction
This chapter looks into the development of the museum profession from a lead-
ership perspective and demonstrates how museum professionals have adapted
to the changing environment, from the 19th to the 21st century. It also sheds some
light on the key changes and critiques that have concerned art museums the most.
Even though the examples are mostly derived from the art museum context,
leadership issues can be implemented into a wider range of cultural institutions.

My questions include how museums have responded to the requirements of

change in leadership from a historical perspective, how organisations should
be led from today’s point of view, and how they should be developed further.

One of my arguments is, that in order to succeed, a museum needs a leader

with strong understanding and experience regarding content, and an ambition
to develop competitive business plans for culture industries. When using the
voice of the museum, the director needs to have content-related credibility and
a clear-headed understanding of the financing models and their potential. This
is challenging the alternative leadership view, according to which a professional
leader, a generalist, can take over almost any institution and make it flourish. In
order to develop the organisation and its practises further, the director should
be open for new competencies and changes.

To write about leadership in museums we can use several different methods. It

can be a theoretical exercise with examples from different organisations or an
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  119

analysis related to the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It can

also be a profound look at the fields that have the greatest impact on a museum’s
actions regarding good and bad, high and low (using, for example, the PESTLE
method, which looks into political, economic, social, technological, legal and
environmental changes). Explorations of future trends, black swans and risk
scenarios belong to the same toolkit. Writing about museum leadership can
also be a self-critical journey through one’s own career with real-life examples
from both failures to success and the other way around. I have decided to use
a combination of both.

I have grown into a museum professional over three decades, from guard to
director. I have also been privileged to work in three different countries, Fin-
land, the United Kingdom and Sweden. These decades have included a massive
transformation from a landline and typewriter dominated environment to a 24/7
society that reacts with speed and navigates a constant flow of information. The
professional museum landscape has changed from a community of art historians
to a combination of diverse professions.

The Formation of the Profession

Today’s museum professionals have education and experience that is simulta-
neously deep and broad. A curator can be a specialist in 18th century European
furniture and an IT-wizard. A social media communicator knows target audi-
ences and masters art historical texts relating to the social media environment.
The head of department is an expert in his or her field, but is expected to also
show competence in budgeting, human resources, negotiation skills and much
more. Especially in smaller museums, one has to cover several areas. In order
to understand where we stand today and how have we ended up here, it is good
to have a short look at history.

In Europe, the majority of museums were founded in the 19th century. The first
museums (as we understand them today) had been opened to the public during
the 18th century, the opening of the Louvre in 1793 being the most famous example
of this. The collections were catalogued, displayed, researched and conserved,
and the museum profession was under development. The first museum profes-
sionals came typically from the upper class; they had a scholarly orientation
and clear visions of what museums could do in society, not least thanks to the
ideas of the Enlightenment. They were pioneers who created the grounds for
the professional requirements, as we know them today.

The first museum men were academics who acted in many roles: they taught
at universities, wrote books and ran the first museums, with the expectation
of being able to cope with everything, since the size of staff tended to be very
limited. Names such as Gustav Friedrich Waagen at the Altes Museum in Berlin
or Sir Henry Cole at the South Kensington Museum in London were known
throughout Europe. They arranged classical art history into a three-dimensional
format: to collection displays and narratives. Art was presented according to
120 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

geographical areas (schools) such as Italian, Dutch and Flemish art. Handbooks
that were published about art reinforced the idea of reading art history through a
geographical school-based system. That was not to be questioned, but taken for
granted. This created a backbone for many installations and collection displays
for decades to come, even in the Nordic countries, thus creating a framework
for art history (Karlholm 1996; Pettersson 2013; Giebelhausen 2020).

In the Nordic countries, the academic community had a strong impact on the
development of the museum field. Nationalism, the Enlightenment, educating the
people, creating the story of art and involving the artists all played an important
role. Art was meant to be shown to the largest possible audiences, preferably as
a complete story. Tools were needed for the dissemination of information: col-
lection displays, catalogues and art historical handbooks, as well as engravings,
all of which displayed the most important works of art in collections. Several of
these methods are valid even today, even though concepts of sharing information
have changed radically. The ideas of openness, sharing and co-creation have
replaced the old culture based on careful selection and restrictions.

By the end of the 19th century the art world had changed; artists were no longer
sculpting and painting according to identical academic rules but were exper-
imenting with new styles and techniques, which was somewhat shocking to
the conservative bodies. This placed growing pressure on museums and their
gatekeepers. Artists understood that the museum men could not keep up with
changes in the contemporary arts.

The gap between the European art capitals and the boardrooms of the museums
was now growing fast, and critical voices were raised. Artists such as Wassily
Kandisky and Alexander Rodchenko argued that only the artists could implement
proper decisions regarding works of art. Academic art historians were considered
not competent enough to evaluate what was topical and contemporary (McShine
1999). Instead of reacting to the critique, museums more or less closed their
eyes and museum practises did not progress. This created a concrete need for
alternative venues such as galleries and Kunsthallen for displaying contemporary
art. For the museum profession, this was the first crisis: authority regarding the
fine arts was no longer unquestioned. New competencies were needed.

Critiques covered not only the understanding the arts but also the way that
museums communicated with their audiences. This was reflected in the ways
that museums reached out by organising guided tours, printing books and cat-
alogues and creating new ways to talk about art in an understandable way.
Director of Hamburger Kunsthalle Alfred Lichtwark, who has been described as
one of the creators of museum education, published the book Übungen in der
Betrachtung von Kunstwerken. Nach Versuchen mit einer Schulklasse (Exer-
cises in contemplation of works of art. After experiments with a school class) in
1900, that demonstrated how artworks could be studied with schoolchildren.
The publication became exceptionally popular and was translated into several
languages, including Finnish (Lichtwark 1926). His followers were the earliest
museum educators of the new era. At about the same time, the world economy
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  121

collapsed, and museums faced economic challenges that affected their capacity
to acquire art, among other things. Museums were forced to learn to think about
alternative funding.

After the Second World War, the art scene continued to grow in diverse directions
that museums were no longer able to closely follow. Whereas in the 19th century
there had been the illusion of a complete story of art that could be presented,
now capturing all of it was a mission impossible. This opened a flood of critique
regarding such choices. Museums presented mostly white men, with female
artists being marginalised. More inclusive policies in terms of gender and race
were required (Pettersson 2009b, pp. 23–28). This signalled that museums
should become much more analytical and observant. The choices they made
mattered, but they were also strongly challenged. Many artists groups such
as Guerrilla Girls, founded in 1985, have confronted museums in public, and
continue to do so.

Almost every generation of critical minds has produced their own alternative for
presenting art: artists’ collectives, new and experimental spaces and border-cross-
ing approaches. Established museums have been regarded as the antithesis of
renewal and risk taking. Even though such black-and-white stereotypes do not
necessarily mirror reality that accurately, this kind of debate has been always
been a driver for change and development. As Marja-Liisa Rönkkö has put it,
every era creates its own museums (Rönkkö 2009). Accordingly, every era has
a new set of demands for the professionals running things (Palviainen 2010).

Museums have always been for the people, have always been changing and
have always been criticised. At the same time, museums have contributed to
the building of a nation as well as responding to the needs of communities and
individuals. Museums are (relatively) agile platforms that react to change, and
they can be used in an innovative manner. Museums that were once regarded to
be objective are from today’s perspective arenas that express, and may express,
different views. In today’s society, they have extremely strong potential to make
a difference on a societal level. Museums are powerful instruments that need
to be used wisely.

All of this means that the museum director is expected to master several fields,
from economics to politics, not to mention the core competence fields that the
museum represents. The director must be interested in everything: the big and
the small, the high and the low. If translated into the language of architecture,
the museum director has to have a passion for city planning and designing
door handles, exactly as the world-famous Finnish architect and designer Alvar
Aalto did.

The Potential of the Future

After the turn of the 21st century, museums and their future were discussed in
several forums. Museums were rethinking their priorities and policies, as well
as their responsibilities (Berger 2004). Books that explored the museums and
122 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

their possible roles and identities for the new era were published (Hein 2000;
Schubert 2000; Witcomb 2003; Cuno 2004; Genoways 2006). Conferences
and talks were organised in the wake of the change of the millennium. Muse-
ums were analysed from a global, not only Western perspective (Knell, et al.
2007). Even the roles of national museums were discussed within an extensive
research project Making National Museums (organised by the Universities of
Leicester, Linköping and Oslo), which resulted in a publication that featured
national museum narratives across the world, and which discussed the myths of
nationality (Knell et al. 2011). Covid-19 has triggered authors to map the future
of museums after the pandemic. One of the questions concerns possible changes
in customer expectations.

As many stakeholders were working with future-related issues, so was the Finn-
ish National Gallery. I was, at the time, working with the national art museum
development initiatives and had a possibility to initiate a future-related exper-
imental project. Future Art Museums (2009) was conducted in collaboration
with museology students from the University of Helsinki, as well as art students
from the Fine Arts Academy/University of Arts. The students worked in groups.
Experimental information mining, boundary-stretching artworks in public spaces
and bold questioning contributed valuable ideas regarding the potential of the
field. Questions were related to the different and even contradictory expectations
that museums face on one hand, and the societal potential that they have, on
the other. All of this was put into a publication (Pettersson 2009a).

As one part of the project, we conducted a virtual discussion with experts repre-
senting different fields: politics, sociology, economy, future research and muse-
ums. The well-known politician Sirpa Pietikäinen, sociologist Pasi Saukkonen,
professor of economics Saara Taalas and future researcher Anita Rubin, all
shared their ideas about four themes: museums and artists, museums and the
public, museums and public debate and museums and the economy, together
with myself and Kaija Kaitavuori, who was at the time the Head of the Develop-
ment Department (Pettersson 2009a, pp. 80–115). Ten years after this virtual
debate, the conclusions are still worth revisiting. They show how some questions
are still valid – and some have become outdated. Quite interestingly the set also
reveals that which we did not see coming.

Museums and artists

• Art/artists/museums are drivers of socio-cultural change

• Artists/art are vital for our identity
• The relationship between artists and museums should be negotiable
• Artists no longer depend on the spaces in museums
• Artists’ competencies could be utilised in museum management
• Museums should move towards more transparent communication in
relation to the art field
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  123

Museums and the public

• A museum that tries to cover it all is sure to fail

• A museum can be a generalist with the public, an expert on art
• The same visitor can have different roles and needs, depending on time
and place
• A museum can have fans
• A museum must pay attention to the language it uses and to whom it
talks (diversity, demographical changes)
• Experiencing art is personal: the right to participate and even touch it
is important

Museums and public debate

• Civic action groups as potential networks

• The possibilities of interculturalism
• The role of art critics as interpreters and filters
• Museums have different needs for public debate

Museums and the economy

• What is the funder’s/owner’s relation to the museum?

• More emphasis on the transparency of publicly funded services: what
and why
• Can a museum that collects entrance fees serve as a proactive partner
in a public debate?
• Key performance indicators: What is being measured? On whose terms?
Can the activities be measured in the first place?
• Companies to be educated by museums

The participants of the discussion emphasised that museums represent conti-

nuity and possibilities for change at the same time. Museums were seen as huge
power engines for art and culture. Art was regarded as a channel of expression
for hopes and fears, and even the most difficult issues (Pettersson 2009a, pp.
112–113). This becomes clear when society is in crisis. The cultural institutions
carry a strong symbolic value and public spaces are needed as safe and demo-
cratic places of contemplation.

Ten years after the project, the world has changed a lot. It is especially inter-
esting to analyse what we, participants of the discussion, did not catch on our
radar earlier. Polarisation of values, political turbulence, neo-conservatism,
humanitarian crises, development of technology, climate crisis and ecological
issues were not examined earlier. Also, the funding mechanisms for the arts
and culture were based on relatively safe ground, the main source being pub-
lic funding. Therefore, alternative funding models from crowdsourcing to big
donations from companies or individuals who wish to give back to the system
were not an option, either.
124 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

On the other hand, there were also topics that have remained the same. Let’s
take museums and the public as an example: all the points mentioned are highly
relevant still from today’s perspective. Museums need to focus, articulate their
expertise and understand the needs of visitors. As John Falk and Lynn Dierking
have shown, museum visitors have different needs and identities (explorers,
facilitators, professionals, experience seekers, rechargers) depending on the
situation (Falk & Dierking 2018). Museums work extensively with their return-
ing visitors and products are being developed to support this behaviour. The
nationwide Museum Card, launched in 2015 in Finland, is a prime example of
this. Museums are also more and more aware of social responsibility and their
diverse audiences.

Projects such as the Future Art Museums project are excellent reminders of how
significant it is for any museum to draft future-related scenarios, even the most
unusual ones, in order to develop practises as part of a strategic process. Think
tanks that focus on future trends and future researchers are excellent partners,
not to mention the American Alliance of Museum’s Center for the Future of
Museums (est. 2008), which is mapping out the cultural, political and economic
landscape, along with publishing annual TrendWatch reports.

Collections as a Core
All museums, no matter the size, profile or location, work with their collections.
They should be the museum’s strongest and most relevant driver. Collections
have a rich history that should be used wisely for the benefit of the public. This
has also been on the top of the agenda during the first two decades of the 21st
century. Collections have been digitised and many useful portals such as Euro-
peana have been launched to encourage better use of collections. At the same
time, museums have been encouraged to collaborate more efficiently in terms
of the physical mobility of collections.

A primary example, which I had the privilege to work with, was the Europe-
an Union’s OMC-working group’s (Open Method of Coordination) project on
Collections Mobility that focused on how practises can be developed together,
crossing geographical borders and overcoming legal obstacles within the member
states. The project identified the areas that needed harmonising: loan adminis-
tration and loan standards, state indemnity schemes, valuation, self-insurance
and non-insurance of cultural objects, immunity from seizure, loan fees and
long-term loans, building up trust/networking and digitisation. Inquiries were
sent to the member states and data were analysed. At the same time, museum
professionals were offered a possibility to participate in Europe-wide collections
mobility workshops. A handbook, Encouraging Collections Mobility. A Way
Forward for Museums in Europe, was published, both as a paperback and
online, thus making the materials accessible to a large professional community
(Pettersson et al. 2010).
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  125

This Europe-wide project put collections into the limelight. Collection histories
were written, collection policies were redefined, collection displays were in focus
again and many national museums and museums associations were working
nation-wide to support museums with their collection work. Collections were
seen as an important asset that had a much bigger value than being just a collec-
tion. The sustainable and future-oriented use of collections became a leadership
issue and the impact of collections became a topic for evaluation (Rajakari 2008;
Jyrkkiö & Liukkonen 2010; Niemelä & Jyrkkiö 2012).

And why is that? The answer is rather simple. From a leadership perspective,
collections help you to formulate the purpose of the museum. Who, why and
for whom are you? What are you working with, and why? If you are local, let’s
say a museum of old cars, you don’t start arranging international exhibitions of
medieval history. Having said that, a museum with a focus on a car collection
can easily work with various themes, ranging from the development of vehicles
and transportation, design history, popular culture and much more. Collections
are a source of inspiration and guidance.

It is fair to say that during the 21st century, collection research has grown in
importance, thus providing solid ground for proper argumentation: why col-
lections matter, why they need resources and why local, regional and national
stakeholders need to invest in them. Research literature and publications, such as
Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago’s Grasping the World, the Idea of the Museum
(2004) should belong to any museum director’s and decision-maker’s bookshelf.
Collections have also received nationwide (and even wider) attention, as in the
case of Neil MacGregor’s collaboration with BBC Radio 4 and his popular book
A History of the World in 100 Objects (2010) that was published when he was
director of the British Museum. Collecting practises have even been challenged,
as in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s rapid response collecting project, which
was introduced in 2014 and has reminded us about the need to mirror the
world when things happen, not afterwards. Collecting and collections have even
become popular among fiction authors, Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Museum of
Innocence (2008) and a museum bearing the same name, located in Istanbul,
being the most well-known example on that. These examples remind us how
the appreciation of collections goes hand in hand with the strategic choices and
capacity to make priorities that benefit, at the end of the day, the public.

Museum Competencies
Leading a museum requires knowledge about the key changes of the field and an
idea about the future. Museums have been described as mausoleums, cemeteries,
temples, laboratories, places of reflection, platforms, meditation chambers and
much more (Noever 2001). They form the collective memory of society (Urry
1996). Since the turn of the 21st century, strategies for displays, collections,
education, audience development, branding and funding have transformed mu-
seum management. Buzzwords have changed from the discursive museum to the
inclusive, participatory and beyond, and so have expectations. The museum’s
126 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

client group consists of visitors onsite and online, funders, donors, the media
and academia, as well as politicians and decision makers.

Professionals need to understand the complexity of the culture industries and

the links from the museum’s own activities to the larger whole, meaning society
at large. Many of the world’s leading museums draw record numbers of visitors,
i.e., millions of people, thus contributing to the economy of a city, a region and
even a country. Culture is seen even as a way to brand a region, the Nordic
countries for example (Asplund & Fransson 2018, pp. 199–202). Culture has
both direct and indirect impact value.

One could ask: What would then be the ideal combination of competencies to
run a museum? The question is not new, quite the contrary. Already in 1978,
the Association of Art Museum Directors (in the USA) stated that it makes more
sense to train art historians to be managers than to train administrators to un-
derstand the role of museums. Stephen E. Weil, deputy director of the Smithso-
nian’s Hirshorn Museum and later senior scholar emeritus at the Smithsonian
Center for Education and Museum Studies, continued to analyse the question
by comparing the pros and cons of the discipline specialist vs. the management
generalist. He argued that the managerial generalist cannot be expected to have
“the education or experience that would enable him successfully to formulate
a consistent, persuasive, informed and authoritative point of view with respect
to the museum’s subject matter” (Weil 1990, p. 103).

I could not agree with Weil more. The reason is very simple: the director uses
the voice of the museum and that voice needs to be trusted. The competence
that is required from a director is much deeper than the capacity to master
Excel-sheets and budgets, fundraising and investment plans. He or she must
have an academic profile, a field of expertise that an organisation consisting of
hard-core specialists can trust. The director is expected to cope even during the
toughest times and have the guts to fight for the institution through good and
bad. Most importantly, the director must understand what the museum is and
to whom it is, and make sure that personnel is on board.

Certain core competencies required from museum leadership can be identified

no matter which decade or century we are looking at. Put simply, we are dis-
cussing connoisseurship, understanding numbers and getting along with peo-
ple. Apart from that, the director has to understand how the museum relates
to society, and the other way around. He or she must have eyes open for the
new competencies that the institution needs in order to succeed in a complex
world. This can be translated into a recipe for successful museums, which has
been illustrated in figure 1.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  127

Figure 1.

The museum staff must have the right competencies in place and understand
that needs change when the environment changes. When I began my career
at the end of 1980s, there was hardly anyone working with information and
marketing issues, not to mention fundraising, IT or environmental issues. They
were skills that became important only when new requirements created new
imperatives: museums needed more visitors (and ticket income) and broader
external funding. Technology, in turn, opened new possibilities that changed
the ways of communicating. Today, such skills as cultural literacy and diversity
awareness, audience development, sales, ecological planning, trend analysis
and future research belong to the list. Once competencies are in place, muse-
ums must invest in their staff members, their wellbeing and the professional
development. Diversity in the work force creates a positive spiral. From the
leadership perspective, investing in people, connoisseurship and new compe-
tencies are of crucial importance. Hiring the right people for the right positions
creates possibilities, whereas wrong choices hit hard like bad investments – not
least because museum professionals tend to work a long time at the same place.

Forbes Magazine listed the 10+ most important job skills every company would
be looking for in 2020, with a footnote that according to the World Economic
Forum 35 percent of the skills that we see as essential today will change in
only five years. The list included skills such as data literacy, critical thinking,
creativity and emotional intelligence, as well as cultural intelligence and diver-
sity. Strong cultural intelligence was seen as an asset needed to develop more
inclusive products and services. Creativity, in turn, was described as critical for
any workplace for moving forward (Marr 2019). One could also add agility and
tolerance to the list.

Another element in figure 1 refers to balancing and securing the museum’s re-
sources. The strategy points out the priorities and tells us what to do – but also
what not to do. That is also needed because the world is full of exciting projects.
Resources are quite often understood solely as funding, but that is only one third
of the pie. The two other thirds are skills and time. The museum might have huge
potential for development, but if the people are not right, their competencies
are outdated or of low quality or if they randomly do this and that instead of
focusing to the strategic areas, the whole organisation will end up facing severe
problems. Therefore, the skills and competencies plan is as important as the
financial plan, and it is critically important that staff members use their work
hours wisely. For example, if a chief curator needs a whole week to prepare a
128 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

standard lecture, it might be better not to give the lecture at all. But if the lecture
is strategically significant and contributes to the success of the museum, then
it might be time well spent.

Strengthening financial resources requires new ways of collaborating with ex-

ternal stakeholders, as well as new thinking. In the 1980s and 1990s in Finland,
sponsorship was a relatively new phenomenon in the cultural field and the rules
were very straightforward. The museum received a lump sum of money and
published the sponsor’s logo in connection with the exhibition. International
contemporary art exhibition ARS95 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hel-
sinki, housed at the Ateneum building at the time, changed that scene in Finland.
ARS95 was one of the first heavily sponsored exhibitions that also developed
a new language between the museum and its funders. Sponsors’ visibility was
defined according to the size of the contribution and the companies also used
the exhibition as a venue for customer events. The new funding system created
some debate, and opinions were divided: one group saw opportunities for the
museum and the arts in general, but the other group despised the idea that a
publicly-funded museum took money from the outside. The criticism was linked
to fear of the commercialised and Americanised way of running a museum,
thinking that the autonomy of the museum might be threatened.

Nowadays, sponsorship is a much wider concept than the exchange of money or

services against company visibility on the museum’s onsite and online platforms.
Instead, one should be able to specify what the added value is that collaboration
brings to the museum and, ultimately, to members of the public. What would be
the societal impact of such collaboration? As an example, a company can fund an
activity that brings art to the people who would not otherwise have an opportunity
for that kind of an encounter, or make sure that the museum can afford longer
opening hours, as Friday Lates, which are popular in several museums from,
the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to MoMa in New York, demonstrate.

The third focus area presented in figure 1 is related to contributing to the suc-
cess and well-being of society. Museums are never cut off from the rest of the
society or the people living in it. Helpful questions are: How does the museum
articulate its contribution for the benefit of the people? What is the impact of
museums? How can this be demonstrated? This is discussed in more detail in
the next section.

Museums and Society

Museums can be globally strong brands such as the Tate, the Metropolitan, the
Hermitage, the Tretjakov Gallery or the Louvre. They are institutions that play
significant roles within the fields of culture, economics and the branding of a
nation. Their directors belong automatically to the group of influential leaders
that are expected to use their voices in public. They can use the opportunity of
saying out loud what the value of culture is, and why it matters. The same logic
applies on a smaller scale to less-known institutions and smaller cities. What is
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  129

important is that the directors recognise their potential to make changes and
to use their power wisely.

Larger organisations, which are often criticised, are like large ocean cruisers that
turn slowly, whereas smaller museums can be compared to speedboats that can
make quick and surprising turns. The problems with big organisations are almost
always related to their leadership, work culture, funding, rules and regulations
and public role, along with the fact that public expectations do not coincide with
reality. For example, in the eyes of graduating young curators, big museums
might seem like conservative fortresses that never take risks or experiment.

I have good reason to claim that even the biggest national institutions can be
agile, quick and radical when needed. Here I’ll focus on one example. In 2015
many European countries, Finland included, received a large number of refu-
gees. A silent refugee demonstration, that lasted several weeks, was arranged in
Helsinki city centre, first in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
and then in a larger square, between the Ateneum Art Museum and the National
Theatre. At the time, I was director of the Ateneum.

We were approached and offered an opportunity to display a work of art com-

menting on the humanitarian crisis. With a very short lead time we decided to
contribute to the discussion concerning basic human rights and display graf-
fiti artist EGS’ work Europe’s Greatest Shame #11 (2015) on the facade of the
building. The work pictured the black world map against a white background,
divided by a red line (figure 2).

Figure 2: EGS’ Europe’s Greatest Shame #11 (2015) on the facade of the Ateneum, Helsinki. Photo:
Susanna Pettersson.
130 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

We at the museum knew that presenting the work outside the Ateneum building
would cause lots of debate and even trigger smear campaigns and death threats
(which it also did). We also knew that we would definitely want to make space
for a work that would make people think and react. We wanted the museum to
act as a visible arena for a work that challenges and presents questions. Exclud-
ing the right-wing extremists’ hate campaign, public support was very strong
and encouraging. It showed how memory organisations such as museums are
listened to when they use their voices. The feedback also demonstrated how the
audience appreciated the work and its strong message.

Decisions like that are relatively easy to make if the organisation has strong
values. They create a firm basis for everything, from quick daily situations to
more complex problems that need to be solved. Values correspond with society,
and the dialogue between the museum and the various stakeholders and interest
groups, from politicians to education and healthcare, as an example.

Museums normally know well how important they are for society and what
their role is. One could present the question: How well do societies articulate
the role of museums? How are they referred to in the official documents, such as
government strategies or policy papers of regions and cities, or Agenda 2030?
As learning platforms? As contributors to people’s well-being? Builders of at-
tractive cities where people want to live and work? I would claim that museums
have a lot of potential to be more vocal and visible as safe-guards of the world’s
cultural and natural heritage.

From the point of view of leadership, museums should more precisely articulate
how they do their share to achieve locally, regionally, nationally and globally im-
portant goals. In this sense, museums need to be ready to change their practises
and ways of communicating and show economic, social, cultural and political
awareness. Ultimately, it comes down to the undeniable value of art and culture.

A Way Forward
The culture industries were growing rapidly and provided a good number of new
jobs before Covid-19 in 2020 and onwards. The pandemic hit these industries
hard, but showed, at the same time, the great importance of culture as one of
the building blocks of a civilised society. The need for consumption of culture
did not disappear during lockdowns, quite the contrary.

The sector needs, now and in the future, professionals who work with expertise
and passion. They need leadership that copes with both the soon-to-be retired
generation of professionals as well as millennials. Most importantly, they need
leaders who have cultural understanding of the institutions that they work for
and can take over the intellectual ownership of the organisation.

I usually describe the museum’s activities by starting with the public. Without
the public the institution would be only a warehouse that would store objects
just for the sake of it. Museums collect, research, communicate and organise
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  131

exhibitions and events for the public. They interpret the contents and encourage
debates that invite different perspectives. But it is the people who make the
museum. Every visitor and their individual needs must be respected, as John
Falk and Lynn Dierking have demonstrated (Falk & Dierking 2018).

Running museums, developing collections, producing exhibitions and events,

funding the work and responding to the needs of the audience create an ongoing
need for analysis. Questions that help museums to identify areas for development
are many, but one must invest time in thinking them through.

In the following, I present a short (and not comprehensive) list that can serve
as a beginning for internal development. The questions might form the begin-
ning for strategic work that will eventually support the annual action plans and
delegation of different tasks on a team level, as well as on an individual level.

Collections

• Profile of the collection: what are the strengths? What are the weaknesses?
• Development potential: what to acquire and why?
• Use of the collection: how is the collection used and how should this be
developed onsite and online?

Exhibitions and events

• Profile and quality of exhibitions and events: what are the criteria behind
the decisions?
• Collaboration & production models: are the ways of working efficient?
Could something be done in a better way or differently?
• Partners: which are the most important strategic partners and why?

Research

• Research policy: what does your museum research and why? What must
be achieved? Examples: provenance and restitution research, colonial
histories, gender studies, etc.
• Partners: who are the most important strategic partners and why?
• New competencies: are practices in place that ensure scholars can start
working?

Education and communication

• Target groups and segments: who does your museum invest in?
• Visitor experiences: what kind of ambition level does your museum rep-
resent? What is the customer promise onsite and online?
• New methods: how do you work with your audiences?
• Hybrid strategies: how do you disseminate information and create expe-
riences on various platforms?

Public debate and society

132 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

• Museum’s voice: how does your museum use it? What are the most im-
portant arenas?
• Clear strategy and key messages: what are the most important messages
that you want to deliver in all circumstances?
• Museum as a medium: what kinds of channels does your museum use to
communicate the most important issues? Can they be developed further?

When working with internal development and strategies, one should be aware
of the constant need for analysis. One should be ready to define and re-define
the work in relation to the needs of the audiences and society. Some changes
are there for a short term only, whereas the others might have long-term effects
that require, for example, new competences from the museum as an organisa-
tion. These changes are typically related to the ways of working, utilising new
technologies, writing and rewriting histories, positioning the museum in society
and taking responsibility.

Probably one of the biggest differences is related to the concept of a museum:

from a place that shows everything at one spot to a concept combining onsite
and online presence and services. In the 16th century the earliest collections
showed more or less everything that was included in the collection to those very
few who had the possibility for exclusive visits. When collections grew, some
objects were stored, and this created categories within a collection.

During the 18th century, when the public was gradually allowed to visit collec-
tions, a whole new set of rules and regulations was required – a code of museum
behaviour. We have seen excellent examples of this, starting from Neikelius’ pub-
lication in 1727, where he gently guides the visitors to behave well and encourages
visitors to deepen their knowledge by acquiring the collection catalogue for any
further studies (Schulz 1994). Then, as we remember, museums were gradually
opened all across Europe in the 19th century. Ways of displaying collections were
formulated and canonical representations were established (Giebelhausen 2020).
Collections grew in size, as did expertise in managing them. The biggest changes
of the 20th century were related to the notion that museums needed to be able to
use the same tools as any other industries: communication, marketing, audience
development and a widening of the economic palette from one source only to a
sustainable selection of several external sources of income.

To become a museum with an exciting onsite and online personality and presence
requires proper policies for securing funding and investing in people with the
right competencies. It requires passion for collections and research, ambition
to explore the needs of the audiences and honesty and transparency in com-
munication. A museum must not be afraid of taking risks or making mistakes.

Working at a museum is people’s business. Objects do not have feelings or

talk back, but people do. We cannot say yet how jobs will change in the future.
What we know for sure is that we will all need many skills and capacities in
order to make better museums for people. Even if the work changes, our need
to encounter authentic and original objects will not disappear. Therefore, in
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  133

the future, we will also need platforms for these kinds of genuine encounters.
They will be challenged and re-challenged, which will keep the cycle of change
active. From a leadership perspective the requirements can be put very simply:
you need to know what you are talking about. And you need to be really good
at and ambitious with what you do.

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Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  137

Strategic Management in a
Changing Operating Environment
Kimmo Levä
Abstract
According to many weak and some slightly stronger signals, museums are un-
dergoing significant changes at present. It would appear that they are no longer
simply in charge of preserving, researching and displaying cultural heritage,
but also have a duty to promote social equality and democracy, maintain the
economic viability of communities and pursue educational policy objectives.
At the same time, as the operating environment of museums expands, changes
within it are taking place more rapidly and are more difficult to foresee.

This chapter discusses the strategic management of museums and the challenges
posed by the changing political, economic, social, technological, ecological and
legislative operating environments in the 2020s.

These changes require managers to have more specific management training or

experience rather than a background in history, art and culture. A more diverse
and dynamic operating environment calls for museums to be better equipped to
be both proactive and reactive, and to be prepared to make changes. All of these
abilities are at the heart of the strategic thinking, leadership and management
skills that are increasingly needed in the museum industry.

Key words: strategic management, leadership, economy, operating environ-

ment, strategic analysis

Museums as a Management Environment

A time of change

The widening and growing importance of the social dimension of museums opens
up new avenues in which museums can have an impact and succeed, but it also
requires a repositioning of activities and a new way of doing things. Added to
this, expanding the focus of actions increasingly means making choices about
what to do, for whom and under what conditions. Priorities have to be made,
as it is impossible to do everything, at least not with the same degree of effort
and attention.

This more diverse and dynamic operating environment calls for museums to be
better equipped to be both proactive and reactive, and to be prepared to make
changes. All of these abilities are at the heart of strategic thinking, leadership
and management skills that are increasingly needed in the museum industry.
138 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Museum management and leadership

As Peter Drucker famously opined, management means doing things right, while
leadership means doing the right things. Management includes administrative
tasks and responsibilities, as well as production and development processes
related to goal-setting. Leadership, on the other hand, is about seeing to it that
goals are accomplished, motivating people and bringing about change.

One of the special features of museum management is that museums have little
financial leeway. This is because substantial parts of a museum’s expenditure
and income are fixed. Fixed income is not an economic term per se, but grants
allocated to museums can be regarded as such. Their share of museum oper-
ating expenditure has remained stable at the current level of around 80% on
average. Fixed costs in museums, for their part, involve personnel and property
expenses. Their share of museum spending has also remained stable at around
80% (Museovirasto 2020).

The remit of the museum director essentially involves managing an expert organ-
isation, as over 80% of museum staff have either a lower or a higher university
degree (Suomen museoliitto 2018). This high level of education enables and
requires a focus on personal leadership in delivering jointly-developed poli-
cies and objectives, and in providing scope for adequate self-management. The
management of an expert organisation is primarily coaching, and in this sense,
traditional management approaches do not succeed.

Expert organisations are generally regarded as rather cumbersome management

environments, according to experienced business executive Eero Kukkola. This
is due to the independent thinking and decision-making that is integral to ex-
pertise, but which can also cause tensions in multi-expert teams and difficulties
in achieving organisational goals (Kukkola 2016).

In the museum area, this expert organisation trait is reinforced by the fact that
when evaluating the credentials of museum directors, the focus is on expert tasks.
Up to 2020, in order for a museum to be eligible for state subsidies, its director
had to have expertise in the museum field. The new Museum Act, which came
into force in Finland at the beginning of 2020, and the state funding criteria
set out in it, place more emphasis on leadership, but museum expertise retains
its strong position in every museum and is compulsory for directors of small
museums (Museolaki 314/2019).

The new Museum Act does not radically alter the management of museums, or
the management culture of the museum industry. The director is still expected to
play a dual role as both a leader and an expert, a feature that is underlined by the
small size of museum organisations. In 2019, professional museums employed
on average 13 permanent staff members (Museovirasto 2020).

Expertise aside, museum management is characterised by project and fixed-

term work, and hence atypical employment relationships. In 2019, about 24% of
museum personnel were engaged in work of a non-typical nature (Museovirasto
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  139

2020). This figure does not include trainees or people whose work is supported
by various grants, which is common in museums. Atypical employment gen-
erates a considerable amount of additional work for the administration and
maintenance of a cohesive organisational culture.

In addition to the specifics of financial and human resources, museum manag-

ers must take into account the fact that, as non-profit organisations, museums
are public-interest entities. Their mission is value-based and designed to fulfil
a social need, which guides the activities of state-owned museums and those
owned by municipalities in particular, which account for 59% of the total in
Finland. The value base is also emphasised in museums run by private founda-
tions and associations, which, in turn, make up about 39% of the total number
of museums (Museovirasto 2020).

Governing bodies

The work of a Finnish museum director is guided and supported by boards in

municipal museums, and by boards of directors in private museums. In state-
owned museums, this role is performed by central offices or the Ministry of
Education and Culture. In all cases, the members of the governing bodies are
appointed mainly on the basis of status. It is not uncommon for such members
to be appointed by nomination committees or with expert assistance, with the
aim of finding the most competent and suitable person for the position from the
point of view of the museum’s current situation or strategy. It is common for
the museum rules to allocate the right of appointment to several organisations.
In municipal museums, the right of, and responsibility for, appointments are
both shaped by political power relations.

Members of the board participate in the museum’s activities in a voluntary

capacity or in addition to their main work, on the understanding that they are
not expected to dedicate a significant amount of time to these duties. As a result,
guiding and supporting the work of the museum director emphasises the setting
of goals, financial and operational supervision, as well as ensuring compliance
with laws and regulations. The governing body duly has a supervisory role.

According to economist and business executive J.T. Bergqvist, the work of boards
and other governing bodies should evolve so that they primarily support the
management in terms of sparring and alternative solutions and strategic policies,
as well as strengthening the organisation’s know-how in matters of substance
(Bergqvist 2007). This is also true in the case of governing bodies in the muse-
um branch, particularly since the diversity of the social functions of museums
outside of traditional museum work is increasing. Museums are increasingly
expected to be providers of know-how, efficacy and results in the business and
social sectors.

The shift towards business management

During the 2010s, the management of museums and businesses converged. The
change was due to the fact that the share of income earned directly from the
140 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

customer in the museum economy increased significantly. In addition, public

funding is conditional upon private financing in connection with investment or,
at the very least, upon the prospect of investment strengthening opportunities
for private financing (Levä 2019).

According to Canadian museologist Robert R. Janes, museums are embed-

ded in the business world framework, where their management is becoming
shorter-term than before, and where action and investment are sought for their
ability to provide a rapid and measurable impact. Money and its economic and
activity indicators are a substitute for a hard-to-measure and slow-moving so-
cial mission. This is one reason why business experience is increasingly being
emphasised as a prerequisite for museum directors and members of governing
bodies (Janes 2012).

Another indication of the emergence of corporate leadership in expert organi-

sations in the 2010s was the introduction of the Lean Management philosophy,
developed in the 1980s to meet the needs of the Japanese Toyota car manufac-
turing company in terms of streamlining the workflow and eliminating waste.
Lean management is based on the concept of continuous improvement, a long-
term approach that aims to bring about incremental changes in processes in
order to improve overall efficiency and quality in an organisation (Torkkola
2015, pp. 22–27).

The Top Priority for Museum Management – Ensuring

long-term sustainability
The Code of Ethics and the Museums Act

While museums are expected to deliver more tangible and measurable results
in the short term, long-term sustainability must be a core priority in museum
management. In other words, the focus of the economic and operational infra-
structure must be to ensure the long-term, if not permanent, existence of the
museum. This is emphasised in the definition of a museum in the Code of Ethics
of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), as well as in the Finnish Mu-
seums Act. According to the latter, permanence is particularly relevant when it
comes to museum collections. An organisation that maintains a museum must
show that the collection is also secured in a situation where a museum has to
close down for one reason or another (Museolaki 214/2019).

The criterion of permanence is a tough requirement for museum management,

highlighted by the ICOM Museum Definition and the Finnish Museum Act,
which both stipulate that the aim of museum activities is not to make a profit,
which, if realised, would actually provide much-needed economic leeway and
risk tolerance.

Risk tolerance is particularly needed in change situations that are characterised

by a new direction, growth or action. In museums, such a change usually implies
investing in real estate to house exhibitions or collections, although in the 2010s
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  141

the activities of many museums also changed significantly as a result of mergers.

In the case of the latter, the change has focused on reorganising operations and
bringing working community cultures together.

From plans to strategies

The Museums Act requires a museum to formulate a multiannual economic and

operational plan that sets out how it will maintain its activities and finances in
the coming years. The Act does not require a strategy as such. Semantically, one
can examine the distinction from the point of view of how activities will be man-
aged. The “Economic Action Plan” is in line with long-term planning thinking,
where changes in the operating environment are seen as linear or reflective of
a trend, and a museum can make fairly detailed decisions on how operations
and finances will be structured in the coming years.

Strategic management, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that

the operating environment is constantly changing and partly unpredictable,
especially as a result of changes in the competitive situation. Mika Kamensky,
who has written several books on strategic management, has identified three
different tasks or goals for the strategic process:

1. A strategy is an organisation’s conscious choice of key objectives and

guidelines for action in a changing world.
2. A strategy allows an organisation to control its environment, either by
adapting to changes in the environment, modifying and influencing its
environment or choosing the best environment for itself.
3. Through its strategy, an organisation purposefully manages external
and internal factors, and the interrelationships between them, so that
the organization’s profitability, continuity and development goals can
be achieved (Kamensky 2014, pp. 13–21).

Arguably, a key difference between planning and strategizing is that the focus
in a strategy is always on the outside of the organisation, and one has to be pre-
pared to change the operation quickly, in accordance with signals coming from
customers, financiers, owners or the operating environment.

In the museum branch, there is justification for referring to both a plan and a
strategy. The use of the word plan is underpinned by the fact that 80% of the
funding for museums comes from grants, as a result of a political decision.
In this kind of operating environment, changes have traditionally been minor
and predictable. There is also no recognisable competitive framework among
museums in terms of this type of funding.

The grounds for using the term strategy arose in particular from the development
that took place in the 2010s, a decade in which the predictability of political
decision-making weakened as populism intensified. The risk that the public
administrative environment will change dramatically has increased accordingly.
142 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Moreover, the need for strategic thinking and strategic management has been
heightened by the change in museum funding, an increasing proportion of
which is derived from consumer service revenue and hence from competition
in the market. This has marked a significant change. In 2010, 14% of museum
expenditure was covered by consumer service income, but by the end of 2019,
that figure had risen to 20% (Museovirasto 2020).

In addition to direct service revenue, the extent to which public funding is con-
ditioned upon private sector involvement and investment has grown. The game
changer in this respect was the Guggenheim Helsinki project in the early 2010s.
In this context, public funding was conditional upon substantial private invest-
ment. The Guggenheim project did not come to fruition, but the funding model
for museum investment survived.

In light of the developments that took place in the 2010s, it is evident that the
level of planning laid down by the Museum Act for successful and long-term
museum management will not suffice. Museums must monitor the development
of the operational and competitive environment, and be as proactive as possible
in preparing to make the necessary changes to their activities.

Museums need to understand the effects of change on the operational environ-

ment and be prepared to adapt their activities in order to seize opportunities
and turn threats into advantages. The need for foresight in strategic manage-
ment is highlighted by the economic structure of museums, with their low level
of flexibility and risk tolerance, which allow for neither quick responses nor
significant losses.

When making changes, museums must also take into account the rigidity of
the museum economy in terms of investment. In practice, investment will
never increase service revenue as much as it correspondingly pushes up fixed
personnel and real-estate costs. Hence, in order to avoid the problems of the
post-investment business economy, a museum must ensure that grant funding
also increases before an investment decision is made.

A sustainable investment plan is based on a calculation in which grants cover

80% of the increase in investment costs on average. This is essential because
of the structure of the museum economy mentioned earlier. The 80% fixed
costs, 80% fixed income structure does not vary significantly, irrespective of
the size of the museum. Any increase in the volume of service revenue as a
result of investment will invariably increase the need for grant funding. This
differs from the corporate investment philosophy, where the premise is that an
investment will always pay for itself in terms of service revenue from consumers
or corporate clients.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  143

Strategic Analyses
The present and the future

The success of museums and their long-term activities is determined by two main
factors: 1) a favourable political environment at the municipal and state level
and 2) consumers’ use of museum services. Successful strategic management
requires the systematic monitoring of both of these key variables. In terms of the
first, a PESTEL (PESTLE, STEEP) analysis provides a useful tool for museums.
In the PESTEL framework, the operating environment is assessed through six
variables: political, economic, social, technological, ecological and legislative.
The PESTEL framework is examined in greater detail below.

When it comes to the second variable, a number of different analyses can be used
to gauge and forecast its impact. In a competitive consumer market, customer
feedback forms and questionnaires are frequently used, as well as other follow-up
activities. An often-used framework for evaluating changes in the competitive
environment is Michael E. Porter’s Five Forces analysis, which evaluates changes
through customers, subcontractors, competitors, products and internal dynamics
within the industry (Porter 2008).

An analysis of the life cycle of products and services is also vital in the consum-
er market. The most well-known tool for this is the Life Cycle Matrix of the
Boston Consulting Group, commonly referred to as the BCG model. By means
of this tool, the life cycle of products or services is divided into four stages of
development (question marks, stars, cash cows and dogs) in terms of time and
economic significance.

The question mark represents the launch phase, during which the service is
developed and the financial result is negative. The star symbolises a phase of
strong growth, where service usage rises and generates increasing revenue. The
cash cow is a stage whereby growth levels off, with development and marketing
inputs invested in service decreasing and profitability improving. In the dog
phase, demand for and profitability of service will decrease until service becomes
unprofitable and should be discontinued.

As noted, the financial success of museums is determined by political funding

decisions made at the local and national levels. Hence, a life-cycle analysis of the
competitive environment or services in the consumer market is less important
in the strategic management of museums than analysis of the social environ-
ment. There are, however, museum-specific differences. In a situation where
the entrance ticket, museum shop and other service revenues have a crucial or
increasing significance from the perspective of the museum’s long-term activities,
the monitoring of the operating environment should be increased regarding the
consumer and competitive aspects. Indeed, this was a growing trend in museum
development in the 2010s.

The most well-known and most widely-used strategic reference framework is

SWOT, which evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of
144 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

an organisation. Despite its widespread use, SWOT is often conducted wrongly,

and the result is an analysis where there is some confusion between strengths
and opportunities, as well as between weaknesses and threats.

In order for a SWOT analysis to be carried out successfully, weaknesses and

strengths need to be assessed as part of an internal review of the organisation,
asking what works (strengths) and what does not (weaknesses). Questions must
be addressed regarding all aspects of the operations and management, from
personnel to administration, and from exhibitions to collections. Opportunities
and threats need to be examined in light of the changes that PESTEL or other
analyses point to in the operating environment. In assessing identified opportu-
nities and threats, we need to ask what we have to do in the coming years to avoid
the threats that are visible, and to take advantage of the opportunities available.

PESTEL analysis

In Finland, the political environment can be monitored according to election

cycles, the most important of which from the museum perspective are municipal
and parliamentary elections, as well as EU elections, for the purposes of devel-
opmental funding. Both prior to and after elections, the announced programmes
lay the groundwork for political decision making at the municipal and national
levels for the coming four-year term. During the term of office, changes in the
political environment are influenced by societal values that come to the fore, as
well as party programmes and ideologies. In terms of the political environment,
the most important task is to monitor cultural policy developments, although as
the social function of museums expands, business, education and social policies
are becoming increasingly important variables.

In the economic environment, the operation of museums is primarily influenced

by economic upturns and downturns. In this respect, changes in the operating
environment can be gleaned from national and local economic forecasts and
reports. National signals also guide economic decision-making at the local level
when it comes to changes in the structure of the economy. A case in point with
regard to museums is the increasing importance of tourism in economic policy.
In addition, changes in consumer behaviour are relevant for the use of museum
services. In recent years, for example, consumer growth has shifted from goods
to services, which has been beneficial for museums.

Changes in the social environment are more related to megatrends, such as an

aging population, urbanisation and changes in the way that work is performed.
Changes in the social environment occur slowly, but can be monitored by pro-
jections issued by ministries or think tanks, for instance, while shorter-term
effects can be anticipated by studying existing municipal and national social
policy programmes. In the 2010s, museum services were increasingly used in
the implementation of these programmes, in relation to immigration and mul-
ticulturalism, and the activation of the elderly and those at risk of exclusion.
This trend continues to gain momentum.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  145

The technological environment can be examined to assess the development

of the tools and processes needed to carry out museum work. In practice, this
entails preparing for the changes brought about by digitisation in managing,
presenting and producing collections and utilizing various presentation tech-
nologies in exhibition activities. In addition to the ICT sector, the development
of technologies related to management, maintenance and the production of
light, heat and cooling is important for museums. Keeping track of technological
changes also involves being aware of the available services and technologies on
the market and their developmental trends.

The ecological environment, and the associated global warming, have quickly
turned from a megatrend into a key strategic variable that must be taken into
account in all museum activities, even in day-to-day management. Museums are
expected to act to mitigate and to prepare for the consequences of climate change.
The ecological imperative has to be evident in choices made in connection with
energy solutions and materials, for example. Relatedly, museums play a role in
promoting ecological solutions and lifestyles because of their educational and
media mission. Understanding the potential of recycling and other ecological
solutions, as well as how the ecology affects consumer behaviour, is the key to
monitoring changes in the ecological operating environment.

One of the easiest ways to keep track of variables related to the museum operating
environment is by monitoring the relevant legislation. The effects of legislative
changes can be anticipated and prepared for, due to the lengthy legislative pro-
cess and possible transition periods. Museums are subject to the same laws as
other organizations, for example when it comes to financial and human resource
management. Most museums are run by municipalities, so they are particularly
subject to municipal legislation. Private museums are organised into foundations
or associations, so their administrative structure is determined in accordance
with specific laws, while the activities of state-owned museums are governed
by state legislation.

The most important legislative framework covering the work of professional

museums is the Museum Act and its related state-funding legislation. In the
case of the National Gallery and the Finnish Heritage Agency, separate laws
apply to the role of state subsidies. Legislation concerning the specific remit
of museums defines their most important tasks and the related quality criteria
and financial frameworks. In addition, the exhibition and collection work of
museums is closely linked to protection of the cultural environment, data pro-
tection and copyright laws. Staying abreast of the government’s programme
and proposals during the parliamentary term is the key to monitoring changes
in the regulatory environment.

Strategic Choices

The museum director and the executive team are responsible for formulating
a strategy, while approving it and subsequently supporting its implementation
are the remit of the museum board or other governing body. After analysing
146 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

the operating environment and current situation of the museum, a strategy

formulation starts by making choices, usually in terms of quantity or quality.
Generally, there are three alternatives, namely maintaining, raising or decreasing
the current level of operations within the given time span. These options can
also be described as securing, expanding or radically changing the current level.

In the museum branch, the time span for a strategy is usually long compared
to the business sector. In an ideal situation, a time span is determined on the
basis of the results obtained from the operating environment and an analysis of
the current situation, but in general a museum strategy covers a period of five
years, which appears to work well.

Securing a certain level entails updating the current activities as a strategic

choice. Expanding could, for example, involve an exhibition or collection activity
that sets a goal of increasing the number of visitors or digitizing collections. In
the case of museums, the most radical change option usually involves a large
investment in construction or the consolidation of functions, which often calls
for a goal that extends beyond a single strategy period.

Strategic choices are defined for each of the museum’s functions, which can be
roughly divided into collections, exhibitions, research and administration. Usu-
ally, pressure from both inside and outside the museum prompts an increase in
the quantity or quality of each area. However, a successful and action-oriented
strategy calls for choices to be made, as not all functions can be increased or
decreased at the same time. Even maintaining the existing level requires making
a choice, because a change in the operating environment demands a change in
the way of working, even if quality and quantity remain the same.

In the corporate and commercial sectors, strategic choices are usually aimed
at gaining a competitive edge in the market. According to W. Chan Kim and
Renée Mauborgne, the market consists, metaphorically speaking, of two types
of oceans, blue and red. Blue oceans comprise all the industries not yet in exist-
ence, and red oceans consist of all the industries that already exist. Blue oceans
are unexplored and deep, providing opportunities for growth, and hence a blue
ocean strategy entails creating new demand and finding a previously untapped
market area. Conversely, a red ocean strategy is all about cut-throat competition
in a crowded market, as companies fight for a greater market share, turning
the ocean bloody. As competition increases, the potential for profit and growth
diminishes (Kim & Mauborgne 2005).

Museums tend to find it difficult and often unnecessary to define their strategic
position from the point of view of gaining a competitive advantage. In general,
museums could operate from the perspective of their main function in a blue
ocean, based on their mission and the policies related to curation and other
activities. There are very few overlaps and little competition when it comes to
the preservation, exploration and presentation of cultural heritage.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  147

On the other hand, from a competitive point of view, museums do not navigate in
a perfectly calm blue ocean, or in a vacuum where they would be able to succeed
in strategic management without taking other museums and providers of cultural
and recreational services into account. The key to success for museums lies in
finding solutions that ensure their share of public funding remains intact. In
this sense, the competition is to all intents and purposes with all public service
providers, but especially with other museums, as well as with the cultural and
leisure sectors.

The direct and indirect impact of revenues from consumers and the private sector
has increased in recent years, and this trend seems to be strengthening. In the
consumer market in particular, museums operate in a red ocean, where visitors
have a considerable number of options to choose among from the point of view
of spending their time and money. Yet by virtue of their unique competitive
differentiation, museums can mitigate the waves.

Strategic Objectives

After choices have been made, strategy work defines the objectives that will be
achieved. Defining objectives is often a demanding process, and there is a risk
that it will become so all-encompassing that it will not be helpful in managing
an annual or shorter time span. The tendency towards overgeneralisation can
be detected, either in expressions such as “try to do”, or in setting goals for the
entire museum without an activity-specific breakdown. Another pitfall is estab-
lishing overly ambitious goals, a tendency which is exacerbated if the strategic
choices are not made before the objectives are outlined.

Objectives must be defined in such a way that it is possible to determine whether

they have been or are being realised during the strategy period. In other words,
they must be specific and measurable. From the point of view of strategic man-
agement, a goal should be formulated in such a way that it answers at least these
two questions: What is the team, function or unit expected to achieve and how
will the outcome be measured with quantitative or qualitative indicators? In
addition to being Specific, Measurable and Achievable, it is also beneficial to
pay attention to the other two variables in accordance with the so-called SMART
framework, to ensure that the objectives are also Relevant and Time-bound.

When setting goals, it is crucial to assess whether sufficient financial and human
resources are available to fulfil them. As a rule, the functional and financial
structure of museums does not allow for the allocation of significant individual
resources for the realisation of strategic objectives. When setting quantitative
growth targets, it is important to be aware of what can be achieved during an
average year. Achieving an objective also requires a buy-in from employees at
all levels of the organisation.

At best, a museum should be identifiable by its goals. To this end, attention

can be drawn to the reasons for any proposed changes, particularly in the area,
region or other major target group served by the museum. Identity is of par-
148 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

ticular importance when it comes to radical changes, such as seeking partners

and funding for investment.

A strategy is always time-bound. As stated earlier, museums tend to implement

strategic changes over a period of five years. The timeframes related to the im-
plementation of the strategic objectives must be defined within the strategy’s
period. To this end, at least two temporal criteria must be defined for an indi-
vidual objective: When special measures to achieve the target will be initiated
and when the results will be obtained?

Implementing a Strategy

The elaboration of a strategy, with its choices and goals, is at the heart of man-
agement at the organisational level. Once the board or other administrative body
has adopted a specific strategy from among the various options presented, the
focus of strategic management will shift to leadership, in order to drive change
by encouraging and motivating the staff to achieve the set goals.

Successful implementation of change requires a joint effort of will by the museum

administration, management and staff. The greater the consensus on the chosen
direction and the need for change, the easier this becomes. Change management
is also easier to facilitate with a more pro-developmental work community. In
an ideal situation, where the work community unreservedly supports reforms
and there is a complete consensus on the direction of the change, it is possible
to implement a strategy swiftly, and great strides forward can thus be made.

However, the optimal management environment is seldom attainable. It is more

common for the organisation to have different perceptions of the need for change,
the direction the change should take and the goals that have been set. This is
particularly the case with expert organisations, where people are accustomed
to independent thinking, and to formulating their own ideas of both what the
goals should be and how they should be implemented.

For the most part, museums also employ people who have had a long career in
the museum industry. According to a survey conducted by the Finnish Museums
Association in 2018, permanent staff in museums had worked in the industry
for an average of 18 years (Suomen museoliitto 2018). One outcome of this is
that the common values and practices of the museum industry exert a strong
influence on the kind of reforms and operating models that are regarded as ac-
ceptable. It is also common for the appropriateness of reforms and goals to be
assessed with reference to the Code of Ethics for Museums, as defined by ICOM.

When initiating a change, a leader must assess both the forces that support the
change and those that support the status quo. After this assessment, efforts must
be made to motivate those units, teams or individuals that regard the change as
a threat or an undesirable development for one reason or another. At the same
time, of course, care must be taken not to frustrate the units, teams or individuals
that are directly affected by the change, if the measures are not implemented
immediately or according to schedule.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  149

During a strategy’s period, it is possible to change the balance of forces pro-

moting and resisting change through human resource management. The result
is likely to be a strategic leadership environment where the pace of change is
slower than desired for those who expect it, and faster than desired for those
who resist it. This is because the strategy’s period is too short to bring about a
change in the community culture. Indeed, there is a saying that “culture eats
strategy for breakfast”, which means that the success and efficiency of a strategy
or strategic plan will always be held back by the people implementing the plan,
if the culture does not support it (Luukka 2019, p. 39).

From the point of view of change forces and organisational culture, Pauli Juuti
and Mikko Luoma classify organisations under four headings: stagnant, intense,
resting and flow mode (Juuti & Luoma 2009). A museum that is in a stagnant
situation has little appetite for change, and trust in the management or among
colleagues is lacking. There is conflict over the direction that change should take,
and the organisation is wary of diverging from the way things have been up to
the present. Managing a museum in a state of stagnation calls for an emphasis
on building trust between management and staff before setting any objectives.
Particular attention must be paid to raising awareness of the need for change.

In the so-called intense situation, there is a strong desire for renewal in the
museum. The work community is infused with energy, expectations and ideas,
but there is no common understanding of the direction of change. The intensity
is visible in daily activities. Perceptions of the right way to act are brought to the
table, both formally and above all in so-called coffee table discussions. When it
comes to strategic management in an intense museum, the foremost priority is
to clarify and adhere to the direction of change.

In a museum that is in a resting state, information about the direction of the

required change is clear, but the willingness to change is limited. The frustration
caused by previous unsuccessful change projects and the resulting fatigue have
led to a kind of sleepwalking. Managing an organisation in a resting mode re-
quires an emphasis on quick and demonstrable results, underscored by specific
and measurable goals. In this kind of situation, it is helpful if certain objectives
can be implemented early on in the strategy’s period.

When in the flow mode, a museum combines a strong desire for change with a
clear sense of direction. In this mode, the museum requires little actual change
management. The organisation is inherently driven by change itself. The flow
mode is highly desirable in bringing about change, but it can also result in a
dip in morale, as excessive zeal often gives way to disappointment if good ideas
cannot be realised in their entirety. In the worst case, the flow mode rapidly
turns to stagnation. Sustaining momentum for change is central to the strategic
management of a museum in the flow mode, even if all its goals have already
been achieved. Similarly, it is important to maintain the willingness to change,
even if some of the desired changes have not been realised.
150 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

The first months of strategy implementation and other change management

activities are crucial. Once the proposed changes and goals have been precisely
defined and determined in such a way that the museum’s situation has been
taken into account from the perspective of the drivers of change and the organ-
isational culture, the strategic management of the museum is on track. If the
point of departure has been poorly assessed, stumbling blocks will occur. In
the worst-case scenario, the museum director may attempt to drive change by
adopting a flow-oriented approach in a situation of stagnation, where the major-
ity of personnel and even other managers are resistant. This risk is particularly
acute in cases where a newly-appointed director assumes responsibility for the
change in question.

This risk can be avoided by mapping out the strategy as openly and compre-
hensively as possible and doing sufficient groundwork beforehand, by analysing
the operating environment and the need for change within the museum. In this
context, it is also important to ensure that experts, and all those involved in the
strategy work, are made aware of the importance of the input and insights they
provide in enabling management to build a strategic plan that the board will
readily approve.

References
Bergqvist, J 2007 Hallitus yrityksen voimavarana. Helsinki: Boardman.

Janes, R 2012 What are museums for? Revisiting Museums in a Troubled

World. Nordisk Museologi 1/2012. Umeå: University of Umeå. pp.
20–34.

Juuti, P & Luoma, M 2009 Strateginen johtaminen, miten vastata

kompleksisen ja postmodernin ajan haasteisiin? Helsinki: Otava.

Kamensky, M 2014 Strateginen johtaminen, menestyksen timantti.

Helsinki: Talentum.

Kim, W & Mauborgne, R 2005 Blue ocean strategy: how to create

uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant.
Boston: Harvard Business School.

Kukkola, E 2016 Asiantuntijaorganisaation johtaminen. Available at

[Link]
johtaminen-6-johtaminen/. [Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Levä, K 2019 2010-luku oli näyttelyiden – Kokoelmat keskiöön

2020-luvulla?. P.S. Blogi 25.6.2019. Available at [Link]
[Link]/2019/06/[Link]
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Luukka, P 2019 Yrityskulttuuri on kuningas. Helsinki: Alma Talent.

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Museolaki 1192/2005. Available at [Link]

alkup/2019/20190314 [Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Museolaki 314/2019. [Link]

[Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Museotilasto 2019 2020. Museovirasto. Available at [Link]

[Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Museoväki 2018. Helsinki: Suomen Museoliitto. Available at [Link]

[Link]/doc/Museovaki_kyselyt/Museovaki_2018_yhteenveto.
pdf [Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Porter, M 2008 The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy. Harvard
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five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy [Last accessed 9 February
2021]

Torkkola, S 2015 Lean asiantuntijatyön johtamisessa. Helsinki: Talentum

Pro.
152 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

Continuing Professional
Education as a Tool for
Developing Museums
Leena Tokila

Abstract
Finnish museum professionals are highly educated; most have a university de-
gree. The legislative policy on the museum sector has determined the qualifi-
cations required of museum workers since 1989. The new Museum Act, which
came into force in 2020, includes the following provisions: a museum must have
a full-time director with an appropriate university degree, leadership skills and
sufficient familiarity with the mission and tasks of the museum; a museum must
also employ at least two full-time museum professionals, who have completed
an appropriate university degree and basic studies in museology, and one of
these two mandated experts should serve as the museum’s director.

Changing museum work in a changing operational environment requires new

knowledge and skills. To this end, museum professionals should develop their
professional competence after completing their initial qualification. Post-graduate
training can be regarded as human resources development, which enhances an
employee’s professional skills, as well as the organisation’s ability to function
in a mutable operating environment. Training and learning can be considered
from the perspective of lifelong learning.

Finnish employees are keen to participate in continuing training programmes.

The 2017 Official Statistics of Finland indicate that more than half of Finnish wage
earners had participated in personnel training supported by their employers.
Personnel training is completely or partly sponsored by the employer and aims
to develop employees’ professional knowledge and skills. The Finnish Museums
Association (FMA) is the leading in-service trainer in the Finnish museum sector,
and approximately 1 500 museum employees attend FMA training sessions an-
nually. Reviewing the history of FMA’s continuing professional education, we are
able to perceive how training operations have reflected changes in museum work.

Keywords: continuing professional education, personnel training, museum

professional, museum work, lifelong learning
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  153

Changing Museum Work Requires a Wide Variety of

Knowledge and Skills
Digitalisation and developing technology transform our tasks and methods of
working, as well as the tools we use. Professions evolve; many professions dis-
appear altogether. Several studies indicate that 25 to 40% of current tasks will
disappear over the next fifteen years due to digitalisation, especially that involving
artificial intelligence and related automation. This transformation of work and
its impact on society has been compared to mechanisation within agriculture
and its societal effects in the 1950s and 1960s. Automation and robots have
been in industrial use for a long time, and the tasks that are easy to automate
have already been automated; there is no great wave of change in sight in the
industrial field (Ailisto 2017).

The situation is different in the service sector, where the application of artificial
intelligence will produce big changes in working methods. The development
of technology and expanding self-service will remould tasks and professions;
self-service checkouts are one example of this evolution (Ailisto 2017). Changes
in the larger society naturally impose changes on museums as working environ-
ments, and there are consequent changes in the procedures, modes of working
and museum professions. Digitalization in the museum context means not only
digitalized objects and better online access to museum collections and exhibi-
tions, but also new services, including expanding digital museum experiences.

In museum work, automation will be first applied to the management of collec-

tions, especially to the work of cataloguing. Museum collection management
systems require museum professionals to have new skills and knowledge; ideally,
these include a combination of IT skills and knowledge about museum work.
There are not many hybrid professionals like these yet, but the need for them
is likely to grow significantly in the next few years.

In 2011, the International Committee for Regional Museums (ICR) and the Inter-
national Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP), committees operating
under the aegis of ICOM, published a book, Staff and Training in Regional
Museums (2011), which articulates the changing nature of museum work from
the perspective of education. The publication is based on presentations from an
international conference and is an excellent example of the current international
and national discourse about museum professions and the education required
for museum work. The book also reflects the versatile nature of museum work
and the different ways of using resources to maintain and develop museums.
In particular, the publication relies on observations of the situation regarding
regional and local museums, which is probably a better way to generate a realistic
picture of the museum field, compared to using observation of those museums
with more resources.

ICTOP was founded in 1968, making it one of the oldest ICOM committees. It
supports museum professionals’ basic university-level education and continu-
ing education and has produced reports and publications for the international
154 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

museum community. The committee organises annual international conferences

on education in the museum field and participates in various projects. Another
example of ICTOP’s publications is Museum Professions – A European Frame
of Reference (2008), which is an overview of museum professions, including job
descriptions and required education, intended for the use by the international
museum community.

In 2016, ICOM launched an initiative, the aim of which is to revise the existing
definition of a museum. From the museum community’s point of view, this
definition is important, because it represents a document capable of determin-
ing museum operations, internationally and nationally, thereby functioning as
a determining factor of museum work, as well as the knowledge and skills of
museum workers. The definition aims to reflect the transformation of museum
work in the rapidly changing operational environments of museums (see also
Ehanti, this volume).

A Conceptual Framework of Lifelong Learning for

Continuing Professional Education
The development of the museum should be based on a personnel strategy derived
from the museum’s strategy, which ensures long-term and goal-oriented devel-
opment. Post-graduate training can be seen as human resources development,
which enhances the employee’s professional skills and the organisation’s ability
to operate in a changing operating environment.

Learning can be reviewed, for example, from the perspective of theories of learn-
ing organization or communities of practice. The individual perspective empha-
sizes, e.g., professional identity theories. Personal and professional identity is
now a key factor in working life (Eteläpelto 2007).

One research field within adult education discipline is lifelong learning. Lifelong
learning denotes all learning and development of a human being over the course
of his or her lifetime. Lifelong learning can be informal everyday learning or
independent goal-oriented studies within, for example, liberal adult education.
It can also consist of formal, degree-oriented study within the official education
system. The concept of lifelong learning is often mentioned in connection with
changes in an individual’s life course. Lifelong learning may include development
of an employee’s professional knowledge and skills as part of a personnel training
scheme or as independent work-related studies in various courses and training
programmes, which aim to enhance or maintain an employee’s employability.

The definition of lifelong learning depends on who defines the term and to what
context. Lifelong learning has been discussed widely within adult education.
The advantages of independent, non-formal and non-professional education
have been examined in the context of the extensive Benefits of Lifelong Learn-
ing project, which involved a survey carried out in ten European countries; the
results showed that participation in education had introduced many positive
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  155

changes in the participants’ lives. For example, participants experienced more

social engagement and appreciation for education. Liberal adult education also
seemed to benefit participants’ work and careers. Participants expressed in-
creased confidence about their potential to expand their influence within their
environment. This and other benefits gained by participants also seem to have
resulted in positive changes in their health habits. The most important factor
contributing to these benefits seems to be the independent or voluntary nature
of studies. Small successes strengthen students’ self-image and their motivation
to study (Manninen & Meriläinen 2015, p. 90, pp. 94–95).

The ideology that promotes lifelong learning underlines learning for and by
adults of all ages, which enables equal opportunities for societal participation. In
recent years, the discourse on lifelong learning has emphasised adult education
and professional skill development as an objective associated with improving
national and European capacities in the context of global economic competition
(see, for example, Kinnari 2013).

Museum Professionals are Highly Educated

Finnish legislative policy on the museum sector has determined the require-
ments for state subsidies, including museum employees and their educational
background. With an act and decree in 2005, Finland was the first country in
the world to establish museology as a discipline that qualifies graduates to work
as museum professionals (Vilkuna 2010, pp. 345–346 and this volume).

The Museum Decree 2005 (effective as of 1 January 2006) and its 2013 amend-
ment established the minimum number of museum employees and their required
education, in the following manner:

A museum has a director and at least one other full-time employee: One
of them is required to have a higher university (master’s) degree and the
other is required to have a university degree, a higher vocational diploma
or a corresponding earlier vocational college diploma. Both are required
to be familiar with the museum’s field of expertise and have completed
basic studies in museology, or have at least a year of work experience as
a museum professional.

In exceptional cases, a museum director with the degree mentioned in

subsection one, item two and familiar with the museum’s field of expertise,
need not have completed basic studies in museology or have a minimum
of one year’s work experience as a museum professional. In such cases
the museum must have at least two other full-time employees who have
completed basic studies in museology or have at least one year’s work
experience as a museum professional (The Museum Decree 2005/1192
and its amendment 456/2013, unofficial translation from Finnish).

The 2020 Museum Act retains museology as a qualification requirement, while

incorporating leadership and managerial skills into the requirements for a mu-
156 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

seum director for the first time. According to the qualification requirements for
employees in state-subsidised museums, the museum must have a responsible
full-time director with an appropriate university degree, leadership skills and
sufficient familiarity with the field and tasks of the museum. Additionally, the
act requires that a museum have at least two full-time museum professionals
who have an appropriate university degree and basic studies in museology.
One of them can be the director of the museum. A museum must also employ a
sufficient number of additional personnel (Finnish Museum Act 2020, unofficial
translation from Finnish).

Museum of Opportunities, the Museum Policy Programme 2030 of the Ministry

of Education and Culture, which was published in 2018, highlights the educa-
tion, knowledge and skills of museum professionals. The policy aims to staff
museums with multi-professional experts to guarantee excellence in museum
services. Museum professionals’ knowledge and skills can be developed through
the establishment of international mobility programmes, as well as continuing
and postgraduate education programmes; doctoral dissertations on museology
should also be encouraged. The status of museology, as a discipline, must be
guaranteed to provide new information to the developing museum sector (Mu-
seum of Opportunities 2018, p. 17, p. 19).

The Museoväki survey states that most museum employees have a university
degree. The survey was conducted by the FMA in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018 to
map museum employees’ educational backgrounds, age distribution, duties and
job satisfaction. The number of respondents in each of the four surveys ranged
from 700 to 900. The surveys showed that most museum employees have a degree
from an academic university or a university of applied sciences. Since 2003, the
proportion of employees with a university degree has increased, although the
number of doctoral or licentiate degree holders has remained relatively small.
The 2018 survey made it possible to choose more than one degree option, which
indicated that one museum professional could hold several university degrees. In
addition to this, museum professionals may also hold vocational qualifications
or college diplomas. All in all, the Museoväki survey showed the versatile back-
grounds of professionals working in Finnish museums (Museoväki 2018, p. 4).

According to museum experts, their job corresponds to their education, mostly

or at least in part. Museum professionals with an educational background in art
history, ethnology or history report the closest correspondence. As many as 75%
of art history graduates working in museums find their degree appropriate for
their job. The corresponding number was 73% for ethnology graduates and 69%
for history graduates. Among graduates from other disciplines, 49% of graduates
find their degree appropriate for their jobs. For example, 71% of conservation/
restoration graduates, 53% of archaeology graduates and 38% of science grad-
uates find that their degree corresponds with the job (Museoväki 2018, p. 5).

Those museum professionals who answered that their job corresponds to their
education slightly or not at all could develop their knowledge and skills by at-
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  157

tending continuing professional education. New knowledge and skills to apply

could also increase job satisfaction.

The Museoväki surveys have also asked about museum professionals’ studies in
museology. Museology courses for full-time students are available at the Univer-
sities of Helsinki, Turku, Tampere, Oulu and Jyväskylä. The Open Universities
in Helsinki, Turku (and its Pori Campus) and Jyväskylä also offer museology
courses. From 2005 to 2016 the FMA also provided its member organisations’
employees the opportunity to complete basic university-level studies in muse-
ology; the programme included onsite and remote teaching, as well as students’
independent study, and could be completed while employed. a total of 155 mu-
seum professionals have completed this course since 2005 (see also Vilkuna,
this volume).

Continuing Professional Education as a Means of Human

Resources Development in Museums
Finnish employees are frequent attendees of personnel training programmes.
The majority of adult education relates to the participant’s work or occupation.
In 2017, 1.2 million Finns – half of the Finnish workforce – participated in this
type of education. Statistics Finland states that more than half of adult education
and training programmes were organised with employers’ support. Approxi-
mately one million people – 53% of wage earners – participated in this type of
continuing professional education. In 2017, women were more involved than
men by 9% (Official Statistics of Finland: Participation in adult education 2017).

The Finnish Museums Association is the leading in-service trainer in the Finnish
museum sector and approximately 1 500 museum employees attend FMA training
sessions annually. Statistics Finland shows that 3 100 people were employed
by the museum sector in 2016 (Statistics Finland’s FOLK data, 2011–2016).

Next, I describe how the FMA’s continuing professional education operations

have reflected changes in museum work. Established in 1923, the FMA is a
national interest organisation for professionally-run museums. The association
has always provided instruction and development facilitation to museum pro-
fessionals. Historically, association representatives travelled to regional muse-
ums to show the staff how to run a museum and design or update exhibitions
(Vilkuna 1998, p. 38, pp. 53–55). Unless otherwise mentioned, a reference is
from an FMA training archive.

The FMA has a tradition of organising museum events that involve lectures,
debates and practical advice on running a museum. The first practical and the-
oretical courses for museum workers were organised in the late 1920s. During
the following decades the FMA arranged annual museum meetings, as well as
practical and theoretical courses for museum workers.

In the 1970s the number of courses increased steadily, from one event to several
events per year. The contents largely focused on the practical skills required
158 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

of a museum staff, but they also featured the research and professional skills
needed to develop expertise in the field. As an example of training topics in 1975,
the FMA organised educational opportunities: a course in museology in Turku,
a conference on museology in Kajaani, a course in serigraphy, a seminar on
museum lighting and a five-day ethnographic seminar on the popularisation of
cultural styles and fashions. An excursion to Rome exemplified how the trends of
museum work, e.g., exhibition design, could be observed at the international level.

Other themes in the 1970s involved museum safety, including burglary and fire
protection and safety planning. The association also organised the first long,
five-day course in exhibition design and technology, with practice in manuscript
writing and miniature construction for exhibitions. Other training sessions in-
volved the care and maintenance of artworks and textiles.

Several museum seminars involved discussions about collaboration between

museums. Another topic of discussion was the regional museum experiment
for cultural history museums. The reason for these topics was that in the 1970s
a national regional museum administrative plan was discussed, and a report of
the Regional Committee of the Museum Field was published in 1973 (see also
Vilkuna, this volume). An extensive seminar on copyrights was launched in
the late 1970s; the relevant lectures were compiled into a printed publication
Tekijänoikeus ja kuvapalvelukysymyksiä (1979).

In the early 1980s, the FMA began to play a more important role, as an organiser
of continuing professional education. To that end, the association hired a training
officer, whose tasks included the planning and implementation of continuing
professional education for museum employees with a university degree. Other
continuing professional education programmes were organised for trustees,
politicians and other decision-makers. The number of participants in the con-
tinuing professional education programmes remained steady at a few hundred
per year, until it rose in the mid-1990s, exceeding one thousand.

The first signs of information technology emerged in the 1980s. In 1981, the
Hanaholmen Cultural Centre was the seat of the first pan-Nordic photography
seminar. Notwithstanding its title, the seminar discussed automatic data pro-
cessing and retrieval systems for photographic material at museums. At the 1981
art museum seminar, Pori Art Museum presented its project on a computerised
registry of artworks; the seminar also discussed automatic data processing in
museums (Kinanen 2010, p. 75; Hakamies 2019).

The FMA even organised an excursion to Stockholm’s Nordiska Museet, where

participants learned about the museum’s automatic data processing system. The
excursion was also an opportunity to discuss the status of information technology
at Finnish museums and to engage in the nationwide planning of a joint data
register. Art museums have contributed actively to the introduction of informa-
tion technology in the museum sector, and art museum seminars featured such
themes as a pan-Nordic microfilming project and data registers of art collections.
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  159

Also in the 1980s, data system suppliers were invited to introduce data processing
systems at designated seminars. The art museum seminar in Jyväskylä discussed
the role of a central art museum and the art museums’ minimum files, based on
the report of the art museums’ Automatic Data Processing committee. In 1987, the
FMA’s training programme included the first basic five-day course in automatic
data processing for museum employees. In addition to basic knowledge about
automatic data processing, the course provided instruction in computerised
cataloguing, as well as an introduction to two collection data processing systems.
Two additional courses were organised in 1987 to provide museum professionals
with knowledge about information technology and related decision-making.

Basic courses in data processing were organised for several years. In 1988, FMA
engaged in a joint discussion about automatic data processing with its Nordic
colleagues; one of the topics was the situation regarding image storage. In the
late 1980s, a training programme in audio-visual technology and videos was
organised for museum amanuenses. Later in the decade, museum profession-
als developed their professional skills through extensive courses in exhibition
design and technology.

In the 1990s, information technology training continued. The main topics in-
cluded the most common brands of software for word processing, databases
and desktop publishing. A 1993 course in audio-visual technology included a
variety of topics: multimedia, hypermedia, image storage and processing, data
transfer and various storage media. Additionally, the contents involved such
future possibilities as the virtual museum and three-dimensional images. In
1994, the first Internet-focused continuing professional education event, titled
What is the Internet and how will it affect your work?, took place.

In 1996, the FMA launched a training programme related to the development of

the information society. The programme was part of The Finnish Information
Society, a nationwide development programme organised by the Ministry of
Education and Culture. The project to develop museum personnel’s information
regarding society-related competencies and museum services based on digital
materials, later titled An Information Strategy Training Programme, received a
designated allowance from the Ministry of Education and Culture until 2015. The
programme involved basic training in automatic data processing at museums
and the use and development of collection management systems. In 2014, one
of the courses organised by the association involved 3D printing.

The FMA’s first online learning environment for continuing professional educa-
tion programmes was a 2003 online course in museum safety. Two years later,
the association offered a study programme in museology worth 10 European
Credit Transfer System (ECTS) credits. In 2006, the FMA piloted the Tietoy-
hteiskunnan työntekijä (Information Society Professional) qualification for the
museum branch (worth 10 ECTS credits) by the Finnish Information Society
Development Centre.
160 Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession

In 2007, more online courses became available; the museology study programme
was extended to cover 25 ECTS credits, the equivalent of the basic studies in mu-
seology offered by Finnish universities. The same year, the association launched
an online course, worth 2 ECTS credits, in the basics of museum work; this
course was intended for new museum employees who lacked formal qualification.

Other study programmes organised by the association include courses in the

production of online learning services at museums, collection cataloguing and
the marketing of museums. Parts of the study programmes were implemented
in collaboration with, for example, the University of Helsinki’s Palmenia Centre
for Continuing Education. Presentation of recent dissertations is one way to
improve museum workers’ skills and knowledge; it is a method that has been
assessed as part of the FMA’s continuing education programme, in co-operation
with the University of Helsinki’s museology studies and the Open University.

Vocational Qualifications as Continuing Professional

Education
The development of museum management has been regarded as an integral
component of continuing education. The first museum management training
courses were already being organised in the early 1980s. Extensive adminis-
trative courses, targeted at museum managers and amanuenses, dealt with the
development of museums as work communities and the improvement of work
processes. Management development, as well as other continuing education in
the museum field, was undertaken in co-operation with Finnish universities’
continuing education centres. These management training sessions continued
into the 1990s. Finnish city college (Kaupunkiopisto) participated, for example,
in the organisation of a training course focused on goal orientation and the
estimation of profitability in museum work. In the late 1990s, the quality of
museum work became a subject of interest in training sessions. In the 2000s,
continuing education programmes also provided education in the management
of expert organisations.

Finally, in 2012, a more comprehensive museum management programme was

established, together with the school of management (Johtamistaidon Opisto,
JTO). The programme still exists, although mergers led the partner to change
its name to MIF: Management Institute of Finland. The museum management
programme is the first vocational competence-based qualification operating
as part of Finland’s official education system; it is customised for museum
managers and professionals who are preparing to assume managerial duties.
In the programme, participants complete a specialist vocational qualification
in business management and administration. Financing for the programme’s
contact instruction and competence demonstrations comes from the govern-
mental apprenticeship training system, which is probably one reason for the
programme’s popularity. The current management programme is the sixth of
its kind, and approximately 200 people have already graduated from it. The
FMA and MIF have also collaborated to establish a development programme
Section I – Museology and Museums as a Profession  161

for first-line managers, in which participants complete a specialist vocational

qualification in first-line management.

The FMA, in collaboration with the Rastor-instituutti, organises a vocation-

al qualification in business and administration. This programme, as well as
the specialist vocational qualification in product development provided by the
multidisciplinary educational institution Careeria, is also targeted specifically
at museum workers.

The requirements for the first vocational qualification for museum technicians
were completed in 2017. The museum field was strongly represented on the quali-
fications committee appointed by the Finnish National Agency for Education. The
first museum technicians to graduate from the new programme did so in 2019.

Conclusion
In the discussion about the transformation of museums and museum work and
about the museum of the future, issues under current debate are the competences,
skills and knowledge needed in museum professions. An integral part of this
discussion is ICOM’s museum definition, which will be revised in the 2020s.
The definition is essential to the museum community, because it represents a
document capable of defining museum operations, both nationally and inter-
nationally. Change in the operational environment of museums is constant. To
understand the meaning of this change in terms of competence requirements
is essential for museums and individual museum professionals, as well as for
organisers of basic education and continuing professional education.

More information regarding museum staff education is needed. Academic re-

search related to the museum sector has been conducted, for example, on mu-
seum work practices and the development of the profession. There is a huge
need for more research on museums, museum profession and professionals,
and co-operation with universities is crucial, especial with those universities
that teach museology.

References
Unpublished Sources

The Finnish Museums Association’s training archive.

Published Sources

Ailisto, H 2017 Digitalisaatio ja tekoäly muuttavat työtä. TEM

yrityskatsaus 1/2017. Available at [Link]
fi/bitstream/handle/10024/80139/TEM_6_oppaat_
Yrityskatsaus_1_2017_26062017_WEB.pdf [Last accessed 28 January
2020]
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Eteläpelto, A 2007 Työidentiteetti ja subjektius rakenteiden ja toimijuuden

ristiaallokossa. In Eteläpelto A, Collin K & Saarinen J. Työ, identiteetti
ja oppiminen. Porvoo: WSOY. pp. 90–142.

Eteläpelto A, Collin, K & Saarinen, J 2007 Työ, identiteetti ja

oppiminen. Porvoo: WSOY.

Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture 2018 Museum of Opportunities

– The Museum Policy Programme 2030 of the Ministry of Education
and Culture. DOI: [Link]

Finnish Museums Association 2018 Museoväkitutkimus.

DOI: [Link]
[Link]

Hakamies, I 2019 “Real Museum Work” and Information Technology –

Does not Compute!. Ethnologia Fennica, Vol 46. pp. 36–60. DOI:
[Link]

International Committee for Regional Museums and the International

Committee for the training of personnel 2011. In Legget, J (ed.). TAFF
and training in regional museums. Paris: ICOM. DOI: [Link]
org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/StaffAndTraining_WEB.pdf

International Council of Museums 2008 Museum Professions – A

European Frame of Reference. DOI: [Link]
uploads/2019/06/ICTOP-Museum-Profession_frame_of_
reference_2008.pdf

Kinanen, P 2010 Suomen museoliitto museokentän rakentajana. In

Pettersson S & Kinanen P (eds.). Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki:
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. pp. 72–93.

Kinnari, H 2013 Miten elinikäisestä oppimisesta puhutaan? Aikuiskasvatus

33(2). pp. 107–117.

Manninen, J & Meriläinen M 2015 Monimenetelmällinen näkökulma

omaehtoisen opiskelun hyötyihin. Aikuiskasvatus 35(2/2015). pp.
84–95.

Museum Act 2020/314. Issued in Helsinki, 15 March 2019.

DOI: [Link]

Museum Decree 2005/1192. Government decree on museums 1192/2005.

Issued in Helsinki, 22 December 2005.

DOI: [Link]

Museum Decree Amendment 456/2013. The Government decree 456/2013

on the amendment of the government decree on museums, section
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one. Issued in Helsinki, 19 December 2013. DOI: [Link]

fi/fi/laki/alkup/2013/20130456

Museum of Opportunities. The Museum Policy Programme 2030 of the

Ministry of Education and Culture. Publications of the Finnish
Ministry of Education and Culture 2018:13. DOI: [Link]
URN:ISBN:978-952-263-559-4

Pettersson S & Kinanen P (eds.) 2010 Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki:

Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Statistics Finland FOLK data 2011–2016. Available at [Link]

fi/tup/mikroaineistot/aineistot_en.html [Last accessed 28 January
2020]

Statistics Finland Official Statistics of Finland: Participation in adult

education [e-publication]. ISSN=2489–6918. 2017. Helsinki: Statistics
Finland.

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Tekijänoikeus ja kuvapalvelukysymyksiä 1979. Suomen museoliiton

julkaisuja 20. Helsinki: Suomen museoliitto.

Vilkuna J 1998 75 vuotta museoiden hyväksi – Suomen museoliitto 1923–

1998. Publications of the Finnish Museums Association 45. Vammala:
Suomen museoliitto.

Vilkuna J 2010 Museologia ja Suomen museot. In Pettersson S & Kinanen

P (eds.). Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden
Seura. pp. 332–346.
164
 165

Section II

Collection
Management
Leading to
Collection
Development
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development
166 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Collections and collection curatorship have always been at the core of museum
operations. Centuries of caretaking traditions have left us with collections that
offer concrete evidence and enrichment for our understanding of the future.
Traditionally, museums are responsible not only for the care and maintenance
of their objects and collections, but also for the dissemination of information
to the public. This work has always been fundamental to museum operations.
Recent decades have produced studies where such work has been under scrutiny
and some have even contested the need for collections. The pressure to justify
the existence and upkeep of collections, from technical, material and substance
perspectives, has been an issue for museum professionals (Conn 2010; Snell-
man 2016). Questions have been raised regarding the amount of care debt that
accumulates, and compromise seems to be a constant when it comes to practical
measures for collection care in museums. At the same time, in-depth knowledge
of collections has increased due to the increasing ways of collecting data for
cultural heritage. Due to various digital technologies, more unified collection
policies and the nation-wide division of collecting duties in Finland, known as
the TAKO Network, we now have more knowledge and a better understanding
of our shared cultural reserve than ever before.

The authors of this section are experts in the field of collection management
and collection care. They have used methods such as Significance Analysis (Rus-
sell & Winkworth 2001; Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2018) in their everyday
museum work, as well as in teaching future museum professionals. The Finn-
ish modification of the Australian Significance Anlaysis method is described in
detail in Leena Paaskoski, Sari Jantunen and Heikki Häyhä’s chapter. The role
of collections and the meaning of co-operation among various stakeholders
are discussed in their text, as well as how analysing the significance of museum
objects will transform the role of these objects from silent entities into cognitive
anchors. Furthermore, the need to be dynamic and take a collection development
approach, rather than restricting functions only to collection management and
maintenance, will be a crucial step in seeing significance in collections evolve.
Another tool for collection work is offered in Minna Sarantola-Weiss’ chapter,
which highlights the meaning of collection policies. In this work, one needs to
keep in mind the concept of cultural reserve, something that is not restricted
to museums. There are private homes and home or house museums, as well as
corporate collections, that house and maintain artefacts and artworks that can be
seen as part of the same cultural reserve. Liisa Oikari and Kristina Ranki make a
contribution to the category of house museums. In their chapter, special attention
is paid to the concept of a home museum, and how this distinction differentiates
highly personal and authentic homes from various historical houses. Teemu
Ahola’s chapter on the TAKO Network (Ammatillisten museoiden tallennus-
ja kokoelmayhteistyöverkosto/Contemporary documentation and nation-wide
division of collecting duties) is also a good example of the practical tools needed
for museums in order to intensify collection work, very much with the long term
in mind. Rapid technological advances have, for example, made 3D modelling
a viable tool, both to keep delicate archaeological objects preserved, but also
to improve accessibility and make objects more informative to the public (Roe
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  167

2014). This technology brings collections and collection work closer to audiences
in new and exciting ways, as described in Visa Immonen and Ismo Malinen’s
chapter on 3D modelling. They remind the reader that regardless of the chosen
technology, one should keep in mind the fast-changing environment of the in-
dustry and the need for close co-operation between the museum and technology
provider. Ultimately, this section highlights the meaning of collections for entire
societies, not only for museums, as seen in Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski’s chapter.
One needs to keep all collections in mind, regardless of their ownership, as well
as the importance of the cultural exchange between corporations and various
cultural institutions.

Heikki Häyhä, Sari Jantunen, Leena Paaskoski

How to be Dynamic – The potential of analysing significance in Finnish museum
collections

Minna Sarantola-Weiss
Collection Policy – Experiences and challenges

Liisa Oikari, Kristina Ranki

Home Museums – Biographical collections of significant lives

Teemu Ahola
The TAKO Network – Developing collections together

Visa Immonen, Ismo Malinen

3D Imaging in Museums

Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski
Between Private and Public – Corporate art collecting and collaboration with
art museums in Finland

References
Conn, S 2010 Do Museums Still Need Objects?. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.

Häyhä, H, Jantunen, S & Paaskoski, L 2018 Analysing Significance.

Helsinki: Publications of Finnish Museums Association No. 75.
Available at [Link]
[Link] [Last accessed 11 February 2020]

Roe, F 2014 Modernizing Millennia. 3D Models as Ethical

Progress in Museum Practice. Master’s Thesis, Lund
University. Available at [Link]
download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=4451700&fileOId=4465992
[Last accessed 11 February 2020]

Russell, R & Winkworth, K 2001 Significance 2.0: A guide to assessing

the significance of collections. Adelaide: Collections Council of
168 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Australia. Available at [Link]

museums-libraries-and-galleries/significance-20 [Last accessed 11
February 2020]

Snellman, A 2016 Olisiko jo aika tutkia esineitä? Kohti uutta

tutkimusparadigmaa. Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 3/2016, pp. 337–
338. Available at [Link]
[Link] [Last accessed 25 July 2019]
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  169

How to be Dynamic – The

potential of analysing
significance in Finnish museum
collections
Heikki Häyhä, Sari Jantunen and Leena Paaskoski

Abstract
This chapter discusses the meaning and museum value of collections as essen-
tial cultural resources of society, promoting the idea of dynamic collections
and collection development, as well as encouraging museum professionals to
implement the significance analysis method, Merkitysanalyysimenetelmä, as
an essential part of museum work. Discussing the origins of the Finnish Forest
Museum Lusto’s forest machine collection has led to an examination of the
challenges and compromises concerning two enormous PIKA50 processors from
the 1960s–1970s in the museum. The solution was achieved using the Australian
Significance method, which was first published in 2001 and the second version,
Significance 2.0, in 2009. Other examples of significance methods are the Brit-
ish (2010) and the Dutch methods (2014), which are also introduced in this
chapter. Encouraged and empowered by these examples, we set out to compile
a version that would fit for the Finnish museum sector. The Finnish method was
published in 2015 (in English 2019). The aim was to make a method that was
simple enough for a non-specialist to perform, with a clean presentation and
plenty of concrete examples. We argue that there is a great need for producing
better cultural heritage information connected to museum collections, which
form a living heritage and a dynamic resource in society.

Keywords: significance, dynamic, collections, cultural resource, sustainability

Creating Meaningful Collections

At the beginning of the 2000s Lusto, The Finnish Forest Museum, started to
collect large forest machines as part of its documenting work in the area of
Finnish forestry. There were no other professional museums collecting forest
machines – tractors, forwarders, processors and harvesters – or addressing the
significant history of mechanised forestry. It was recognised as an important
part of the story of forestry and the forest industry in Finland. Telling this story
needed proper evidence in the form of artefact collection (Anttila, Lehonkoski
& Paaskoski 2004; Karhunkorva & Paaskoski 2008a). The mechanisation of
Finnish forest work started already in the 1940s–1950s. First came chainsaws
for felling; tractors used in agriculture were soon introduced for transporting
170 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

and finally, from the 1960s onwards, developing forest machines started to sig-
nificantly change heavy and human-powered forest work. It was all part and a
continuum involving the great post-war intensifying project of Finnish forestry.
Finland had lost about 12% of its forest area as a war indemnity and was in the
middle of structural change. Forests and forestry played an important role in
recovering from the war, as there was a need to produce more, and much more
efficiently. It was also part of the modernisation of the Finnish society (Pakkanen
& Leikola 2010, pp. 303–308, pp. 384–387, pp. 319–331).

With the help of its stakeholders, Lusto collected 17 forest machines during
the years 2000–2010. Most were donated to the museum by Metsähallitus (a
state-owned enterprise responsible for the management of state-owned land
and water areas) and the former Jämsänkoski Forestry School (Karhunkorva &
Paaskoski 2008a, p. 10). There were many challenges for a museum collecting
large, mechanical and old artefacts such as these machines. On the one hand,
there was a need to present history from the first processor to modern solutions
in forestry, but without too many space-demanding machines in the collection.
On the other hand, many forest machines were demolished already, and the
museum was forced to choose from what was left in the field. There were thus
somewhat random objects left to be collected for a museum in Finland. This
inevitably led to a situation in the collection where some key objects were missing
(as there were none left in Finland) and some were duplicates (as the museum
later found a better example of a particular artefact). Another challenge was the
physical condition of the machines, which had not been used in a long time, and
that sometimes had been exposed to the elements for decades and sometimes
were over-restored with plenty of new paint. Finally, the third challenge had to
do with information, i.e., cultural heritage knowledge, as there was not always
enough information available to be able to create the rich metadata of a museum
object (Karhunkorva & Paaskoski 2008b). The forest machine collection put
together during those years can be seen as a museological compromise.

A museological compromise is often a part of museum work. It means balancing

between different viewpoints and criteria in collecting and valuing museum ob-
jects. Museum collections have had various tasks and aims throughout museum
and collection history. They have been sources for research, objects to be exhibited
and the tangible heritage of society, and have told various stories about both
the past and the present (Pettersson & Kinanen 2010). They are believed to tell
about society and human life, but they also tell us about museum professionals,
their visions and affections. Nonetheless, the cultural heritage information itself,
collected and connected to the objects, has not dramatically changed through-
out the course of museum history (Ekosaari 2009). In our cataloguing work in
Finnish museums, we still concentrate on describing the appearance of artefacts,
instead of pointing out their meanings and significance. Cataloguing is, in fact,
seen more as a technical process of recording than as a process of producing
content, meanings and stories (Museoiden luettelointiohje 2014, p. 9).
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  171

The need to produce better cultural heritage information and more meaningful
museum collections has arisen in many ways during the 2000s. For example,
participation, co-operation, the professional-amateur movement and the idea
of shared cultural heritage are all seen as means for creating dynamic collec-
tions. According to Peter van Mensch and Leontine Meijer-van Mensch (2015,
pp. 24–26), we should talk more about collection development than collection
management. At the same time, various methods for assessing significance have
been created around the world.

Lusto’s forest machine collection is partly the background of why we became

interested in Significance, an Australian method of assessing the significance
of cultural heritage objects and collections (Russell & Winkworth 2001). The
first efforts were made in 2011, when Lusto’s artefact collection curator Sari
Jantunen used the method in her short-term studies concerning museum work.
The class took place at the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences;
the method was introduced by teacher Heikki Häyhä. Sari used Significance to
assess a part of Lusto’s forest machine collection. The degree work, Kookkaita
koneita – Raskasta rautaa (Large Machines – Heavy Metal) (Jantunen 2011),
proved that the method was feasible and worth further examination. Next, in
2013, we started evaluating the museum value of the forest machine collection
in co-operation with Lusto and the students of Helsinki Metropolia University
of Applied Sciences’ Degree Programme in Conservation. One of the concrete
problems to be solved was that Lusto had two PIKA50 processors from the
1960s–1970s and, as they are enormous objects and expensive to preserve,
the museum had to choose the better one to be musealised and kept for future
generations. We successfully used the Australian Significance method in making
this deaccession decision for the other machine. The concepts of significance
analysis (merkitysanalyysi) and significance statement (merkityslausunto) were
collectively defined in Finnish with the Metropolia conservation students and
museum professionals at this time. Later on, we ended up working even more
with significance analysis.
172 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Figures 1. and 2. From left to right: The too-rigorously restored PIKA50 (V1M0607) was chosen to
be disposed of from Lusto. The authentic PIKA50 (dcs5297) was conserved and relocated to the
exhibition hall.

Examples of Significance Analyses Methods

Through the experience of analysing and evaluating Lusto’s forest machines in
2013, we considered the Australian Significance method inspiring, but it ap-
peared to need some developing to fit the particular needs of Finnish museums.
We started a project, Merkitykselliset museokokoelmat – Museo-objektien ja
-kokoelmien merkitysanalyysimenetelmän kehittäminen (Museum collections
of significance – Developing a significance analysis method for museum objects
and collections), funded by the Finnish Heritage Agency and carried out in
2014. In this project, we developed the criteria and certain concepts concerning
significance analysis, as well as making a method that was more flexible and
easier to use. Before we got to this point, there were several foreign examples
to be thoroughly investigated. In the following, we introduce the Australian,
British and Dutch methods for analysing significance, created from 2001 to 2014.

The Australian Method

Significance – A guide to assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects
and collections (Russell & Winkworth 2009) is based on the concept of the as-
sessment process and summary statement of significance that were developed
by the Australian National Committee of the International Council on Monu-
ments and Sites (Australia ICOMOS) in 1979, known as the Burra Charter. The
Method of Assessing Significance was therefore first used for the management
of places of cultural significance (Russell & Winkworth 2009, p. 4). The first
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  173

edition of Significance was published in Australia in 2001 by the Department of

Communications, Information Technology and the Arts through the Heritage
Collections Council (HCC) and the museum sector. Significance was created by
heritage consultant Roslyn Russell of the Australian Heritage Projects, along
with heritage consultant Kylie Winkworth (Russell & Winkworth 2001, pp. 7–9).
According to the publication, the project’s aim was to facilitate museums to
identify and preserve cultural heritage, help assess the significance of objects
in collections and provide a basis on which to set priorities, focus resources and
generally make solid collection management decisions.

The method was intended for all collecting institutions and for everyone working
with collections, and the process was to be applied to both single objects and
whole collections. The meaning and value of an object was to be defined by con-
sidering significance against a standard set of assessment criteria. The primary
criteria were historic, aesthetic, scientific, research or technical and social or
spiritual. The degree of significance was estimated using the following compar-
ative criteria: provenance, representativeness, rarity, condition, completeness
or intactness and integrity and interpretive potential. The completed process of
significance assessment was summarised in a statement of significance (Russell
& Winkworth 2001, pp. 7–12).

The step-by-step-process gave clear instructions on how to proceed and what

to do. Firstly, the executor was to compile all available details about an object
and its history, secondly, to research the history and provenance, as well as
talk with donors, users and relevant community members, and thirdly, to un-
derstand the context of the object. The fourth step was to analyse and record
how an object is manufactured, how it works and its condition. The fifth step
was to consider comparative examples of similar objects and the sixth step to
assess significance against the main criteria. The seventh step was to determine
the degree of significance by making an assessment based on the comparative
criteria. The final step was to write a statement on significance that explains
why the object is significant and what meanings and stories it carries (Russell
& Winkworth 2001, p. 20).

The second edition of the significance method, Significance 2.0, was released in
2009. The authors Roslyn Russell, Kylie Winkworth and the Collections Council
of Australia Ltd took into account the experience gathered with determining
significance in different collections settings – archives, galleries, libraries and
museums (Russell & Winkworth 2009, preface vi).

As a result, Significance 2.0 includes a greater emphasis on whole collections

and cross-collection applications, as well as the inclusion of criteria for assessing
national significance (Russell & Winkworth 2009, p. 1). The core of the method
remained unchanged, but the steps of assessing significance were refined. The
method now involved only five main steps: Analysing an item or collection, re-
searching its history, provenance and context, comparing it with similar items,
understanding its values by reference to the criteria and summarising its mean-
ings and values in a statement of significance. The assessment consisted of four
174 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

primary and four comparative criteria. The four primary criteria were historic,
artistic or aesthetic, scientific or research potential and social or spiritual. The
four comparative criteria were provenance, rarity or representativeness, condition
or completeness and interpretive capacity (Russell & Winkworth 2009, p. 10).

Looking at both the 2001 and 2009 versions of Significance, the refinement of
the latter was noticeable and welcomed. With the aid of the Australian method,
it was possible to apprehend the meaning of the studied object on a much deeper
level. The step-by-step process guided us in exploring aspects of the object that
one might have overlooked otherwise. Also, writing the Statement of Significance
forced one to crystallise ideas and discoveries into a solid form. Nonetheless, the
two-fold method and use of the English language made the Significance a little
too laborious to be even partially implemented into everyday use in Finland.

The British Method

The British method, Reviewing Significance 2.0 – A framework for assessing
museums collections’ significance, management and use, is a 2012 updated
version of the original Reviewing Significance framework that was published by
Caroline Reed, Museum and Heritage Consultant, together with Renaissance
East Midlands (REM), in 2010. The publication was inspired by the Australian
Significance 2.0 and University College London’s Collections Review Rubric
(Reed 2012, p. 2).

Like its Australian inspirer, Reviewing Significance 2.0 presented a method,

the Significance Assessment Process, which helps with assessing a museum
collection’s meaning and value, developing understanding of the use of collec-
tions and creating a basis for dynamic collection management. In addition, the
framework presented the Collections Review Process to help with comparing
collection management, care and documentation with usage, as well as several
grids, forms and data sheets as ready-to-use tools. The Significance Assessment
Process and the Collections Review Process were intended to be used either
together or separately (Reed 2012, p. 2). The Collections Review Process, a
score-based data analysis system, was not utilized in compiling the Finnish
method, Merkitysanalyysimenetelmä.

The Significance Assessment Process provides two tools: Significance Assessment

Grid and the Statement of Significance Template. The Significance Assessment
Grid presents a structured series of questions in tabular form. The questions are
grouped under six column headings and six row headings. The column headings
are: provenance/acquisition, rarity/uniqueness, visual & sensory impact, condi-
tion/completeness, historical meaning and exploitability. The row headings are:
key points, national/international, regional or cross-regional, locally specific,
community/group and organisationally or site specific (Reed 2012, p. 2).

The written answers to the questions presented in the Significance Assessment

Grid are then collected to the Statement of Significance Template. The bul-
let-pointed key observations are first summarised after each heading and finally
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  175

as an edited and ready-to-publish Statement of Significance. The Statement of

Significance template also has a separate section to indicate ideas of further
research and consultation (Reed 2012, pp. 6–7).

Reviewing Significance 2.0 had both pros and cons. The bullet-pointed key
observations in the Significance Assessment Grid made it easy to summarise
the meaning and value of the studied subject. The five different perspectives
– national/international, regional/cross-regional, locally specific, community/
group and organisationally or site specific – made it clear that the impact of
the object or collection probably is and should therefore always be considered
more widely than just from the museum’s perspective. Yet again, the use of the
English language and the way the method was presented made it quite difficult
to use for us Finns.

The Dutch Method

The Cultural Heritage Agency in the Netherlands has published a method of
Assessing Museum Collections in 2014, called Collection valuation in six steps.
The method makes distinctions among value, criteria and significance (Cultural
Heritage Agency 2014). They describe the concept of valuing in relation to her-
itage as making reasoned, verifiable statements about its value. This elucidates
the value assigned to heritage in order to guide the way in which museums
preserve, develop and use this heritage, as well as to engender public support
for it. According to the Cultural Heritage Agency, such valuation has been al-
most the exclusive preserve of professionals such as architects, historians and
curators, who tend to express valuation in scientific or culture historical terms.
As Laurajane Smith (2006, p. 30) writes: “Act as stewards for the past, so that
present and future publics may be properly educated and informed about its
significance.” The world is changing, however, as they state in the introduction
of the method – politically, economically and socially – and so is the way that
we view heritage and valuation. Ideas about who values heritage are also subject
to change.

According to the Dutch method, the value assigned to collections plays a key
role in three activities: use, preservation and development. The most interesting
activity is development, which, as they state, may increase through research.
This is an accepted reason why objects about which nothing or very little is
known are kept in a collection. It is very difficult to see who other than experts,
can conduct research, and this in our opinion rules out other stakeholders who
may also have an interest in value heritage.

The method introduces the concept of a reference framework. Does an item have
a high, medium or low value at the national, regional or local level, or within
an institution? What is the significance of an artwork in relation to the artist’s
complete oeuvre, or to other works from the same period, of the same style or
from the same region? This reference framework, in our opinion, exists only for
experts in the relevant field.
176 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

The Dutch method, despite its great ideas about who values heritage, doesn’t
really achieve its goals. We felt that to be successful the method should support
the creation of community identity by opening collections to new generations
and by honouring the effort of previous generations toward the common good.

This could be understood as increasing social inclusion, a concept that is men-

tioned many times in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Ac-
cording to Hilary Silver (2015, p. 3) social inclusion may refer to a process which
encourages social interaction among people who have very different socially
relevant attributes or to an impersonal institutional mechanism of opening up
access to participation in all spheres of social life.

Merkitysanalyysimenetelmä, i.e., Analysing Significance

– The Finnish method
Encouraged and empowered by these examples, we set out to compile a version
that would fit the Finnish museum sector. The aim was to make a method that was
simple enough for anyone to perform, through a clear presentation and plenty of
concrete examples. We also wanted to make sure that using the method would
be easily approachable and the end result individualised. The former chair of
ICOM Finland, Eero Ehanti, aptly describes this in his foreword of the English
version, Analysing Significance:

Having tested the method, I know that it works, and is fun to use. Easiness
is another important quality that deserves to be highlighted here. Why?
Because it is not the exclusive right of museum professionals to define
cultural heritage and establish its significances. It is a responsibility that
can and should be shared with communities and individuals to whom
cultural heritage essentially belongs, and who have unique insights into it.
This publication opens the door for better community involvement, which
is another excellent reason to spread it as widely as possible. (Ehanti, in
Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019, p. 5)

The Finnish method was modified on the basis of experiences and comments
that we received from a total of 60 museum professionals, stakeholders and
other persons who tested the method on a number of tangible and intangible
expressions of culture, objects and collections both inside and outside museums
(Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019, p. 6).

The method consists of selecting the object and perspective for analysis, justifying
these choices and determining what the goals are. Subsequently, those who will
carry out the analysis need to be found. This is then followed by familiarisation
with the object of analysis, the collection of information, contextualisation and
an assessment of the significance and meanings based on the chosen criteria.
The method concludes with the writing of a significance statement (Häyhä,
Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019, p. 8).
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  177

Figure 3. The process of the significance analyses method (Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019).

We did not want to dictate which implementation or presentation method would

be the most beneficial for analysts and interest groups, and therefore the most
fruitful for their analyses. Even though finding actors and interest groups may
be challenging, it would also be rewarding and would support participation
within and the transparency of museums. What would be a stimulating way to
process and express thoughts – a group discussion, communal writing assign-
ment, diagram, comic strip, video, etc.? It is also good to consider which method
would best convey the significance and meanings of the object to audiences. The
analysis requires a research-oriented approach, and its results always depend
on the interpretation by the performer(s) of the analysis. This is a continuous
process, open for later reassessments and new interpretations (Häyhä, Jantunen
& Paaskoski 2019, p. 9, p. 12).

It has to be kept in mind that the communal analysis of objects and collections
may yield conflicting interpretations. The objects and collections may have dif-
ferent significance and meanings to different actors. Their relationship with the
object of analysis varies, and this influences the results. Therefore, in accordance
with the principles of cultural studies, the party or parties who determine the
significance and meanings become visible in the process (Häyhä, Jantunen &
Paaskoski 2019, p. 9).

The Need for Richer Metadata and More Use of

Collections
Museum collections are an essential part of cultural heritage. They should be
dynamic and well-utilized resources for individuals, nations and societies (Mattila
178 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

2018, p. 21). With the help of cultural heritage, we can create deeper understand-
ings of cultural processes, change and time, as well as building identities and
having an impact on a sustainable future. Museum collections should, therefore,
be seen as a means for building a better world – and this where the concepts
of dynamic collections and collection development (van Mensch & Meijer-van
Mensch 2015, pp. 24–26) are needed. Dynamism means:

The collections are developed by means of acquisition and deaccession,

but also that existing collections and museum objects are reflected upon,
significance is attributed to them and they are contextualised repeatedly
and from new perspectives. The potential and utility value of collections
are highlighted. Significance analysis is a method for developing museums’
collection work and producing dynamic collections (Häyhä, Jantunen &
Paaskoski 2019, p. 10).

We argue that there is a great need for producing better cultural heritage infor-
mation connected to museum collections and to include it to our understanding
of what a museum object is, and what it is for. To improve the metadata we have
expressed in Analysing Significance that a museum object, first of all, should
be defined as:

Not only a physical object but a combination of selected information,

significance and meanings, as well as a tangible or intangible expression
of culture. A museum object has both a physical and cultural life cycle. An
object’s physical life starts when it is manufactured and ends when it is
destroyed. In the various phases of its cultural life cycle, the object man-
ifests itself as an idea, as an existing but not yet used object, as an object
with a usage history and finally, as an object that has been destroyed but
still exists in documents or memories. From the perspective of the cultural
life cycle, the significance and meanings relating to the object are essential.
A museum object’s purpose of use is almost always something else than
what it was originally designed for. For example, it works as a piece of
evidence and source, conveys information and meanings and produces
identities, experiences and well-being. A museum object’s authority as
evidence is guaranteed by its genuineness; authenticity strengthens the
“power of the genuine object”, on which the relationship with the viewer
or user is often built. (Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019, p. 10)

Developing collections’ use has been emphasised in the new Finnish museum
policy programme Opportunities in the Museum Sector (Mattila 2018). Museums
need better metadata to be able to use and get more use for their collections. In
recent decades there has been very little discussion about the information con-
tents and cultural heritage information included in museum collections. Instead,
the computerisation of Finnish museums since the 1980s–1990s has created a
constant negotiation regarding technical cataloguing. We know very well how to
catalogue, but not so well what to catalogue. The significance analysis method is
an attempt towards establishing more dynamic museum collections in Finland.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  179

Examples of Using the Significance Analysis Method

In the following, we introduce a few examples of using the significance analyses
method in museums, together with the audiences and stakeholders of museums.
Our examples are from the Finnish Forest Museum Lusto, the Craft Museum
of Finland and collaborative project involving the Kerava Art Museum and the
Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

A few years after the significance analysis method was launched in the Finnish
museum sector, we found ourselves keen to make the most of it, trying to figure
out how to get museums to actually implement it. The good news was that all
the museum professionals and museums’ stakeholders who had been testing
the method seemed to have found it useful, innovative, inspiring and worth-
while. What made the method less compelling for the museum professionals
was all the cataloguing necessary, regarding millions of museum objects and
not enough time. Using the method as part of everyday work seemed to be too
time-consuming. There was also the question of “proper museum work”. Proper
museum work is still talked about in the museum sector and it includes more or
less practices connected to collections. Cataloguing is one of them (Hakamies
2017, pp. 148–149; Hakamies 2019, pp. 42–43). As long as significance analysis
is not seen as proper museum work but as some new, extra practice, it will not
become mainstream.

We believe that significance analysis methods in Finland and abroad will be-
come proper museum work and help creating dynamic collections, catering to
the needs of individuals and societies. There have been several inspiring and
encouraging examples of this already.

In the collection management of the Finnish Forest Museum Lusto, the sig-
nificance criteria have been used for defining and determining the museum
value of an object since 2015. This is needed when deciding on acquisition and
deaccession or doing value classification. The aim is to more deeply integrate sig-
nificance analysis into the various collection management processes (Collection
Management Policy of The Finnish Forest Museum Lusto 2015). As part of its
participatory museum work, Lusto has also used the method successfully with
its stakeholders, for example when documenting and evaluating the significance
of the forest workers’ Hiace van. The group of forest workers analysed their van
themselves and found the most essential and relevant museum values during
their analysis (Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2019, pp. 20–21).

The Craft Museum of Finland has decided to implement the method of Analysing
Significance as an essential part of its work, especially involving the acquisition
process (The Collection Management Policy of Craft museum of Finland 2018, p.
40). Questions that can produce the most expressive answers have been chosen
from the method and changed into simplified language. The questions are then
handed out to those who plan to a make a donation to the museum. The idea is
that the donor will be able to tell the story of the object or objects as fully as they
possibly can, without having to understand the language that museum profes-
180 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

sionals use. At the same time, they are hopefully guided to an understanding that
what cultural heritage museums wish to collect and preserve is much more than
mere artefacts. For museum professionals the answers, which will be speed-read
through the Analysing Significance criteria, will offer an easier and faster way to
form a clear vision of the object’s significance, as well as to highlight the issues
that speak for or against the acquisition. Asking donors to participate this way
also complements the method’s communal nature.

In 2013 the Kerava Art Museum and the Helsinki Metropolia University of
Applied Sciences launched a pedagogical conservation project to restore the
Sirkusmuistomerkki sculpture by artists Heikki Häiväoja and Antero Poppius
(1979). This sculpture consisted of five almost life-size fibre-glass horses, which
formed a circus monument in the centre of Kerava city (Kauppinen & Häyhä
2015, pp. 134–141). The project partners wanted to share this journey of care-
taking with the people of Kerava. The aim was to raise awareness and increase
knowledge of the circus monument, to lift the curtain of museum work and allow
people to participate in the future of their beloved monument. The Significance
2.0 analysis was used as a key to unlock the meaning of the monument, and to
study its intangible elements. This significance assessment was a collaborative
and transparent process and it took into account that the circus monument
may hold different meanings and values for different groups and individuals. A
class of school children were at the core of this project. They were following the
process from the beginning, working with the conservation students involved.

The children were given the task of spreading knowledge about the project. They
expressed their thoughts and shared their knowledge with the project group and
a wider audience through a blog. They also made a short film that was shown in
every elementary school in Kerava. Alongside the children’s project the project,
group also invited people to participate in different ways. They asked people to
contribute to this project by sharing their memories and stories of the monument.

According to the consultations carried out in Kerava, it seemed clear that through
functionality the circus horses had made their way into the lives and memories
of the people. They played a significant role in childhood memories. Accord-
ing to the memories collected and interviews conducted, functionality was the
most important value for the community. Functionality was then chosen as the
ideal state of the monument. Ideal state, a concept from conservator Barbara
Appelbaum (2007, pp. 173–193), is very useful in defining a realistic goal for
the conservation-restoration process. Ideal state is always a real historical state.
Functionality also preserved the cultural practice and meaning of the monument.

What did the project group gain by making the process transparent instead of
just conducting it behind closed doors? It was able to show that conservation
is a process that does not happen overnight and one that involves decisions.
The group wanted to show that both tangible and intangible aspects should be
studied carefully before decisions are made. The group was also able to share
knowledge of local history with a new public. But maybe most importantly in
the project, a sense of engagement with the community was gained. The project
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  181

group was able to demonstrate that public space, in this case public art, creates
private memories and experiences that are beyond the creators’ intentions, and
that those experiences are of value.

In the course Significance Analysis as an Interpretation Method arranged by

the University of Helsinki and Helsinki Open University in 2019, around 20
students studied and analysed artefacts from various museums’ collections.
The museums, in co-operation, offered the students chosen objects and their
own museum expertise for doing the analyses. The results – 14 comprehensive
significance analysis works and statements provided to the museums – were real
research and fantastic summaries of history, cultural meanings and interpreta-
tions of these objects. The objects analysed during this course showed interesting
views and became part of a larger context, what Renatas Berniūnas and Janusz
Barański call “cognitive anchors” (Berniūnas 2009, pp. 167−171) and “material
medias” (Barański 2012, p. 88). This is how a museum object, at its best, works.

As these examples show, the significance analysis method has been very use-
ful, in co-operation among museums and universities, as it offers a new way
to study museum collections and find meanings and significance connected to
physical objects. It also creates research that is highly relevant for museums,
universities and students.

Significant Museum Collections of the Future

Today, the problem of Lusto’s two PIKA50 processors has been resolved. Even
though the significance analysis process helped us to make our decision, it took
several years to prepare for the actual disposal of the duplicate object. The PIKA50
machine with new paint and only a little contextual information has since 2008
been part of Lusto’s basic exhibition. The conservation of the PIKA50 with high
museum value (notable significance, rich metadata and original, albeit poor
condition) is now finished and the other machine with lower museum value was
sold in Autumn 2019 to a local heritage village. The next steps are to replace the
processor in the exhibition and transport the disposed object to its new home.

Collection work has always been seen as the heart or foundation of a muse-
um. It has also been one of the most time-consuming areas of museum work.
Throughout the years of professional museum work, museum professionals have
concentrated on collecting, documenting, cataloguing, managing, describing,
digitizing, preserving and conserving museum collections. Today, the use of
museum collections is becoming probably the most central question, as 5.6
million artefacts, 346 000 artworks, 15.9 million specimen of nature, and 24.1
million photographs, among other things, are preserved in Finnish museum
collections (Museotilasto 2019). These items are needed as a living heritage and
dynamic resource in society, and they help us to understand ourselves, the past
and the present, as well as creating a more sustainable future. The collections
will, however, act as such only if they are studied, analysed and given significance.
182 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

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Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  185

Collection Policy – Experiences

and challenges
Minna Sarantola-Weiss

Abstract
This chapter describes the phases of collection policy thinking in cultural-histori-
cal museums in Finland. I explore collections policy as a process that is constantly
changing in relation to a museum’s own operational environment and to national
and international developments. In the 2020s, the challenges will be collected
under the umbrella term of sustainable development. The collections should
be sustainable from the environmental, economic and cultural points of view.

Keywords: dynamic collections, sustainable collections, material culture and

digitalisation

Helsinki City Museum in 2021, founded in 1911, 62 permanent employees.

Collections include approximately 450,000 cultural-historical objects,

more than a million photographs and approximately 6,000 pieces of art.

Awards: Museum of the Year 2017 Finland, Winner of the Museums +

Heritage International Award 2017, European Museum of the Year 2018
Special Commendation.

Introduction
According to the national Museum Statistics annual data from 2018, the object
collections of Finland’s cultural-historical museums included approximately 5.6
million objects, while the total accession in 2018 was 59,000 objects. The col-
lections included approximately 23.6 million photographs, with the photograph
accession for the year being 373,000. Helsinki City Museum housed approxi-
mately 450,000 objects and a million photographs. The size of the collection
and all related management responsibilities are considered huge, and museums
need tools and strategic thinking to accomplish this task. A common tool used
for this purpose in the 21st century has been a collections policy document, in
which a museum defines its collection mission and describes the core contents
of its collections. In an ideal situation, the document describes what will be col-
lected in relation to the collection mission, and it also includes policies related to
collection care and use. The identity of most museums and the services targeted
at their clientele is based on a museums’ own collections, so the collections
policy document can be regarded as the most important document that guides
a museum’s long-term operation, alongside the museum’s memorandum and
articles of association.
186 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

A collections policy is not only a document that describes goals related to strat-
egy and content. It should also be an everyday tool that describes how muse-
ums should organise their collections management so that their strategic goals
can be achieved. Museum consultant Freda Matassa (2011) divides collections
management into collection acquisitions, documenting collection information
and information management, collection storage, exhibition use, mobility and
access. The Finnish Checklist for Museum Collections Management Policy
(Ekosaari et al. 2013 & 2014), has largely the same basis but focuses more on
the importance of defining a museum’s collection mission as the basis for all
collections management. Many collections policy documents include a section
that resembles a handbook, and work instructions are sometimes made into a
separate instruction manual.

My chapter is not a guide for creating a collections policy. Instead, I describe the
phases of collections policy thinking in cultural-historical museums and how
the discussion around collections policy has affected collections management. I
explore collections policy as a process that is constantly changing in relation to
a museum’s own operational environment and the museum industry’s national
and international developments. I also look to the future and examine which
questions collections management will face in the 2020s and what tools we
have acquired throughout the years1. Helsinki City Museum’s collections policy
process acts as a concrete example for this chapter. As the museum is in charge
of regional matters in the Helsinki metropolitan area, our task is to also support
our region’s museums in developing and documenting their collections policy.

The Legal Framework

The Finnish museum field has developed while interacting with the international
field. ICOM’s Code of Ethics for Museums, in particular, is extensively considered
in the development and guidance work of museums. This applies to collections
policy as well. ICOM began outlining the ethical principles of museum profes-
sions very early and published the Ethics of Acquisitions recommendation in
1970, which outlined the ethical accessioning of collections, but it was not until
the 1986 Code of Ethics that the creation and publication of a written policy
was required. In Finland, the Act on the Statutory State Aid and Subsidies of
Museums (Laki museoiden valtionosuuksista- ja avustuksista) (1146/1988) was
established in 1988, and the requirements for receiving statutory state aid were
considered to be the careful storage and appropriate cataloguing of objects and
archival material owned by a museum. The Museums Act of 1992 (729/1992)
required museums to collect and store material and visual cultural heritage for
future generations in accordance with ICOM’s ethical guidelines. For the same
purpose, museums were required – again, in accordance with ICOM’s instruc-
tions – to practice collection research, education and information dissemination,

1. I am grateful to my colleagues Elina Kallio, Tiina Merisalo, Tuomas Myrén, Aki Pohjankyrö, Eero
Salmio, Satu Savia and Tommi Uutela for sharing their knowledge and experience.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  187

as well as exhibition and publication. No definitions were created for operations

or written instructions given related to collecting and storage.

The 2005 Museums Decree defined a long-term operational and financial plan as
a requirement for receiving statutory state aid. A part of these plans was a plan
for how museums organise the displaying, collecting, accessioning and storing of
collections. The basis was the Museo 2000 (Museum 2000) commission’s view
that all museums require a collections policy programme, in order to improve
the management of their collections (Museo 2000, p. 53, p. 58). This marked
the beginning of collections policy documents for many Finnish museums. As
an example, the first collections policy document for the National Museum of
Finland was published in 2009. Nevertheless, the new Museums Act of 2019
was the first law to state explicitly that museums receiving statutory state aid
required both collections and a collections policy programme. Helsinki City
Museum was slightly ahead of many others, since its first collections policy
document was completed in 2003.

The Beginning of the Helsinki City Museum Collections

Policy Process
The history of the City Museum’s collections goes back to 1787, when the bass
drums, horns and standard that belonged to the city’s disbanded cavalry unit
were collected.2 The members of the bourgeoisie who led Helsinki at the time
must have had their reasons to preserve these specific objects, even though
no documentation of those reasons remains. We can consider their collecting
to be a part of the general identity project of the rising European bourgeoisie
class. Weapons and musical instruments were typical collectibles, already in
the collections of Renaissance nobility, and flags and standards were valued as
spoils of war and signs of victory.

The first written form of the City Museum’s collection mission is the task given
to the Antiquities Board of Helsinki in 1906, i.e., documenting a disappearing
Helsinki. The City Museum was founded in 1911 to continue the Antiquities
Board’s work with the task of “collecting objects that are ideal for illustrating the
city’s history, its appearance and its societal life” (Kertomus Helsingin kaupungin
kunnallishallinnosta 24, 1911, p. 230). In other words, the view of what should
be collected for the City Museum’s collections has existed since its founding,
even if the matter was not conceptualised as a collections policy per se.

In 2000, Helsinki turned 450 years old and was named the European Capital
of Culture. After the City Museum had accomplished this Herculean task, it was
time to focus on developing collections management. Many factors incentivised
development. Firstly, Helsinki’s city administration adopted a results-based
management model from the business world. The model emphasised strategic
thinking and measuring operations. A mission and vision were also defined

2. Helsinki City Archives, Maistraatin pöytäkirjat Ca:93. 3. maalisk. 1787, § 5. pp. 14–149.
188 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

for the City Museum as one of the city organisation’s actors (Helsingin kau-
punginmuseon kokoelmien historia 2002, p. 2). Secondly, the museum’s own
museological thinking developed in the same direction as part of the internal
professionalisation process, together with the museum field. By chance, the
City Museum of Stockholm explored the collection collections management
goals of other Nordic capital museums during this time (Sigurdsson 2001), and
discussions during this process inspired colleagues in Helsinki to study their
own collections more analytically.

The work was aided by the storage room’s basic renovation and a desire to direct
resources from accepting donations toward museum-led documentation projects
(Helsingin kaupunginmuseon kokoelmastrategia 2003, p. 2). The undertaking
was characterised by the difficulties involved in pioneering work. There were
no real domestic models, which was one additional reason why Stockholm’s
report was so welcome.

Work had to begin from scratch. The first task was to describe what the museum’s
collections actually included. Information on the collections’ specific contents
was largely based on employees’ personal skills and tacit knowledge, because the
information was – as was the case with almost all other museums – primarily
recorded in manual record books and files. Moreover, cataloguing was behind
in accessioning, despite the fact that the first IT-based relational database was
implemented in 1991 (Toimintakertomus 1991). Information on the contents
and goals materialised as accessioning and everyday practices, and was retained
as an oral tradition whose interpretation depended on the new generation of
museum employees.

The analysis demonstrated that the personality and interests of the Museum
Director had a significant impact on the collections’ acquisitions until the be-
ginning of the 1980s. Directors made decisions on which objects to purchase
for the collections and purchased objects themselves. Later, as the museum
grew, curators began to play a larger role. A survey conducted as background for
the history project revealed, however, that curators either lacked the necessary
skills or were unwilling to analyse the reasons for their decisions. Instead, they
spoke of “an intuitive recognition skill” (Helsingin kaupunginmuseon kokoel-
mastrategia 2003, p. 39). That said, there was a unanimous view of the goal,
which was “a collection of objects that is as varied and comprehensive as possible
and describes Helsinki and the people of Helsinki” (Kokoelmastrategia 2003, p.
38). In other words, the process of adding to collections had followed the mis-
sion given during the founding phase at the beginning of the 20th century, even
though there were no written or public instructions. The insufficient cataloguing
made accessioning difficult in the present, because people felt that there was no
comprehensive understanding of the collections.

The City Museum’s first real collections strategy was completed as part of the
process in 2003. It began ambitiously with the definition of Helsinki’s city iden-
tity. According to the strategy, the identity’s elements were being a city by the
sea, the city’s position as a capital city and being European – all themes that
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  189

are still present in the Helsinki City Strategy. The collections were examined in
relation to the identity’s different elements. One central observation was that
the object collection placed more emphasis on private life and women’s lives,
whereas the photograph collection focused more on public spaces. Another
observation was that the collections as a whole emphasised the inner city. It
was noted that these factors caused many of the city’s residents to be excluded
from the collections. Much thought was given to what it meant to identify as a
Helsinki resident, but the museum’s relation to legislation or the Helsinki City
Strategy was not mentioned at all. Instead, borders were defined between the
Helsinki City Museum and other museums in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
The aim was not only to limit the museum’s acquisitions but also to improve
co-operation. The museum’s own primary processes received descriptions, which
was possible because the city had recently adopted a process description prac-
tice. Contemporary collecting was mentioned referentially, but the matter had
clearly been considered:

We must assess which contemporary trends will be given more significance

and become permanent fixtures of city life. If these trends are added to
collections, the reasons for adding them should primarily be based on
the impact of the trend in Helsinki instead of how hot the trend is. (Hel-
singin kaupunginmuseon kokoelmastrategia 2003, p. 48, translated by
the author)

The document also notes that the museum should represent other realities besides
those of the museum’s employees and most typical customers, but no means to
accomplish this or concrete goals were defined. The document also discovered
deficiencies and development needs. Online publication was not yet possible
in 2003, and the document was not published in any other form either, so it
was only available for the museum’s internal use. In fact, the internal nature
of the document is one of its notable features. There are no mentions of any
stakeholders, external users, citizens or financiers.

The collections strategy was updated rather quickly in 2007, and it was called
The Collections Policy Programme. This time, the incentive came from legisla-
tors. The Museums Act of 2005 required museums receiving statutory state aid
to have a comprehensive long-term plan. The previous document consisted of
56 sheets of A4 paper. The new document was comprised of only 12 sheets and
contained many references to previous processes and the history of the collec-
tions. It was easy to build on earlier work, and the new document proved that
collection thinking and work had developed. The collections strategy of 2003
was mostly descriptive, whereas the 2007 version included more strategical-
ly-minded writing. The document defined customers, citizens and the research
community, and named the owner of the collections, i.e., the City of Helsinki.
The document also set a goal for collections policy work – defining the future
of the collections’ content and care. The guiding principles according to the
document were the museum’s mission and operational plan, which meant that
collections management was redefined as a part of the museum’s comprehensive
190 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

operation. The museum’s first collection inventory began with this collections
policy update. In addition, the document made visible the serious problem of
objects without inventory numbers, which had previously gone largely unmen-
tioned. The accessibility and mobility of collections were mentioned for the
first time, which indicated that museological discussions and suggestions were
being followed. The digital world had also developed. Transferring collection
information online was set as a goal, and the new collections policy programme
could be published on the museum’s website.

Toward Dynamic Museum Collections

The goals written in the 2007 collections policy document were goals of their time.
Similar objectives were present in both national and international discussions,
and there was even talk of reinventing the museum as an institute (Anderson
2004). The period was also an eventful period for collections management, and
the development of digital technology facilitated networking and made collection
information more easily accessible. Common topics at the beginning of the cen-
tury included the uncontrollably growing museum collections, collection bulimia
and the hoarding of collections, with museums becoming more aware of the fact
that resources were limited. In England and the Netherlands, discussion about
the costs of collections management began at the end of the 1980s, and in Fin-
land, the depression in the 1990s had made the vulnerability of public funding
painfully obvious. The remedy offered was the concept of dynamic collections,
which was launched by many parties (van Mensch & Meijer-van Mensch 2011,
p. 19, p. 20). The idea at the core of the concept was that collections are not
static, given entities; rather, they are entities whose contents and significance can
change from time to time, with collecting and deaccessioning being two sides of
the same coin. Considering the significance of new and existing collections was
seen as important. The first version of the significance method was launched in
Australia in 2001. There was also discussion of potentially increasing the use and
shared ownership of collections, and the Collections Mobility 2.0. Lending for
Europe 21st Century project was conducted between 2001 and 2010. The aim of
the project was to increase the mobility and shared use of museum collections
within the European Union (Petersson et al. 2010). ICOM also established a
new committee focused on the development of collections (the Committee for
Collecting; COMCOL) in 2010. Other megatrends in the museum world included
the participation of customers and communities, which had been established as
an idea as early as in the 1970s, but did not get much wind in its sails until the
2010s. The position of experts was challenged, and museums began searching
for an active role for the audience as partners and experts in both acquisitions, as
well as in interpreting the significance of existing collections. COMCOL created
a new, visible forum for skills and thinking related to these matters.

There was also much activity around these questions in Finland. In 2011, led
by the Finnish Heritage Agency, the Finnish National Gallery and the Finnish
Museums Association, the Museum 2015 project began. During their project,
cataloguing instructions based on the SPECTRUM standard were created. Ad-
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  191

ditionally, the project implemented a collection management system that all

museums could choose to use. The aim was to develop the management of
collections and the accessibility of collection information widely throughout
the entire museum field, and to find solutions to challenges related to electronic
bodies of work. Museum 2015 wished to steer museums’ activities away from
each museum’s internal needs toward common practices, where different collec-
tions and their objects would be accessible to users, regardless of their original
source. This unification of practices was supported by the Checklist for Museum
Collections Management Policy publication. The checklist was complemented by
the Finnish version of the significance analysis method (2015), which museums
could use to deepen their understanding of their collections’ museum value and
significance (see also Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski, this volume).

One matter that was crucially important for the dissemination and accessibil-
ity of electronic bodies of work, and one that strongly steered the guidelines
of collections policy, was the Finna service. It opened in 2013 and is the cus-
tomer interface of the National Digital Library. Through Finna, the public has
constantly-expanding access to the cultural heritage information of libraries,
museums and archives.

From the perspective of collections policy, the TAKO Network played an impor-
tant role. The network significantly improved the transparency of collections
management and increased the exchange of knowledge and skills related to
collections management. Museums in the TAKO Network can accession their
collections in a controlled manner and avoid overlapping work, based on the
framework defined by the agreement on collaboration among Finnish museums
in accessions and collections. Teemu Ahola examines the TAKO Network in more
detail in this publication, but the network’s significance cannot be exaggerated
when writing about the collections policy of Finnish museums. Museologist
Simon Knell argued in 2004 that the collections policy documents of museums
often look inward, focusing only on their own collections, and that the documents
do not sufficiently account for either development and future outlooks or the
relation between a museum’s collection and the rest of the museum field. With
TAKO, such navel-gazing in collections policy has been considerably reduced
in Finland.

Besides TAKO, the development of collections management in the 2010s also in-
vested in other projects that unified operations in the museum field and provided
tools for collections policy work. Even the Museo 2000 Commission recognised
the need to limit collections and accessioning and proposed that museum col-
lections should implement a classification system based on the museum value of
objects. This classification system also included the possibility of deaccessioning
(Museo 2000, p. 16, p. 54). Museums took up the challenge at very different
times. Tampere Museums were trailblazers who had already implemented a
classification system for their collections in 1994. Action was truly finally taken
with the Kokoelmapoistojen hyvät käytännöt (Good practices for deaccessioning)
project between 2014 and 2016. In the project, six museums created a proposal
192 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

for a national deaccessioning process (Sarantola-Weiss & Västi 2016). In this

sense, the attitude of Finnish museums towards deaccessioning has followed
European developments. In the early 2000s, many museum professionals still
considered deaccessioning unethical. Now, the scales have tipped in such a
way that not deaccessioning is generally seen as equally unethical, although
that is not the case everywhere. Museologist Dieuwertje Wijsmuller (2017) has
charted the attitude that EU countries have towards deaccessioning, and has
stated that almost all countries have legislation related to deaccessioning, na-
tional instructions or best practices developed by museums themselves, but
there are still differences in whether collection management aims to produce
dynamic collections or preserve the material cultural heritage that museums
control as perfectly as possible. In Finland, as in other Nordic countries, the
idea of dynamic collections is widely shared, and museums have implemented
collection classification tools related to it. Furthermore, they have started to
perform significance analyses and have begun deaccessioning processes. The
national museum statistics began tracking deaccessioning for the first time in
2016. Between 2016 and 2018, cultural-historical collections had deaccessioned
a total of 14,295 objects documented on Museum Statistics, which amounts to
an insignificant 0.2% of the collections’ total number of objects.

All projects described above were characterised by their network structure. Dif-
ferent museums participated in the development projects, while the Finnish
Museums Association, the Heritage Agency and the Ministry of Education and
Culture worked as a steering group, publisher of the final report and inves-
tor. The substance of the projects was produced by museum professionals. The
structure made the field’s voice heard and helped to implement developmental
thinking. In the 2010s, collections changed from being a private matter of in-
dividual museums to being part of a shared, professionally-developed national
cultural heritage. The work done together culminated in the Ministry of Educa-
tion and Culture’s 2018 programme, Mahdollisuuksien museo (Opportunities
in the Museum Sector) (Mattila 2018). The programme emphasised planning
in collections management and collections as a resource for communities and
society. Mahdollisuuksien museo – and all national collections policy steering
and development work, in fact – was penetrated with the idea that it should be
possible to prioritise and classify all kinds of museum collections.

Good Work is Rewarded

Helsinki City Museum also enjoyed the benefits of networking. The museum
actively participated in founding the TAKO Network and in the deaccessioning
project. The agreement on national collaboration in accessions and collections
was made with the Finnish Heritage Agency in 2013. The deaccessioning project
brought much-needed support from colleagues to the discussion regarding the
ethics and practices of deaccessioning. Deaccessioning had already been docu-
mented as a collections management tool in 2000, but in 2014, the leasing periods
for collection centres were ending and inventories as well as deaccessioning had
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  193

to be conducted on a large scale. Active participation in COMCOL’s operation

brought an international perspective to the proceedings.

All the development work and networking were visible in the City Museum’s next
collections policy programme, which was completed in 2014 and continued until
2019. Like many other museums, the basis for the City Museum’s programme
was the Checklist for Museum Collections Management Policy, which introduced
the concept of collection mission to the document. The concept encompassed
the somewhat disorganised concepts of city identity and collections history from
previous documents. Compared to the earlier documents, the new document was
generally characterised by more accurate terminology and a broad view of the
different perspectives of collection care, from developing spaces to attempting
to assess the economic impacts of collections management. Another new feature
was that the idea of customer perspective was included in the document.

The City Museum got new premises in 2016. The move made it possible to renew
the museum’s strategy, as well as our understanding of our audience and of who
we want to reach. Customer thinking and inclusive practices had internationally
permeated museological thinking, and the City Museum was on the cutting edge.
The results of this work were encapsulated in the new vision: “Everyone has the
opportunity to fall in love with Helsinki”.

With new legislation, updating the collections policy became a topical issue
again in 2019 as part of the statutory state aid system reform. The update pro-
vided a good reason for looking both backward and forward. One delightful note
was that the museum’s own collection workers considered the 2014 collections
policy document a helpful tool. The document helped in recognising areas that
had improved, and it was used in customer communication and even as a tool
in recruiting.

I believe that there is good reason to say that the City Museum’s collections
are well under control as we enter the 2020s. Collections management has
taken a huge leap in 15 years, and there were developmental tools that museum
workers could only dream of in 2003, i.e., the main body of object and archive
collections was kept in one collection centre in appropriate conditions. Col-
lections were processed as dynamic entities whose accessioning was carefully
considered and limited, and both collection inventories and deaccessioning were
constantly performed. Contemporary collecting was done regularly, and the
targets of documentation were usually selected through national discussions or
as part of university collaboration. The TAKO collaboration established clear
boundaries with other museums and enabled an active, collegial discussion.
Overall, the museum was no longer an introverted, autonomous actor that was
detached from others. Instead, collections management was conducted while
actively interacting with the operational environment. As an example, the Hel-
sinki City Strategy, i.e., the strategy of the museum’s owner community, had a
much more visible impact on collections management than it did before. This
can be interpreted as having less freedom, but committing to the Helsinki City
194 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Strategy also clearly helped in both defining the borders of our own operation
and in budget negotiations.

All in all, the development of the City Museum’s collections management reflected
the general professionalisation of museum work from both a management and
accessioning standpoint. The museum’s directors – regardless of their gender
– long represented the tradition of gentlemen collectors, where the views and
tastes of individual connoisseurs were deciding factors and where accession
procedures were not central to operations. This attitude, in turn, was reflected
in collection workers as the museum expanded. In the 21st century, accessioning
was no longer based on the intuition of individual experts, but rather on collection
responsibilities and collegial decisions, and there was strong commitment to
collection procedures. The founding-phase documentation regarding collecting
the city’s history, face and societal life continued to steer the collection mission.
We have considerably developed in the strategic thinking heralded by Simon
Knell (2004, p. 14), and our understanding of our own collections, as well as
their potential and challenges, has deepened significantly. The development can
be clearly observed by reading the museum’s collections policy documents, but
it can also be seen in everyday work.

Museum Collections in the 2020s

What about challenges? What should Helsinki City Museum and all other mu-
seums prepare for as we enter the 2020s? Many present and future challenges
have already been identified several times over the decades (Lubar 2017). These
include challenges such as controlling the growth of collections, controlling and
publishing collections digitally and including the audience in accessioning. Be-
coming mainstream does not mean that all the work is done, however, although
our museographical and museological competence has advanced significantly. In
the 2020s, these themes will be gathered under the umbrella term of sustainable
development. We must develop museum collections that will be ecologically,
financially, socially and culturally sustainable.

The theme of sustainable development has been relevant for a long time. It was
the basis of the eco-museum movement. The British Museums Association,
for example, already published an article on the topic in 2008 (Sustainability
and Museums). The Finnish Museums Association included sustainable de-
velopment in their strategy for 2007–2010. Controlling energy consumption
related to collection storage and using ecological materials are actions that we
have begun to view as obvious. Controlling the growth of collections is a very
important tool in this matter as well, as growing collections inevitably result in
increased stress on the environment (Marisse 2010, p. 60). Museums must do
their part, even though some have questioned whether a single museum can
have a direct impact on climate change (Pop et al. 2019). Responsible thinking
also applies to digital collections, whose required server space consumes large
amounts of energy. There is still much left to do. Collection lifespan thinking is
still in its infancy, and the materials of industrial and post-industrial culture will
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  195

require much attention from a conservation and storage perspective (Paavola

2016; Fontell & Leskelä 2016; Holkeri et al. 2016). Additionally, digital service
products form a special object group, because traditional competence is focused
on material cultural heritage that is made to last (Ojala 2016). The conservation
of digital collections is a phenomenon in its own right, and we still have little
experience with it.

What about economic sustainability, then? Our understanding of storage condi-

tions, materials and different converting needs has increased substantially, but
better competence in these areas has also increased costs – high-quality spaces,
materials and tools cost money, after all. This forms a cost-related challenge
that museums must face openly, because it appears that financing property
and equipment costs will become more difficult as financiers are increasingly
interested in the results of work done with the audience and the work’s impact.
More goals are also constantly being set, from both outside and within museums,
without a corresponding increase of resources.

Furthermore, the challenges of social and cultural sustainability will become

increasingly evident. Social sustainability refers to generations inheriting the
requirements for well-being from previous generations. Cultural sustainability,
then, means ensuring that cultural heritage and other kinds of intangible cap-
ital are passed from one generation to the next, along with the values related
to them (Pop et al. 2019). These two forms of sustainability are at the core of
museum work, but we must become more aware of them ourselves and better
at communicating about this as a fundamental task. Clear arguments must be
provided for why collections work is significant to future generations, as well as
to different communities and groups. The lack of sustainability in the economy
is currently dominating the discourse, so we should become better in our ability
to use economic and business-related language when speaking to owners and
decision-makers about the benefits of collections and collections management,
without losing sight of our core mission (Loach et al. 2017). Significance anal-
ysis, for example, provides us with ways to discuss the contents of and values
related to collections. We should especially be able to measure the impact of
collections management, so that we have definitive numerical arguments that
are easy to communicate when defending collections. The Impact Playbook
produced by the Europeana Foundation (Verwayen et al. 2017) presents ways
to measure the impact of digitising collections, in particular. Developing such
tools will definitely be a challenge for collections management in the 2020s. In
Finland, the number of Finna users is one simple measure of impact, but the
numbers only explicitly indicate the impact of digitalisation work, even though
there are a number of collections management issues in the background, such
as prioritising and conserving.

The Audience as a Focal Point

All aforementioned challenges are, in one way or another, bound to the rela-
tionship between the audience and collections. The meanings and impact of
196 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

collections are central quality criteria, and neither significance nor quality is
currently defined by experts alone.

Expectations of providing experiences and entertainment meet the challeng-

es of objectivity, diversity and empowerment of all kinds. Museum collections
should aim to fulfil the same goals and needs as other museum work. Peter van
Mensch and Leontine Meijer-van Mensch state (2011, p. 15) that we should view
collections as tools for achieving a museum’s goals, not as goals an sich. We
must examine whether our collections can serve these needs. Should we perhaps
acquire new types of collections or develop our collections management, so that
we can utilise the empowering potential that collections have?

There has long been the opinion that an exhibition is the platform on which a
museum can best display its collections to the audience. Exhibitions continue to
ensure the best media visibility for museum work, and museums’ operations are
mainly assessed in light of visitor numbers. From this point of view, collections
have no intrinsic value; their purpose is to support the goals of a museum’s
exhibition activities (Anderson 2004, p. 4).

There is also an opposing view of development to the previous perspective. Ex-

hibition visitors want to be ever closer to collection objects and experience them
with all their senses by touching, listening and smelling. This underlines our
ability to classify collections. The Helsinki City Museum has utilised collection
use classifications for approximately a decade, and objects are actively used in
both exhibitions and activities related to museum pedagogy. Some visitors also
want to know more about the mythical behind-the-scenes life (Lubar 2017) of
museums. For these types of visitors, the museum organises visits to the col-
lection centre. Unfortunately, the City Museum has not been able to arrange
an open access collection centre for visitors, despite plans in the early 2000s.

On the other hand, the first steps in including audiences in collections work
have been taken with the introduction of two voluntary groups doing photo-
graph collection work. The Kuvakummit (Photo Godparents) group focused on
photograph collection care, and the photography hobbyist group, Kuvaussakki
(Photographing Bunch), documented Helsinki and the city’s life, in co-opera-
tion with museum staff. Meanwhile, voluntary work is still being defined in the
cultural-historical collection.

For Complexity
The new paradigm that puts the audience more into focus was visible in the
Finnish 2019 Museums Act, which, for the first time, highlighted matters such
as community, cultural diversity and equality as purposes of museum activity
(314/2019, §1).

Museums have undertaken complete turnabouts with regard to identity politics.

They have constructed a cohesive worldview and a homogeneous community
identity for many generations and have simultaneously built and maintained the
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  197

concepts of otherness. The word community is, in and of itself, excluding, and
it places a boundary between us and the other (Walle 2018, p. 107). In a global
culture, however, people’s identities are constructed transnationally, and in
many locations, which museum collections should reflect (Mulinari et al. 2009,
p.13). As a result, museums have begun to deconstruct this ideal monolith, and
they are now steering their operations toward diversity.

There has been a desire to introduce fractures and different tones to homogene-
ous and monocultural narratives about national and, in the City Museum’s case,
local identities. Thomas Bauer, an expert on Arabic literature, has presented a
strong case for the culture of ambiguity (2018). He is concerned about the ten-
dencies of simplification and overgeneralisation that are related to populism and
fundamentalism and that also affect depictions of history. Museums have the
opportunity to take a role in resisting fundamentalism and in making diversity
and complexity visible. This is an essential part of social and cultural sustain-
ability. Bauer reminds people that the past is truly different – sometimes even
bizarre and repulsive – but change has existed and always will. The emancipatory
power of museum collections is that they are proof of the potential for change.
They also bear witness to the fact that all change is not always positive, and that
we must constantly fight for the values we believe in.

Figures 1 and 2. The challenge of the collection’s development is to create shared interfaces between
collections and the many identities and stories manifest in the audiences. A young family in Helsinki
in 2004 and a uniform from the 1780s. Photos: Matti Huuhka and Jan Alanco/HCM.

Changing one’s own identity as an actor is not without its problems. Museums
have a strong desire to deconstruct traditional stereotypes instead of strength-
ening them, but accomplishing this task demands much self-inspection and
education. One criticism concerns museums’ positions as actors. Museums and
their collections are thought to represent the established power structures of
the majority – which they often do – and they do not necessarily recognise their
own motives (Damsholt 2012, pp. 34–36; Boast 2011). From this perspective,
the desire for understanding and harmony often means assimilating the other
into us. Thomas Walle argues that a truly inclusive museum process is one that
changes new communities and the museum’s traditional demographics, as well
198 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

as the museum itself (Walle 2018, p. 107, p. 115, p. 124). In other words, the
result should be truly new communities that are not based on nationalism or
local patriotism. Individual groups and their diversity should be strengthened.
This is obviously not an easy task, and it is not easy to always make the right
moves in relation to an issue that is an object for much ideology, politics and
feelings (Ahmed 2012).

A Culturally Sustainable Collection from Helsinki?

Until the 1970s, people moved from Finland to other countries in search of
a better life. Today, however, Helsinki is a city of migrants. In 2017, only ap-
proximately half of Helsinki’s residents were born in Helsinki, and 16% of the
population originally came from abroad. In 2030, approximately 30% of the
inhabitants will speak something other than Finnish or Swedish as their first
language (Saukkonen 2018). The City Museum wishes to make the culture of
these new Helsinki residents visible, and we hope that the museum becomes
one of their contact points. The vital question is to what extent collections and
the practices of documenting collection information will enable varied and
multi-layered interpretations that could offer building blocks for alternative
narratives and identity processes.

In other words, to what extent will the collections of the Helsinki City Museum
offer tools for visualising and reframing cultural diversity? We have some objects
that are related to Jewish, Romanian, Tatar and Russian history and culture, as
well as the history and culture of other groups that are traditionally not thought
of as natively Finnish. There are only some sporadic examples of immigration
from the end of the 1900s. The search term Somali, for example, yields some
photographs and women’s stockings from the 1980s, whose colour has been
designated as Somali. Cultural differences and sexual norms have been addressed
in exhibition and event production, but they are only sporadically represented
in collections. Records related to the city’s language relationships – old Swedish
roots, the German bourgeoisie class and being under Russian rule in the 19th
century – have not been catalogued systematically from a language or ethnic
standpoint. The collection of LGBTQ culture has, however, been designated to
the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas in TAKO co-operation (see also Ahola, this
volume). Documenting anti-racist activities is also Werstas’ responsibility. One
notable challenge for the City Museum – and for the mobility and accessibility
of collections in general – is making collections and collection information in
other museums visible to the museum’s own audiences.

Collections have never been systemically analysed as to how they reflect gender,
social class or ethnic background. The collection analysis of 2003 observed, as
already mentioned, that wealthy districts of the inner city and the educated
middle class were over-represented, and the general feeling is that this is still
true. The division between public and private life, in particular, follows the bour-
geoisie gender system, meaning that objects related to private life are primarily
related to women, whereas objects related to professions and production are
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  199

more related to men. The City Museum’s example supports Fredrik Svanberg’s
(2015, p. 391, p. 392) argument that even though museology frequently analyses
the significance of exhibition and audience work, collections are researched less
from the audience’s perspective.

It can be said that reaching marginalised groups is still one of our challenges.
That said, we do have the desire to add examples of different ethnic, linguistic,
religious and social groups to collections. Then again, the notion of marginalisa-
tion is problematic in the same way as is the notion of community, because the
concepts of marginalisation and example already imply that something is normal,
while something else is marginalised and requires examples. A key question is
what collections will mean to future Helsinki residents. The current collection
objects and their narratives will be distant and foreign for them in terms of both
time and culture. Cultural sustainability requires cultural accessibility.

The Digital Possibility

To conclude, a few thoughts on the digital world should be given. The collection
objects of cultural-historical museums have traditionally been three-dimen-
sional. At the beginning of the 21st century, the mass of objects, archived paper
records, photographs and pieces of art started to become a problem, and digital
solutions were proposed to control it and its expansion. Digitisation was a new
phenomenon at the time, and it raised many questions about how museums
would be able to adapt to the new operating environment (Mairesse 2010, p.
64; Knell 2010). On the other hand, Tomislav Šola dreamed of a total museum
(2010) that could integrate museums and the cultural heritage they control
into people’s everyday practices. In 2020, we can see that museum collections
have, for the most part, truly moved online and that they are also being utilised.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 has also put digitalization at the centre of mu-
seums’ work in a revolutionary way. The already existing know-how has taken
a huge leap, and the situation has shown, on the one hand, the necessity and
possibility of digital ways of working in the new global context, but at the same
time it has also emphasised the importance of physical collections and encoun-
ters. In any case, it seems that the areas of collection work and public work in
museums are becoming increasingly intertwined due to the new digital tools
and communication now available.

Putting collection information on the internet has played a significant role in, for
example, the City Museum’s operation. In 2020, the entirety of collection man-
agement was based on a collection management system that offered extensive
possibilities for openly publishing collections online. Thanks to this practice,
particularly the accessibility and methods of using the photograph collection have
changed in ways that we could not even have imagined in 2003. Approximately
five percent of the collections had been published as digital objects through the
national Finna service by the end of 2019, and the City Museum also had its
own Finna-based [Link] interface, through which photographs were
200 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

published as high-resolution images with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

(CC BY 4.0) license. This was rare in Finland, and even rare around the world.
The collections were opened through the EU digital platform for cultural herit-
age Europeana in 2020. In 2019, there were some 3.4 million visits to the digital
treasures of Helsinki heritage.

On the Relationship Between the Material and the

Digital
It is obvious that keeping object collections dynamic and significant will re-
quire new practices and museological perspectives. The material life that the
historian Fernand Braudel examined – the ever-present, unnoticed substances
of everyday life (Mäkikalli 2010, p. 13) – does still exist. However, an everyday
life that functions through virtual means and tools now exists right alongside
it, and material substances have faded into the background. In contrast to the
traditions of modern society’s consumerist world, physical objects have moved
from the spotlight to the background, while global production has almost com-
pletely overtaken local production. We are still interacting with all kinds of
stuff (Miller 2010), but individual and institutional discourse is at the moment
concentrated around letting go.

Physical objects are not necessarily in a key position anymore, not even in the
research of material culture. Digital cataloguing makes it possible to attach many
types of data and different meanings to collection objects, and it also enables
a new system for referencing objects outside of a museum’s own collection.
Online portals and search engines have made it easier to search for data from
large collections and to simultaneously search for data from the collections of
several different organisations.

In summary, digitisation increases the accessibility of collections in research,

and an individual researcher can analyse larger and larger object masses. This
does, of course, place demands on museums regarding both cataloguing and
photographing quality. How can cataloguing meet the demands of changing
information interests and research questions, and what will happen to the parts
of collections that have not been catalogued in a collection management system
or other forms of digitisation? Will anyone remember them or know how to
use them?

This inevitably also affects the position of collection objects. Firstly, the collection
and long-term storage of digital objects must be ensured. We must continue to
consider the relationship between the material substance and its digital coun-
terpart. As physical objects are increasingly documented using digital documen-
tation systems, digital records will surely replace physical collection objects in
the future, at least partially. All kinds of images, etc. – photographs, the visual
arts, moving images – are at the core of modern virtual communication, and
images are used more than ever, which requires objects to be in a format that
can be shared digitally.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  201

On the other hand, the material essence of collection objects, their materiality, is
significant to the relationship between the observer, the object and the object’s
interpretation. How can a two-dimensional image or virtual reality even convey
something three-dimensional, and how will digitalisation work in relation to
dimensions such as weight, smell and touch, as well as all the other information
that is conveyed through the different senses (Roivainen 2016, p. 52, p. 53; Il-
makunnas 2016, pp. 140–141)? Furthermore, we must separately consider the
documentation and recording of digital culture. How can we document all the
many different work and leisure activities that place codes and algorithms at
their centre and use a computer or phone as their interface?

Digitisation presents huge opportunities from an audience perspective, when we

consider including the audience in narratives and in collecting data, but it also
creates possibilities for inventing new user experiences. When collections are
digitised, they can be opened to the audience for free examination, which may
lead to the audience viewing collections from an entirely different point of view
than would an expert. The audience can invent new and innovative ways of using
collections. Open culture increases the feeling of community and strengthens the
idea of sharing an identity, regardless of location. It also inspires us to think in
new, creative ways. At its best, open culture increases productivity, innovation,
learning and well-being (Putkonen 2018).

By 2020, we have seen a huge amount of creativity in both the public sphere
and in museums. New collection products have been launched and the use of
existing services has increased. Museums have gained visibility outside their
walls and found new audiences. However, not all museums can do everything,
and in the coming years we will see museums looking for the best virtual ways
of working for themselves. Maximal impact and the ability to prioritise will be
focused on in the coming years.

Physical objects are easily overshadowed in all the excitement for digitisation.
Fortunately, museum experts will not be wholly responsible for collection re-
search. After many studies that emphasise the textual nature of reality, humanist
research has become interested in re-examining material substance. There has
been a return to studying concrete, physical objects, and digital collection infor-
mation has been challenged in terms of how sufficient it will be for conveying
information related to material entities (Immonen 2016; Snellman 2016). In
any case, maintaining object research is always a challenge. Object culture is
constantly changing, and objects from pre-industrial times are distant to us today
(Roivainen 2016, p. 45). The change in object culture has even been referred to
by words such as fossilisation (Shove & Pantzar 2006). The challenge for mu-
seum workers is keeping these parts of collections usable, so that researchers
and museum visitors can approach the past through means other than text and
verbalised or digitised entities.
202 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Conclusion
Growing collections, globalisation, climate change and the digitalisation of cul-
ture are enormous challenges. However, museums should not lie down and do
nothing. Rather, they should seize the opportunities that these changes provide
and be agents of change. At best, we can support our communities in processing
change and even in making changes. This also applies to collections manage-
ment. At the beginning of this chapter, I stated that collections policy should
not only be comprised of strategies and goals; it should also be an everyday tool
that helps museums manage their collections. Still, the strategic dimension is
crucial. Collections policy can be a tool for change, and museums can use it to
broaden their horizons beyond exhibition schedules and to take control of the
future. Grand statements should, however, correspond to concrete goals and
actions. The usefulness of a policy is not measured by its breadth or rhetorical
inventiveness, but by how well it meets the demands of everyday work. Every
museum has its own environment, and one key challenge is keeping a policy
alive and developing it.

Helsinki City Museum’s experiences have been positive, which is likely the result
of several factors. To begin with, collection workers have always been actively
involved in the creation process. This has resulted in a certain type of slowness
and many meetings in such a large museum, but it has also helped form a shared
understanding and commitment. Moreover, the policy has always aimed to be
as concrete as possible, and it can be used to verify who does what and what the
goal is. Furthermore, there is a realistic understanding that not all goals can be
immediately reached.

Customer perspectives were introduced to collections management in 2014, and

the photograph collection has already accomplished much in this area. Audience
perspective continued to be important in the 2019 collections policy update,
because it plays a crucial role in meeting the challenges of social and cultural
sustainability. A new challenge was to face the city’s cultural diversity from a
2020s point of view and to understand diversity very differently compared to the
beginning of the 21st century, when Helsinki’s multiculturalism was still often
illustrated through such groups as the Russians, Jewish people and Tatars, who
had come to Helsinki during the Grand Duchy era.

Because of this, the 2019 update included experiments in the collections policy
process to help form a view of how collections and collections management could
become more important to different user groups. We wanted the audience to
be closer to collections. We experimented with a significance analysis course in
museology, invited students attending a course in the adult education centre to
the collection centre, analysed our own exhibitions, together with our customer
service staff, and supported the photography project of youths who were at risk
of social alienation. In short, we followed the museum’s vision to find methods,
so that “everyone has the opportunity to fall in love with Helsinki”.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  203

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208 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Home Museums – Biographical

collections of significant lives
Liisa Oikari and Kristina Ranki

Abstract
The chapter discusses museums usually categorised as house museums or his-
torical houses. Different types of museums in this sector and the existing termi-
nology are both examined. We look at the differences and the common features
in these museums, as well as their role in biographical knowledge. The focus
of the chapter is on a special type of house museum that we – inspired by the
Finnish terminology (kotimuseo) – call a home museum.

The psychology of home museums, their main characters and approaches, is

discussed using various European examples. The Finnish home museum does
not in itself differ from the European home museum. The strategies and prac-
tices are the same.

Homes become excellent museums because of their ideal size, human interest
content and because they provide a perfect narrative of history in a dense form.
Modern museum visitors have many requirements on their agenda and as a re-
sult, the existing or non-existing fame of the home museum’s former occupant
is important. Collections, the physical necessity of the home museum, is in the
end what makes it different from other biographical and house museums.

A home museum’s identity and the significance of collections are approached by

examining and comparing two different Finnish home museums through their
collection profile: the Mannerheim Museum and the Gallen-Kallela Museum.
Authenticity and its many levels in house museums are discussed with special
interest placed on the home museum and the high demand for authenticity
regarding this particular type of museum.

Key words: home museums, collections, significance, biography, authenticity

Introduction
The biggest strength of our museum is “the authenticity and the emotional
connection that visitors make” to our main character.1

In a museum dedicated to an important historical figure, one of the main ques-

tions is: What essentially draws the visitor to the house? In other words, is it the
admirable collections or the sheer reputation of the personality? This chapter

1. Said by a participant in the European home museum meeting in Helsinki, October 2019.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  209

discusses museums usually categorised as house museums or historical houses.

We examine different types of lieux de mémoire in this sector of museums and
discuss the existing terminology, with its various subcategories that create this
unique group of museums. We look at the differences and the common features
in these museums, as well as their place in the broader field of museums. This
museum type is approached through referring to some European, and especially
some Finnish museums that fit the suggested category, as well as by indicating
how they differ from other house museums.

The psychology and practical work in a home museum is examined by analysing

a group of museums in this category through the strategic aims and identity of
the museum. The strengths and weaknesses of these museums as experienced
by their caretakers today are under discussion. How do the Finnish and more
generally European home museums currently deal with their initial biographical
mission, with the modern vision of the given museum field and the transmit-
ting of their everyday values to the public? Do their identities include specific
attitudes and are they accessible enough?

A house museum’s identity and the significance of collections is approached by

examining and comparing two different Finnish house museums through their
collection profile – the Mannerheim Museum, former home of the iconic Finn,
Marshal Mannerheim (1867–1951, figure 1) and the Gallen-Kallela Museum,
former home and atelier of the beloved and influential Finnish artist Akseli
Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931, figure 2). The question of authenticity and its many
levels in house museums also captures our interest.

Figure 1. Gustaf Mannerheim. Photo: The Mannerheim Museum. Figure 2. Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
Photo: The Gallen-Kallela Museum.
210 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Various Ways of Categorisation

House museums are in many ways identifiable and distinguishable from their
museum peers. Often house museums are places and buildings in need of mu-
seumification, some form of rescue and redemption; they act as glimpses and
timestamps of history. Others are places of commemoration, monuments to he-
roes, collectors, artists or historical events. A house museum combines meaning
and content, and functions as a container (Young 2007, p. 60). A house museum
preserves history and is meant to represent the past as it once was. It makes us
see, understand and feel the experiences of the past, to resonate with the ones
who lived before us. The house museum offers a particularly direct encounter
with the materiality of another’s life (Hancock 2009, p. 114). House museums
serve as vessels for immersive history.

Museums in this sector often share similar visions and strategies, and collab-
oration with peers is welcome. DEMHIST, an ICOM International Committee
(Demeures Historiques, “historical houses”), focuses on the conservation and
management of house museums. It is a network for house museums and histor-
ical houses with a professional perspective on the sector, and it brings together
a wide range of expertise regarding the management of house museums. In
addition to DEMHIST, other international museum type focused networks, such
as Iconic Houses and the Artist Studio Museum, also exist (ICOM DEMHIST;
Iconic Houses; the Artist’s Studio Museum Network).

Many countries also have their own national networks for museums in this
category. In 2011 the Ministry of Culture in France created a network of kindred
house museums dedicated to notable persons called Maison des Illustres. As
of 2018, a total of 235 museums have received this label, which “represents an
official recognition of the patrimonial interest of the house”. To obtain this level
a museum must fulfil certain criteria, including accessibility, authenticity and
forms of professional activity. Above all, these maisons des illustres need to “excel
in the aura of the (national or local) personality.” In Finland, the Ministry of
Education does not provide such recognition of museums, but in its subventions,
it could be said to be supporting the same idea of nationally important heritage
houses. More common is the network model between the museums themselves,
ranging from the Italian Case Museo in Italy to the Nordic network for literary
museums and writer’s homes.2

In Finland, networks like TAKO (Ammatillisten museoiden tallennus- ja kokoel-

mayhteistyöverkosto), an acquisitions, documentation and collection collabo-
rative network for professionally managed Finnish museums, the Tuusulanjärvi
artist colony house museums, the Laajalahti seaside museums and co-operation
among house museums in the capital area in Finland, all offer support and a
platform for ideas and collaboration for Finnish house museums (see also Ahola,

2. Recently, a Danish initiative around home museums was also created.

Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  211

this volume).3 A museum can of course join multiple networks, if one does not
satisfy all of its needs. It is also a question of identification and identity; what
type of house museums feel the closest and similar, and is there a specific group
that the museum wants to connect with?

The terms house museum or historical house tie together a broad spectrum of
different museums. House museums can be categorised further and distinguished
by their museum profile and identity, but they are all united by the fact that they
are dwellings, museumified and presented as dwellings (Young 2007, p. 60).
There are many ways to approach classification and sub-categorisation of the
house museum genre. When interpreting house museums, historic, cultural,
artistic and social information is considered. One of the earliest categorisation
attempts of this type was Sarah Butcher-Younghan’s classification of historic
house museums into three categories:

The documentary historic house museum: a house that commemorates a

rich or famous individual or family. It provides a glimpse into a famous
person’s life, but also shows how various social classes might have lived
at the time.

The representative historic house museum interprets a particular style

of architecture from a particular period.

The aesthetic historic house museum: a historic house that serves as the
setting for special collections, where decorative and fine arts, furniture
and antiques from various periods are displayed. The house serves as
a backdrop for the objects, with no particular attention paid to former
residents or the events that took place there.
(Butcher-Younghan 1993, pp. 184–186)

Another categorisation example is Linda Young’s classification of house muse-

ums. She focuses on house museums in the United Kingdom, the United States
and Australia. With almost 600 examples, she divides them into six categories:

Hero: Someone important lived here (or sometimes merely passed

through).

Collection: A collection of furnishings intrinsic to the house, or a collection

formed by the inhabitants that is worth conserving in its original location.

Design: Especially important form, fabric, decoration, technique or in-

novation; may be aesthetic or technical.

Historic event or process: Something historically significant happened

here, once or regularly; may be particular or generic.

3. The Tuusulanjärvi artist colony consist of a group of house museums, mainly artist ateliers and
homes. The Laajalahti seaside museums are house museums located around a cove in Helsinki and
Espoo.
212 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Sentiment: Positive spiritual or communal feeling for the place, usually

focusing on non-specific antiquity (contrasted to history).

Country house museum: Product of multi-generational development of

the house, furnishings, collections, and gardens.
(Young 2007, p. 63)

Similar views on categorisation of house museums can be observed in a classifi-

cation project organised by DEMHIST. The committee was founded in 1998 and
plans for a categorising project started during the very first years of its operation,
lasting until 2009. The project sought to create a system for classifying types of
historic house museums along homogenous museological lines. The aim was
to discover a shared museological approach to the problems house museums
face. In the categorising project, it was argued that the house museum field
needs categories in order to manage different houses, based on their different
strengths. Situating a museum in one of the categories is the first step toward
understanding its significance. Categories are tools that facilitate comparisons
between similar house museums, to enable museum professionals to identify
exemplars and establish standards (Bryant & Behrens 2007; Pavoni 2000, 2001,
2002, 2010).

With the aid of 135 responses to a questionnaire, the DEMHIST project group
was able to create category definitions based on the information received from
the house museum sector as follows:

1. Personality houses (writers, artists, musicians, politicians, military he-

roes, etc)
2. Collection houses (the former home of a collector or a house now used
to show a collection)
3. Houses of Beauty (where the primary reason for a museum is the house
as work of art)
4. Historic Event houses (houses that commemorate an event that took
place in/by the house)
5. Local society houses (house museums established by a local community
usually seeking a social cultural facility that may reflect its own identity,
rather than for an historic reason)
6. Ancestral homes (country houses and small castles open to the public)
7. Power houses (palaces and large castles open to the public)
8. Clergy houses (monasteries, abbots’ houses and other ecclesiastical build-
ings with a former or current residential use, open to the public)
9. Humble homes (vernacular buildings such as modest farms valued as
reflecting a lost way of life and/or building construction)
(Houses for Museums, Period Rooms, Bryant & Behrens 2007)

In the DEMHIST categorisation project, the categories classify museums mainly

by the building’s purpose, not by the building type, collection profile or biograph-
ical context of the museum. The categorisation project was never finished in the
form of a formal publication, as time changed the perspective on interpreting
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  213

house museums and new ways of approaching these museums and their place
amongst the museum field started emerging.4 House museums and the intangible
cultural heritage connected to them have become more relevant and interesting.

Stefan Bohman’s categorisation format for house museums is mostly based on

the level of authenticity. The museums used as examples are specifically house
museums related to composers, but the classifications can be modified to suit
a broader selection of house museums.

Nyckeloriginal (a key original, a house that is exactly as it was left by

the historical person)

Rekonstruktion (a reconstruction, a house or a place reconstructed with

the original furniture and objects of a historical person)

Kopiering (a copy, a house or a place reconstructed with similar objects

and materials from a specific time)

Utställningslokal (an exhibition space, a place used for exhibitions of

the historical person)
(Bohman 2010, pp. 44–45)

The categorisations within the house museum sector are certainly helpful for
a house museum searching for its identity and a place in the house museum
sector. However, categorisations have their flaws and exceptions. As the range of
museums included in this museum sector is very wide, so are the classification
categories. The need for a deeper and more precise classification arises within
the created categories, and subcategories for such as artist ateliers or literary
homes are required. No two museums are alike, but the need for peer support
creates bridges between similar house museums. The difficulty in categorising
also comes up in cases where a museum is suitable for many categories. Forcing a
museum into only one category can affect a museum’s whole strategy and identity.

In addition to classification, the terminology used to define house museums

presents its own interesting dilemma. The terms house museum, historical house
or historical house museum, a combination of the two, are commonly used,
but broad terms such as these tend to include all places that can be classified
as dwellings. Sometimes more specificity is needed. Museum work in a former
artist atelier can be very different from that in an open-air museum with house
specimens, both of which can be categorised as house museums and technically
fall under the terms house museum or historical house.

The intent of this chapter is not to comment on whether the presented category
types are suitable for house museums’ needs or not. Instead, we mainly focus on
the definition of one of the categories. In the footsteps of our fellow research-
ers, we are proposing an additional term for the field of house museum types

4. Email exchange with DEMHIST board members. (10–13th June 2019)

214 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

that can be subcategorised in the DEMHIST categories under the definition for
personality houses: the home museum.

Defining Home Museums

There are almost one hundred museums dedicated to individuals in Finland
alone. These can be home museums, but also places of memory and exhibi-
tions inside other buildings or exhibitions. Terminology around this type of
visitable place is both flourishing and confusing. A debutant museum director
cannot always tell if his or her institution is a biographical museum, an atelier
museum, a collection house, a historic house or a mix of several of these. The
terms house museum and historic house seem to refer to a generally stereotyp-
ical timeframe, a generic and neutral house museum. A home museum, on the
contrary, was somebody’s home. It was founded to memorise a name, and it
used to be a genuine home with authentic objects that were collected there for
living purposes. It holds a spirit that combines the pedagogical element that
the remarkable person brings through his or her exemplary biography and the
warmth and hospitality of the (disappeared, therefore mysterious) private home,
which understandably appeals to any human being who himself or herself lives
in a home or dreams of one.

To begin with, there is a simple – linguistic – explanation for our sympathy for
the term home museum: in French (maison) and in Italian (casa), for instance,
the term signifies both the building and the residence. In Finnish, there is a
lexical distinction between talo (house) and koti (home).

The term home museum can also be regarded as a refinement of DEMHIST’s

category personality house. Personality houses are houses of writers, artists,
musicians, politicians, military heroes, etc. They have a biographical connection
but are not necessarily in the form of a home. A personality house can also be
an exhibition space focused on one historical person. In order to be classified
as a home museum, a personality house should, according to us, have a certain
level of authenticity and a strong connection to a historical person’s life.

In our opinion, any biographical museum can inform, teach and entertain us
with a particular personality in mind. Its efforts lie with the human being’s his-
tory, life and works, but it is not necessary that it should illustrate such physical
evidence as authentic collections. It is possible to create a biographical museum
totally from the external perspective, either academic or more hagiographic. In
house museums, on the other hand, the focus can vaguely shift from the build-
ing, its collections and its inhabitant. A house museum can even exist without a
personal history attached to it. In a home museum, the purpose and core theme
cannot be contested: the mission, vision and every related value all come down
to the vocation of conserving and transmitting the memory of those who have
distinguished themselves in (local, national or international) history. In a home
museum, most attention should be given to the totality – although scholars
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  215

understand the hierarchy of its elements: the contents of the house can be seen
“as the key to unlocking personality” (Forgan 2012, p. 257).

Instead of the numerous conceptual possibilities, we have here settled for the
term significant lives.5 The illustrious, famous, known or heroic personalities
(men, or increasingly, women) who have lived in homes that have been made
into museums – and whose lives have a larger, national or even international
significance in artistic or political developments – are special in the sense that
people usually visit them not in anticipation of incredible treasures, which is
the case with art museums or history museums in general. The visitor is drawn
to these places or knows of their existence only because of an a priori interest
towards the names that the museums carry. As a visiting destination, the museum
connected to a hero or an anti-hero has a huge brand advantage compared to
generic or neutral museums.

Significance is of course subjective, and we wish not to enter the discussion of

human value, but are simply suggesting that the more known a person is, the
more his or her museum fits into our studied category. Subcategories are subse-
quently the home museums of regional and local heroes (unknown outside their
region), national illustres (Winston Churchill or Urho Kekkonen) and interna-
tional mega-stars (Elvis Presley or Jean Sibelius). The idea of canon is useful
here – whose home museums belong to the story of Finland or a global history
more than others? Significance or illustriousness in the sense of exemplarity
has great advantages, for instance in the construction of a national identity.
Having its background in the viri illustres tradition going back to Plutarch, and
reinforced in the Enlightenment tradition of the Grands Hommes (great men),
home museums of important individuals are opened to the public specifically
and exclusively because of the importance of that person and due to their either
exemplarity or fascinating counter-exemplarity. Therefore, it is a part not only
of their history of origins, but also a mission stated in their statutes and still
today the core of their existence.

What is not a home museum? Anonymous houses should not be classified as

home museums. They can be good examples of a certain architectural style, a
period in history or a social class, but this must not be mixed up with the type of
museums where a dichotomy between talking about the person’s significant life
and his or her possessions might present challenges. There are many museums
where the biographical side is neglected or where it is secondary to the efforts of
reinforcing local identity. In our view, recently created inauthentic homes built
in order to strengthen a celebrity with a mere illustration of how it might have
looked should not be counted as home museums.

Another somewhat problematic dimension to these distinctions can be added

by memorial places that are actual visitable homes but are not intended to per-
form the function of a professional museum, such as Astrid Lindgren’s home in

5. Merkkihenkilö in Finnish and bemärkt person in Swedish come very close to the term significant
person.
216 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Stockholm. There are also combinations of art museums and former homes – not
to mention waiting sanctuaries that could be opened to the public.

ICOMOS (2008) has defined the spirit of the place as follows:

Spirit of place (or genius loci) refers to the unique, distinctive and cher-
ished aspects of a place. It is thus as much in the invisible weave of cul-
ture (stories, art, memories, beliefs, histories, etc.) as it is the tangible
physical aspects of a place (monuments, rivers, woods, architectural style,
pathways, views, etc.) or its interpersonal aspects (the presence of family,
friends and kindred spirits).

A home museum is a suitable cradle for the spirit of the place to reside in. It is
a space where the spirit of a person still lingers. Authenticity, a term which we
delve into later in this chapter, also affects the classification of a house muse-
um, and even more so, that of a home museum. A home museum is required to
possess a high level of authenticity, an expectation created by not only museum
professionals but the audience as well.

Whereas the biographical museum does not necessarily have an authentic collec-
tion, and the house museum does not always present a clear historical inhabitant,
the home museum combines these two into one, and is also dense with historical
information in an experienceable form.

The Psychology of the Home Museum

To create museums of significant people’s homes is not that modern.6

In this section, home museums are seen from a distance, as well as from an in-
ternal perspective gained through working experience. In the classroom, some
students of museology stated that the main task of a home museum is to make a
person considered immortal be understood as a mortal. How does the museum
manage this noble goal? What is the home museum’s working environment
and how does it cope with its central mission in the midst of various challeng-
es, from collection care and conservation duties to the growing expectation of
entertainment in museums?

The home museum phenomenon has its roots in the 19th century high season of
(national) heroes, which in its turn replaced kings and saints in the turmoil of

6. “Merkkihenkilöiden kotien museoiminen ei ole tätä päivää.” See for instance a blog writing by
the Finnish Heritage Agency in 2016 on the funding of museums, where an attack against small
home museums comes as a bit of a surprise. Available at [Link]
kaukset-murentavat-kulttuuriperintoa [Last accessed 27 October 2019]. The same de-personifying
tendency is to be seen in the Finnish way of re-baptizing the great men’s commemorations days in
the calendar to commemorate the context as well as the person – Sibelius or the day of the Finnish
music (8th of December), Aleksis Kivi Day or the Day of Finnish literature (10th of October). The 4th
of June has a slightly different history, which since the 75th birthday of Marshal Mannerheim, has
also been the Flag Day of the Finnish Defence Forces.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  217

the French revolution. Exemplary people were presented through biographies,

statues and tombs – today they can also be understood through home museums,
where it is possible to access the human being behind the myth.

Contrary to what has sometimes been argued, home museums are still in fashion.
Partly due to the popularity of museums in general, they still are the perfect way
to personify history and to give faces to nations, societies or artistic movements.
In the era of digital media and “information tsunamis”, there is a strong need
for experiencing “the real thing” (Bohman 2010, p. 11, p. 24, p. 25). If we travel
to a place that is new to us, it is surely tempting to go and find the “soul of the
place” in the residence of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg or the St Pe-
tersburg poet Anna Akhmatova. We might also want to examine to what extent
the Swedish Prince Eugen in his Waldemarsudde or the artist Joaquin Sorolla in
his atelier-villa in Madrid were representatives of or dissidents regarding their
time and social circles. The homes of the significant persons in each culture are
not just unique curiosities, but discussion starters for many other issues – the
less a tourist knows of a country or theme, the more powerful the home museums
are in communicating their chosen message.

The home museum is a specifically important tool, not “only” for cultural heroes,
but when the significant life in question is a strong symbol of a nation, belongs to
a dramatic phase in history or is a phenomenon. We come to think of Victor Hugo
for the eloquent yet changing France, Winston Churchill for critical moments of
British history, Nicolae Ceausescu for difficult Romanian re-evaluation or Anne
Frank for the victims of the Holocaust. There was, throughout the second half
of the 20th century, and has been even more so in the recent decades, a strong
museumification tendency of significant persons’ homes. In Finland, too, new
home museums arise, and old ones revisit their strategies. From the oldest
home museum in Finland, the national poet J. L. Runeberg’s home (opened in
1882) to the most recent project of rescuing the former home of president P.
E. Svinhufvud in Kotkaniemi, they all struggle for attention, both among other
museums, but also among other forms of entertainment.

An Illustrated Biography
A home museum’s identity is based on a combination of various elements: what
kind of organisation, history, activities, strategy, reality (human resources), eco-
nomic challenges and possibilities, narrative choices, image and brand, signif-
icance and controversy the museum has. As we have stated, much depends on
the illustriousness of the name the museum bears – but at the end of the day, it
is the way the museum chooses to treat that legacy which decides the museum’s
orientation.

As we know, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this context, it means that

the physical environment of the home museum, an illustrated biography, truly
broadens and completes the visitor’s biographical understanding. The results
of a museum visit are often quite different from what was expected – a per-
218 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

sonality has revealed himself as much more interesting and filled with various
dimensions, all of which has been highlighted by silent but convincing material.
Triviality or obscurity connected to the home museum’s significant person is a
brand problem for the museum. When leaving the home museum, the tourist or
random visitor should absolutely have a clear idea of whose home he or she just
visited – otherwise the home museum remains a mere collection of somebody’s
estate, with more death than eternal life in its atmosphere. This is how important
the identity of the former inhabitant is to the home museum.

Comparing European home museums is rewarding.7 In a house filled with objects

with stories and where the former inhabitant was a person with an extraordinary
life, it is worth contemplating which story is the most important to be presented
by guides or in exhibition texts. The general house museum can concentrate on
the interior in the home, but a home museum of a significant person must put the
focus on his or her biography. It can emphasise the meaning of the person to the
whole nation (which used to be the main idea in great men’s homes!) or stress
the many different roles of the hero in his long life – like in the Mannerheim
Museum and in Georges Clemenceau’s house. Intellectual environments like the
Strindbergsmuseet can, by stating “we are not a fan club”, also take a little more
distant approach to the writer, whose opinions today are not considered to be
politically acceptable. The Victor Hugo museum in Paris excels in an ocean of
stories, with Hugo either on the centre or on the periphery of the subject, but
always shaking up the limited view of the homme de lettre, the mere literary
man, Victor Hugo.

In many of the modern home museums, the narration does not end with the
story of the significant life alone, but it also considers the wives, daughters and
mistresses of the great man – or the male companion of a great woman. Ainola,
the home of Sibelius, has recently put more focus on Aino Sibelius, whose name
was given to the actual house, and her role as a strong inhabitant, alongside
the isolated, difficult composer. In the Runeberg Home, we find an active story
of and a museal presence of his wife Fredrika. This is true also for Chartwell,
where Clementine Churchill was the object of a special exhibition recently, and
in the Gallen-Kallela museum in Finland where the memory of Mary, Akseli’s
wife, has not been forgotten.8 It is possible that in cultures with a high degree
of gender equality this phenomenon is stronger. In most parts of Europe, the
family is just a nice addition to the story of the remarkable person, and it can
only be made visible in the private sphere. In some social circumstances, the
uncomfortable feeling of celebrating one individual over others may lead to the

7. These observations have been made based on general acquaintances of home museums in Finland
and abroad, on their websites and especially during the home museum meeting in Helsinki called
Illustres 2019, where representatives of 10 museums met in October 2019 and exchanged thoughts
and experiences.
8. Available at [Link] and https://
[Link]/fredrika-charlotta-tengstrom [Last accessed 10 October 2019]. On Aino Sibelius see
Konttinen 2019.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  219

suggestion that these connected personalities were as important as the original

names to whom the museum was opened.

More important than the gender issue, it is worth reflecting on the plurality of
people in general around the significant person of the home museum. As a form
of biography, the home museum can present the entirety of the former inhab-
itant’s entourage. In special exhibitions or in its presentation of the interiors
it can bring up interesting social historical issues (servants or guests), political
context logics (political opponents and followers) or transnational arguments
(compatriots abroad, colleagues in other countries).

An interesting case study could be made regarding the fascinating Casa Ceaus-
escu in Bucharest. While the former home palace of the dictator of Romania was
opened, it was decided to leave the interpretation completely to the visitor and
only show the physical environment, without any story. Of course, not evaluating
the political issues surrounding the person is efficient per se, because the visitor
usually sees the palace and knows that the people in Romania from the same
time did not have that standard of living. The commercialisation of the mansion
for an audience looking for a luxurious event is also a kind of appropriation of
the Ceausescu mansion and a narrative in itself.9

Home museums are on the one hand bridge-builders between the widespread
popular interest in history, personified in each case by the significant lives they
represent, and on the other hand, by the professional researchers in history,
politics, art and literature and their academic networks.

Some home museums do not feel the weight of problematisation hanging over
them; they are happy just to exist. It is true that not all museums need to engage
in theory and abstractions concerning the interaction between their identity
and activities. Many smaller museums have a constant issue with resources
and bigger organisations can be lost in the quest for constant novelties. There
is also a big difference between being a small part of a larger organisation (like
the departments of the National Trust or the Finnish National Museum) or an
independent private actor. But even if the strength of the home museum is that
it should resemble a real home, its direction should have a museological interest,
with the ability to see the home as a part of the historical museum landscape. A
high self-evaluating style and impeccable caretaking of collections are possible
to combine.

Home museums are strongly connected to what we call difficult history (see also
Thomas, this volume). Controversial personalities make difficult museums, since
the gap between heroizing and presenting the whole truth and nothing but the
truth can be challenging. Even in the most non-provocative beloved artist’s home

9. “We want our visitors to see how Nicolae Ceauşescu lived, not only as an internationally known
head of state, but as a man in his own private life – the hobbies that he had, what his routine around
the privacy of his home was, how he studied or what art collections he had in his house.” Available
at [Link] [Last accessed 1st November 2019]
220 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

museum there is the possibility that the main character’s more positive sides
are emphasised, while issues that might provoke the audience or diminish the
universal admiration are avoided in the presentation, whether textual or spoken.

Home museums, in our experience, also display examples of obstinacy. In most

of them, the many faces of digital modernisation are recognised. On the other
hand, too much technique is not desirable in a sanctuary. Professionals cher-
ish their genius loci, in order to be able to offer quiet and genuine places in a
hectic world. Furthermore, rather than participate in the research field of their
protagonist’s expertise (literature, military strategy, music, etc.) it seems that
they want to balance and enlarge the image generally portrayed, and in that
way act as educators of the public. Surprisingly, the central theme in the home
of Victor Hugo is not literature, and in Sibelius’s home museum other issues
than creating music are taken up. Perhaps every home museum dedicated to a
significant life in its own way wants to shake up the mainstream understanding
of its main figure, to provoke a little by being something more and to break free
of the canonical image.

Strategy and Practice

Strategies – mission, vision and values – try to answer the many questions as
to how the museum should operate and what is essential in the understanding
of the museum’s main character. In the Mannerheim Museum, Marshal Man-
nerheim’s former home opened to the public in 1951 as a museum. Strategic
re-evaluation is as topical as in other European home museums at the moment.
Re-branding a museum is possible to do without changing its eternal content –
but by enlarging the means and adapting them to current audiences.

Exceptionally, the background organisation, the Mannerheim Foundation is

not, according to Mannerheim’s last will, established to create a biographical
museum, but to promote promising Finnish officers’ internationalisation. The
mission of the museum is crystal clear, but the visions and values are more
debatable, and also time bound. As in other biographical museums, here the
mission is to ensure that interest remains relevant and the memory of Gustaf
Mannerheim vivid for future generations. As in other museumified homes (for
example, Vladimir Nabokov’s apartment, Charles Dickens’ house or Ainola),
collections are understood as a unique possibility to enter the private sphere –
the desk, the bed and the slippers – and to give a valuable feeling of intimacy
in a genuine home. The Victor Hugo museum in Paris is not as authentic as his
villa in Guernsey, but in both places of memory the man would not be as great
without his objects – and this has consequences for strategic thinking. Artefacts
are both the strength and fragility of this type of museums; they are easier to
grasp than the mere reputation and interest towards the great man worldwide.

The Mannerheim Museum promotes the understanding of Mannerheim’s life

and work, as well as being an explanation of Finnish history. It is a physical
scene for the Mannerheim foundation to present its values through which it can
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  221

participate in societal debates. For the future, it strives to secure the profession-
alism of the museum and its own strengths as a private, independent actor. The
museum relies on a scientific approach, cherishes values such as cosmopolitan
patriotism and supports a variety of opinions in relation to its main character.
In other home or house museums, strategy can more concentrate on a specific
theme or section of the person’s life. For example, an atelier museum can focus
mainly on the artistic side of a historical person and intentionally leave aside
political or societal issues as secondary interests.

From a more practical side, the leader of the Mannerheim Museum is continually
torn between two important but quite diverging fields of action and expertise.
On the one hand, the accumulated information and scientific approach to the
history of Marshal Mannerheim requires attention, if the museum wants to not
only maintain but to enforce its role in society as a memory organisation based
on historical research. On the other hand, as a professional museum, not too
much time should be put into the details of biographical history, but rather
into direct museological activities. In a home museum this is a normal, time
challenging conflict, and both sides of such museum work are strongly needed.
We must respond to both peer pressure and public pressure, to equally ensure
knowledge about Mannerheim and the implementation of museological skills.
As one house museum colleague put it, the priority must always be the day-to-
day running of the site and the care of the property. In the home of Churchill,
general awareness focuses often on his wartime leadership, but the museum is
a place where other stories of his private life are told.10

In the case of Mannerheim, the display of furniture and objects in his private
home feels like a striking autobiography. His memoirs being very scarce on
information about the self, his home is much more explicit and eloquent in
this sense. It is possible that objects were moved around and removed, but the
element of self-representation is still present.

Towards a Collective Biography

Significant lives are important components of society. They do not represent
only microhistory or curiosities, but together form a collective biography. As
in literature, museums can be seen forming entities, where group biographies
emerge. An artistic community arouse around the area of Lake Tuusula in the late
19th century, and there are now several museums that commemorate the work
of the artists and cultural figures that lived there: Juhani Aho (1861–1921), Eero
Järnefelt (1863–1937), Pekka Halonen (1865–1933), Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
and J.H. Erkko (1849–1906). These artists and cultural figures together form
a collective biography of the fin-de-siècle artists in Finland. They have unique
fates, but together represent issues such as national romanticism, international
orientation, artist couples, the young Fennoman movement among artists, and so

10. Katherine Carter, project curator and collections manager at Chartwell, questionnaire during
the Illustres 2019 meeting.
222 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

on. If we take this idea of a collective biography to a higher level of abstraction,

Finnish illustres such as Pekka Halonen, Amos Anderson, Alvar Aalto and Tove
Jansson do not have as much in common, as historical persons, as their home
museums do. In each of these, the museological questions are the same. How did
they emerge? What do they today identify as their strategic core competence?
How authentic are their collections? A history of humankind united by each
different fate is not possible, but a European or global biography of museums
dedicated to significant lives could be worth a try.

The story of Mannerheim and the stories of other European great men together
form, through research on their lives and their authentic home museums, a col-
lection of significant lives. In the end, it is not about individual history. Home
museums in general present a bird’s eye on how societies, history and individual
actors interact in the world.

Homes become excellent museums because of their ideal size and human-interest
content, and because they serve a perfect narrative of history in a concise form. It
is a no-brainer to understand that the former inhabitant completely still dictates
the psychology of the museum many decades after it has been established. The
special atmosphere depends on the interests of the main figure; many are those
amateurs of history who only concentrate on one particular destiny.

However, gone are the days when the public would be grateful just to enter the
mysterious, dusty estate of their idol. Home museum visitors today – and mu-
seum professionals often form a part of the visitors – are educated and not that
easily impressed. They have many requirements on their agenda: the museum
webpages must be clear and up-to-date with virtual tours, there must frequently
be new interesting exhibitions, the collections should be opened as open data,
there should be pedagogic and V.I.P. events and tours and the merchandise
should be both intellectual and fun. Therefore, the current level of relevance of
the museum and that of its protagonist are probably the most important factors
influencing the museum’s work.

In all museums, there is always the risk of changing values in current museum
work and the interpretation of the historical figure in question. The interna-
tional dimensions of national heroes are possible to exhibit only in those lucky
circumstances where the political atmosphere allows this. If the celebrity is only
a private individual and thus not representative of his nation, the use and abuse
of his character, however, could reveal crucial features about society.

The Significance of Collections in Home Museums

I do not build just for us, I build for the five hundred years to come.11

11. “En rakenna vain meitä varten, vaan viideksisadaksi vuodeksi eteenpäin.” Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
Gallen-Kallela 1956, p. 240; 1992, p. 624.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  223

We now introduce and analyse two house museums in Finland as case studies.
The museums are viewed through their collection profile. A museum’s collection
plays a crucial role in the forming of a museum’s identity. Even though both
example museums can be categorised as house museums, their surrounding
walls, collections, history and everyday practices all affect the way the museum
interprets and forms its identity. The two museums compared here are the Man-
nerheim Museum in Helsinki and the Gallen-Kallela Museum in Espoo. Both
museums are linked to historical persons who have undisputed status in Finnish
cultural history, Gustaf Mannerheim and Akseli Gallen-Kallela. However, when
looking at the history of these museums and their current collection profiles,
the two are rather different, as were the two characters in their own time. These
museums act as case studies; the Mannerheim museum as an example of the
proposed home museum type and the Gallen-Kallela Museum as a mirror and
comparison, an example of a versatile house museum that is difficult to classify.

All museum collections have three things in common: the collection is made
up of objects that hold a meaning or some form of cultural value, the objects
within the collections come to us from the past and they have been assembled
with intention by someone (Pearce 1992, p. 7). This is true in both of our case
studies. Both museum collections consist of objects that are regarded as mean-
ingful, originally to the historical person who collected and owned them, and
consequently to the person who made them immortal as part of the museum
collection, i.e., the person responsible for the museumification process. The
materiality of the house museum is doubly layered: an archive within an archive,
both container and contained (Hancock 2009, p. 114). The objects are indeed
from the past, but interestingly with two layers of history, the first layer being the
objects’ past in the eyes of the original collector or possessor, the second being
the time period, now past, of the historical person. The intention in assembling is
where these two example museums differ somewhat (see also Häyhä, Jantunen
& Paaskoski, this volume).

What makes the collections of home museums special is that they are strongly
linked to the historical person, by the act of his own possessing, collecting,
arranging or making of them. It is also important to note that without collec-
tions, the house of even the most distinguished person is not actually a home
museum. A home museum is an entirety given, ready to be interpreted. It is a
spontaneous museum form, when compared to intentionally assembled museum
collections. A home museum does not just represent the historical person; it is
the historical person.

The Mannerheim Museum

The Mannerheim Museum is the former home of Gustaf Mannerheim, located in
Helsinki near Kaivopuisto Park. It is a private Eden for a public man, a baron, a
soldier, the Marshal of Finland, President and an integral part of Finnish history.
The house was Mannerheim’s home for 26 years, from 1924 to 1951. It was his
home, a place for entertaining and a place for exhibiting his life. Mannerheim
224 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

took great care in creating a place for himself where he would be surrounded by
not just beautiful things, but things of personal meaning and cultural value. He
decorated his home with finesse and was inspired by the things he had seen and
experienced during his life. In his home, Mannerheim created an identity and a
sense of history not only for himself, but also for guests to see and reflect upon.
He saw his house as an entity to which various parts contributed. In a sense the
house is a Gesamtkunstwerk created in the shape of a home.

When Gustaf Mannerheim died in 1951, the Mannerheim Foundation thought it

important that the home of Mannerheim be preserved, and its doors opened to
the public (von Fersen 2007, p. 81). The house was in a way cocooned in a time
capsule, where it remains today. The interiors and objects are left as they were
when Mannerheim himself resided in the house; the feeling of a home remains,
although some changes have been made to the interior since Mannerheim’s death.
In 1951, the rooms on the first floor of the house were occupied by the Archive of
War Accidents, and Mannerheim used the rooms on the second floor. Some of
Mannerheim’s furniture and objects were at this point also placed in his other
residence, Kirkniemi Manor, in Lohja. When Mannerheim died, the interior of
his home in Kaivopuisto was returned to how it was before the Second World
War. This transformation was largely carried out by Major O. R. Bäckman, the
first intendent of the museum, Mannerheim’s younger aide-de-camp (von Fersen
2007, p. 83; Ojala 2001, pp. 32–34; Klinge 2016, pp. 211–212).

It is worth contemplating as to how much these decisions made after Man-

nerheim’s death in fact affect the authenticity of the home museum. It is also
important to note that preserving his home as a museum was not in fact Gustaf
Mannerheim’s intent, but an idea that arouse after his death by people who
wanted to honour his memory. Mannerheim’s own thoughts about his home
being made into a museum remain unknown. It is safe to say that he did have
his own public image in mind when creating his ideal home. His private home
was always a public space. In this sense the museum could be seen as an au-
tobiographical museum; it is a collection created and curated by the historical
person himself (Hill 2012; Nemec 2012). But since Mannerheim, as far as we
know, didn’t plan on the museumification of his home, the term autobiographical
exhibition seems more suitable. His house was a meticulously curated exhibi-
tion of his life. Today, one of the missions of the museum is to preserve and
secure Gustaf Mannerheim’s home and present him through the variety of his
interests, strengths and achievements. This mission can be fulfilled through
the home museum.

The collection profile of the Mannerheim Museum is rather clear and distinct.
The collection consists mainly of cultural historical objects that were Gustaf Man-
nerheim’s personal property and parts of the decor of his home in Kaivopuisto.
In addition to the movables, the museum collection also holds Mannerheim’s
personal library and archive materials, including Mannerheim’s old photograph
collection. When Mannerheim died, his estate remained intact aside from a few
items inherited by his two daughters and some objects given to his friends and
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  225

relatives (Ojala 2001, pp. 34–35). The object collection, together with the house
and its interior, form a coherent entity that is respectful towards Mannerheim’s
own vision. For this reason, the museum’s collection policy states that collection
acquisitions are made with careful consideration, and additions or changes to
the decor of the house are nearly non-existent. Modifying this museumified
home would be altering history.

The Mannerheim Museum can be classified as an example of a home museum.

It is a documentary historic house museum, the home of a hero, a personality
house or a key original, if chosen to be classified with the categories presented
in the first chapter. In a sense, the Mannerheim Museum is a house museum
easy to categorise; it ticks all the boxes of a home museum.

The Gallen-Kallela Museum

The history of the Gallen-Kallela Museum is more complicated. The museum is
a former home and atelier of the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The museum area
consists of the atelier building, old summer house Villa Linudd, a smoke sauna
and the grounds with a garden. Akseli Gallen-Kallela designed and built the
atelier building Tarvaspää from 1911 to 1913. Additional changes to the building
and interiors were made in 1926. Gallen-Kallela started planning and designing
this second atelier building in 1908.12 The idea of the atelier building being a
public place, and even a museum, was part of the plan from the very start. The
building shows signs of being influenced by museum architecture in Finland
of that time (Wahlroos 2008, p. 22, p. 36, p. 46). The artist had continuity and
history in mind, for he did not build his atelier just for him and his family, but
for the next 500 years. Gallen-Kallela cared for his legacy and felt concern for
his life’s work disappearing and intentionally did what he could to preserve it
for future generations (Gallen-Kallela 1956, p. 240; 1992, p. 624).

However, the sudden death of Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1931 started a chain of

events that affected the museum’s evolving profile and derailed it from the art-
ist’s own vision. Complicated inheritance issues divided the artist’s art works,
belongings and houses among his wife, daughter and son. His estate scattered and
the atelier building went through different stages in the following years. During
the Second World War it was used as a base for the military’s Intelligence and
Reconnaissance Department and after the war for nearly ten years the building
remained uninhabited (Raivio 2008, p. 80). When the Gallen-Kallela Museum
was finally opened in 1961, the creation of a home museum like the Mannerheim
Museum was impossible. Although, we might wonder, was it ever even really
Gallen-Kallela’s intention to showcase his life in the form of a home museum?
Or is it in fact so that the current form, a sort of an autobiographical museum,
is closer to the artist’s vision? Today the museum functions as an Akseli Gal-
len-Kallela information centre and exhibition space for Gallen-Kallela’s art and
contemporary art. The museum’s main function is to cherish the work of Akseli

12. Akseli Gallen-Kallela designed and built his first atelier Kalela in 1895 in Ruovesi, Finland.
226 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Gallen-Kallela and maintain the public’s interest towards him (Statutes of the
Akseli Gallen-Kallela Museum Foundation). The collections are both a source
of information and a vessel for achieving the museum’s main goal.

The Gallen-Kallela Museum’s collections are diverse. The collections consist of

art, cultural historical objects and archive material, including old photographs
and Akseli and Mary Gallen-Kallela’s personal library. The collection base was
formed at the same time the museum was founded and has grown mainly through
donations during its years of operation. It is noteworthy to acknowledge the in-
fluence of the donors on the museum collection and their impact on the current
collection profile. Acquisitions have been sparse due to the confined collection
profile. The terms for acquisitions are described in the museum’s collection policy
and state that the museum collects and documents Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s art, as
well as materials and objects related to his life’s work (the Gallen-Kallela Museum
collection policy). The provenience and connection to Akseli Gallen-Kallela are
the main criteria when considering acquisitions. The collection is movable in the
sense that it is not tied to a preserved home interior. This allows collection loans
and more freedom in exhibition planning. Yet interestingly, a preserved atelier
or a home interior is what museum visitors sometimes expect. A biographical
interest towards the artist and his family life is continuous.

In terms of classification, the Gallen-Kallela museum is a bit trickier. It is a doc-

umentary historic house museum, the home of a hero or a personality house, if
classified with the categories presented earlier. However, it can also be placed in
the category of a representative historic house museum in Buther-Younghan’s
classification, design in Linda Young’s classification and as a house of beauty
according to the DEMHIST categorisation. By Stefan Bohman’s categorisation,
the museum would be an exhibition space, which it is, but not solely for Akseli
Gallen-Kallela related exhibitions, as it also has contemporary art linked to Gal-
len-Kallela. Because of the missing home interior, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
does not entirely fit the presented home museum category, even though the
main character is strongly present in the house.

Evaluating and Preserving Biographical Collections

Both museums are identifiably house museums, though their collection history
and collection profiles are different. The collections of the museums can be de-
scribed as biographical; the collections are remnants of lives lived. They act as
narratives and witnesses of a person’s life and experiences. The collections act
as mirrors, of the original person and his or her views, but also of us, our ways
of interpretation and re-interpretation. Intimate personal belongings carry emo-
tional meaning and provide an essential humanizing effect and authentication
to a house museum (Forgan 2012, p. 257, p. 261). The collections and singular
objects that were once used by a historical person and story emanate a certain
power that can create sensation and resonance in the viewer (Hancock 2009,
pp. 114–115). Their personal connection to a historical person can give an ob-
ject a vast amount of authentication and value. The shared history of an object
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  227

and a person create importance. A uniform that Gustaf Mannerheim used or

a paintbrush that Akseli Gallen-Kallela painted with are laden with emotional
charge and verification.

A former home tells us of the interests and values of the historical person. What
sort of objects did this person think were meaningful enough to have in his or her
life and home? The collections of home museums were curated by the museum’s
main character and for that reason hold a certain meaning and personality. Both
museums, even though different in appearance, are in identity and even strategy,
blessed with an asset that combines the building and the collections with the
historical person. Their main character is identifiable and certainly reflects the
origin of the spirit of the place. Both museums house the characteristic spirit
of the person in question (Stanisforth 2014, pp. 60–61; Bohman 2010, p. 80).

With both museums, the identity of the museum is formed from various factors
– the main character, the collection and the house or the building. Gustaf Man-
nerheim and Akseli Gallen-Kallela both had several other homes during their
lifetime, so what makes these museums or their collections special?13 For that
reason, the museums’ identities are also connected to a certain time period; the
time spent in those particular houses. This confined time period and connection
to a place influence their collection profiles and collection policies. For example,
the Mannerheim Museum focuses largely on preserving and researching the
collections linked to his home in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki. In the Gallen-Kallela
Museum’s collections, objects that have a direct link to Tarvaspää have a certain
value added to them. Authenticity is ever stronger, when the mentioned factors
fit together and form a coherent entirety.

Despite their differing collection profiles, both the Mannerheim Museum and the
Gallen-Kallela Museum face the same difficulties when it comes to preserving a
house museum. The Mannerheim Museum’s collection is a stagnant collection
in the sense that the museum objects have been in their places for almost 100
years, with little to no disturbance in nearly 70 years. Unfortunately, however,
stagnation does not mean safety. House museums share a common risk, as the
houses that hold the collections are not originally built to function as museums.
The Mannerheim Museum building is an old wooden villa from 1873 with drafty
corners. The Gallen-Kallela Museum is an artist atelier building, a cold stone
building with large windows designed to let light in. Both houses react to the
changes of the weather and seasons. The possibilities for creating ideal muse-
ological conditions for the buildings and the collections are limited. Museum
professionals in house museums don’t always have the luxury of storing museum
objects in perfectly monitored collection spaces, where warmth and humidity
can be controlled, nor can the items on display be changed when needed.

13. During his lifetime, Akseli Gallen-Kallela lived in various places, in Finland and abroad. His other
atelier in Ruovesi still exists, but it is a private home rather than a museum. Gustaf Mannerheim
likewise had several homes during his lifetime. The Mannerheim Museum, however, is the only one
museumified.
228 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

In addition to preventive conservation and concrete measures in the maintenance

of the house, house museums are required to manage the spirit of the place.
This is an intangible attribute and in many cases the reason and warranty for
a house museum’s existence. It is not an easy task balancing between keeping
collections safe and stabilised and at the same time trying to respond to the
needs of the audience.

On the Authenticity in Home Museums

Authenticity – the level, interpretation and creation of it, are issues often dis-
cussed in the house museum context. Authenticity is one of the basic concepts
of museology and the term authentic is often seen as related to the original and
genuine. Traditionally, authenticity in museums has been regarded as an attri-
bution of an object or set of objects and is associated with a sense of timelessness
(Hohenstein & Moussouri 2017, p. 138). It is a difficult concept, because it implies
that one thing is more genuine in comparison to another thing. But sometimes it
may be difficult to define what the other thing actually is (Bohman 2010, p. 186).

In addition, authenticity is a relative concept, and it changes depending on who’s

decoding it. There is no one and only definition for authenticity, but interpreta-
tions and the way museums use authenticity in evaluating their collections offer
a useful base on which to create one’s view on authenticity. In one museological
deconstruction of the concept, authenticity is formed from three main relations:
the relation between object and maker, the relation between original and copy
and the relation between factual and actual identity (van Mensch 1992, chapter
16; Savage 1976, p. 42). This way of interpreting the concept seems to fit the
discussion of authenticity in house museums. Authenticity in a house museum
could also be evaluated from different angles, such as authenticity linked to
origin, to form, to provenance and state, and to the role and use of the place
(Saule 2014, pp. 104–106).

Every material object eventually degrades. Wear and tear are symptoms and
signs of age and the conditions that a museum object has been subjected to.
Even though we like to talk about home (or house) museums as unchanging
windows to the past, the truth is, that the past looked different from how it is
presented today. The textiles on couches and curtains were more vibrant, the
surface of the wooden desk shinier and the floors had less wear on them. Since
visual change is eventual, every house museum is at one point faced with the
question of authenticity in relation to conservation and restoration. The choices
that are made should always be justifiable and based on research. Decisions
regarding conservation and restoration procedures are done individually, case-
by-case, and on the terms of the museum. A chosen level of restoration might
be suitable for one museum but much too invasive for another, and might in
fact work against the illusion of authenticity. Preventive conservation is of the
utmost importance when dealing with historical houses; it decreases the need
for invasive procedures.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  229

Is the level of authenticity altered if the wallpaper of a house museum is a re-

production instead of original or if the furniture has been refurbished to look
like new? And what is more important, authenticity in the sense of originality
or authenticity in the sense of experience? In the case of house museums, the
definition of authenticity is created not only by museum professionals, but also
by the audience. Since authenticity as a concept is subjective and ambiguous,
the feeling and sense of real and authentic have a strong influence on the per-
ceived authenticity of a museum. We argue that in the case of house museums,
and especially home museums, these factors are the most important features.

A museum visitor is immersed in history by an authentic setting. But authenticity

is not to be confused with a time-machine, offering us a one-to-one impression of
the past. Instead, it is a guiding principle to achieve a feeling that the appearance
of a room is in balance, evokes a picture of the past and offers an impression
of historicity (Horn & Wittwer 2014, p. 122). What matters is less an absolute
standard of authenticity and more an understanding of the expectations brought
by visitors to each site (Young 2014, p. 131).14 Following these arguments, an
interior in its original state is not necessarily more authentic than a refurbished
interior, if the perception of authenticity is also achieved in the latter. A fresh and
redecorated home interior might be authenticity of the decadent type, but when
done well and based on research, might suit the cause better than a badly worn
but original interior. The question of the time period chosen is also inherent to
the discussion of authenticity. If a home museum is restored to a certain time
period, it is important to notice why this choice was or is made. It should be
assessed as to what information might be lost in the process and what matters
are in turn emphasised.

Home museums are required to succeed at a certain level of authenticity, a

level sometimes impossible to reach. Many of the same arguments on authen-
ticity applied to house museums also apply to home museums. However, home
museums are probably expected to deliver the highest kind of authenticity,
uniqueness and a past frozen in time. The spirit of the place is an essential part
of discussion also in matters of authenticity. In a home museum, the perception
of authenticity is created from three different angles: the historical person (his
or her relation to the collection and the place), the collection (its relation to the
person and the place) and the place (its relation to the person and the collection).
A home museum is at its most authentic level and has a qualitative richness
when these components correspond to each other. The level of authenticity in
a home museum is affected by various pieces of the puzzle:

How well the person, the collection and the place are conjoined

How well the original intention of the historical person is followed

How well the collection profile is defined

14. For more on authenticity and visitor perceptions, see for example Hohenstein & Moussouri 2017,
pp. 136–169; Morris Hargreaves McIntyre 2015; Peirce et al. 2014.
230 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

How well the place is preserved

How much of the place has been reconstructed and how true to the orig-
inal the reconstructions are

How truthful and objective the museum is in its presentation.

The original intent of the historical person is also something to contemplate in

relation to authenticity. Let us look at the case studies again. Gustaf Mannerheim
would not have had his home looking worn or untidy. He would have changed
worn-out curtains and kept his silver polished. But he did enjoy the antique style
of his home. Should the museum follow this example or is the upholstery on the
furniture more valuable when it is the actual textile that Mannerheim himself
sat on? The Gallen-Kallela Museum today functions mainly as an exhibition
space and the present exhibition rooms are former atelier or gallery rooms
of the artist. Gallen-Kallela designed his atelier to be flooded with light from
the large windows, but today’s museological requirements of museum lighting
restrict the amount of light allowed in an exhibition space. The original, and
in its way authentic vision, must be superseded for the benefit of the museum.
Would Gallen-Kallela agree with this change? We cannot say.

In the end, the level of authenticity in each house museum is a product of several
factors. The definition and level are created from the starting point through
to the care, use and public’s views and expectations. The desired authenticity
level is not always possible for a museum, and one has to make do with what
is available. Every house or home museum deals with shared, but at the same
time very distinctive issues, and decisions on conserving and redecorating are
as unique as each home and the historical person in question.

Conclusions
In this context, it is problematic and unnecessary to speak about home museums
in geographical or national terms. The Finnish home museum does not in itself
differ from the European home museum. All museums are of course unique – one
Spanish home museum can be more like a Finnish home museum than another
Finnish one might be, if the significant lives who lived in them had common
political, professional, economic or other features. An artist’s house might raise
similar questions whether it’s in the quiet countryside or in a vibrant metro-
pole. The division lies crucially in how professional the museum is, what kind
of identity it has and if it is run by an academic visionary or a staff just taking
care of the home. We have also argued that the attitude the museum staff takes
regarding its main figure is essential.

With some exceptions, however, the Finnish museum field does not, for example,
so eagerly concentrate on the great men per se, and instead tries to extend and
enlarge the focus from the person himself or herself to larger topics such as liter-
ature, societal debate or historical contemporality. This can be a problem, if the
museum deviates too far from its core mission and artificially wants to recreate
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  231

a new identity to serve not its own logics, but rather the demands of the outside
world. European home museums seem to have a little less problematic identity
when it comes to the underlying raison d’être of the museumified home of a
remarkable person, and uses this as a vehicle for transmitting cultural heritage.

Museum studies are – or should be – about the philosophy of history. If mu-

seums used to be positivist collections of certain things, today their role is as
much pedagogic as schools, universities and training programmes. Despite this
common belief, home museums are not sanctuaries of objective truths, but
always remain interpretations and constructions of the past. Home museums
are subjective in at least two regards. They consist of a collection of a particular
historical person and the home that he or she created (or lived in) – but it also
consists of multiple choices made after the person’s death, which take place in
the process of museumification.

A third subjective layer would be the choices that have to be made every day in
museum work – to repair, conserve or reconstruct? The high demand of authen-
ticity is hard to fulfil, and full authenticity is impossible. Even a home museum
is a changing home; neither homes nor museums are static.

The (professional) home museums have a two-fold advantage: both the impres-
sive quality and quantity of authentic collections, and a self-awareness about
the many issues connected to the status of an illuster. Moreover, and perhaps
as the most important factor, they attire with their genius loci the entirety of a
private home made accessible to a visitor. Historical home museums add certain
insights to the explanation of history that cannot be found in academic studies
alone. They present and represent both knowledge and a strong emotional expe-
rience of the past. In fact, the process of getting to know a historically important
figure should begin, but certainly not end, with the acquaintance of his home.

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236 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

The TAKO Network – Developing

collections together
Teemu Ahola
Abstract
This chapter sheds light on some of the main challenges that museums in Fin-
land and elsewhere face regarding the development and management of their
collections. How museums are able to manage the accumulating mass of potential
museum objects has been the most important question for a while. Museums
have to find sustainable solutions to this matter in order to maintain high-qual-
ity collections and efficient processes. At the moment museums are more or
less struggling with unclear collection profiles and overlapping collecting with
other museums. This leads to inefficient collection management and lower-qual-
ity collections. Museums are not able to tackle these large-scale challenges by
themselves. National co-operation in collection management is the key issue
for improvement of collection processes. In this work, the nationwide network
for collections management co-operation and contemporary documentation,
TAKO, has played a central role. Established in 2009, TAKO is an open network
for all professional museums in Finland. The information regarding the net-
work and its operations is public and available to all ([Link] This
chapter examines the processes and development of collection management in
Finnish museums through the TAKO Network and its operations. The chapter
concentrates on the two main modes of operation regarding the TAKO Network:
contemporary documentation and the nationwide division of collecting duties.
The latter in particular is designed to improve the quality of collections and
collections management through co-operation.

Keywords: collection management, contemporary documentation, collecting

duties, networking

The Main Challenges in Collection Management

Many of the main challenges regarding collection management are linked with
the acquisition processes. The first issue is the huge volume of potential museum
objects that our modern mass-production society has produced for decades. Long
gone are the days when regionally produced, hand-crafted objects were unique
and few in number. Contemporary museum objects are most often mass-pro-
duced items that have no unique features based on regionality, independent
manufacturer, etc. This overflow of diverse objects makes it demanding to ex-
ecute planned and high-quality acquisitions. The need for clarified acquisition
policies is thus clear.

From a historical perspective, many museums in Finland have had quite loose
principles concerning obtaining material for their collections. In many cases,
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  237

there have not been any specific predefined acquisition guidelines. Eventually,
this has led to the point where the physical storage of objects has become very
limited, a common problem both in Finnish museums and globally. High-qual-
ity storage space is expensive to maintain and therefore there are quite strict
economic limitations to purchasing more storage for persistently growing col-
lections. The historical trend of loose acquisitions, combined with the massive
numbers of contemporary potential museum objects, is extremely challenging
for the management and development of museum collections. This problem was
recognised already at the beginning of the 2000s by professor Janne Vilkuna
(2000, p. 92).

Unplanned acquisition activities have left museums in a situation where they are
not fully aware of the contents of their uncatalogued collections. Many museums
are struggling to get a handle on the unidentified and unprocessed parts of their
collections. The amount of work resources that has to be directed to managing
old collections, such as inventory, cataloguing and disposal tasks, is significant.
These resources are inevitably taken away from managing new acquisitions and
other collection management tasks.

The missing information regarding the contents of uncatalogued collections

makes it very hard to perform planned acquisitions. The other issue to emphasise
is the level of knowledge regarding collections among museums. Traditionally
museums have not been that keen to exchange information regarding collections
and their contents with each other. The main reason has been the lack of tools
for exchanging information, not the fact that museums would protect or hide
information. The exchange of information has usually been linked only to exhibi-
tions and loan agreements. In order to execute high-quality acquisition policies,
museums should be very interested in what other museums are preserving in their
collections. This is one of the key features for raising the quality of collections on
the level of individual museums, as well as on the national level. Museums need
to see the overall picture of collections and the activities linked to them. This
has an effect on almost everything regarding collections management – acqui-
sition decisions, deaccession and disposals, collections relocations and storage
space rearrangements, to mention a few. As Susan Pearce has stated, collections
policies and their operations play a key part in the process in which museum
meanings are constructed. Collections policies are not passive or neutral tools
that are decided elsewhere. They are the most crucial elements for active and
developing museums (Pearce 1992, p. 136). In this process an increased level
of shared knowledge is key when pushing museum collection management to
the next level in Finland (see also Sarantola-Weiss, this volume).

Developing collection management and getting rid of unclear and loose policies
is clearly linked to sustainability and a sustainable economy. For their part,
museums have to actively seek solutions for a sustainable future. Museums
have great potential to be more significant actors in society. As Nina Robbins
writes in this volume: “The task is to make the heritage sector matter in a so-
ciety where the turnover of themes and circulation of events is accelerating”.
238 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Striving towards a sustainable future is a critical point for museums regarding

being a significant actor in and contributor to society. This is also a critical issue
for collection management in order for it to succeed in the future. I argue that
museums will not succeed in this without co-operation.

National Collection Networking in Finland

The discussion regarding the development of collection management has been
increasing in Finland since the beginning of the millennium. The museum policy
programme published in 1999 stressed the need for collection policies (Komite-
anmietintö 1999, pp. 52–53). This gave a boost to the first round of new collection
policies. These collection policies gave museums an opportunity to explore and
examine the processes of collection management in different museums. These
policies were the first opportunity for museums to create nationwide benchmark-
ing, learn from best-practice solutions and get to know the other museums better.

The published collection policies also generated dialogues and new openings
regarding deaccession and disposals. These issues had been very problematic in
the museum field, mainly because of the lack of general discussion and written
guidelines. Especially with deaccessions and disposals, the written guidelines
and best-practice solutions were extremely important for museums when de-
veloping their collections management. The various challenges of deaccessions
and disposals procedures were central to current collection management topics
(Kostet 2009, pp. 157–160).

After collection management had surfaced in the public realm of the museum
field, the next phase of the process was the question of co-operation among
museums. Museums were creating collection policies and developing their pro-
cedures actively, but mostly in isolation. There were no actual tools or forums for
developing collection management together or sharing thoughts and practices.
The need for collaboration was obvious.

The Birth of the TAKO Network

The National Board of Antiquities, now known as the Finnish Heritage Agency,
acknowledged the need for a forum of co-operation, and in 2009 established a
national network that would deal with issues of collections management and
co-operation (Hakomäki & Metsänkylä 2009, p. 9). This network was named
TAKO: Tallennus- ja kokoelmayhteistyöverkosto (The Nationwide network for
collections management co-operation and contemporary documentation).

The network is led by a steering group that consists of the chair and seven board
members. These seven members act as chairs of the contemporary documentation
groups, or pools, as they are called by the network. In addition, there are two
secretaries in the steering group. The chair and the rest of the steering group
come from different museums, where they have their full-time positions. This
also applies to the secretaries who come from the Finnish Heritage Agency. The
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  239

network is run on a voluntary basis; nobody is paid a salary by the network.

Running a nationwide network in this manner is a strong indication of how
important this work is seen to be by museum professionals and their organi-
sations. Museums clearly see the cumulative benefits of TAKO when they give
their own work resources to the network. Museum professionals themselves are
highly motivated, which is the main reason why they give their limited time to
this networking and development work. All this results in active and flexible
operations.

There are no fixed terms for the chair or members of the steering group. This
allows the needed flexibility for the voluntary network. Over the years, this has
been quite an ideal situation, where the formation of the steering group has
been handled in a controlled manner. One may say that it is important for the
network to get new ideas and visions to develop further. Yet at the same time,
the network needs its senior members, with their experience and perspectives.
The members of the steering group have changed over the years but there have
always been senior members included as well. The chairs have also been rotated.
Johanna Jakomaa, the current chair from the Satakunta Museum, is the third
chair in the TAKO Network. She was preceded by Minna Sarantola-Weiss from
the Helsinki City Museum and Teemu Ahola from the Tampere Museums.

The fundamental purpose of the network is to develop collections management

and bring collection professionals together. TAKO is a hub for new openings
regarding all kinds of collections activities. The network has two main modes of
operation for development work: contemporary documentation activities and
the nationwide division of collecting duties.

Contemporary Documentation
The steering group was elected by members of the museum field in a constitutive
meeting in 2009. After its organisation, the steering group began working to
establish network structure and operations. When establishing a new network,
building up enthusiasm with the museum community is extremely important.
The steering group had many options regarding how to initiate co-operation.
It was realised that the first modus operandi should be something museums
felt important, but also fun and natural to do. Therefore, it was decided that its
first action would be the creation of a concept for contemporary documentation
(TAKO Annual Report 2009, pp. 1–2).

With contemporary documentation, museums together would record themes

from the present day and preserve them in their collections. Documentation may
be done in various ways, including photographing, video recordings, interview-
ing people (figure 1), making observations of the documented themes, making
drawings and collecting objects. The fundamental idea is to grasp important and
interesting contemporary themes and phenomena for collections.
240 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Figure 1. Executing contemporary documentation. Photo: Saana Säilynoja.

When creating the system, Sweden was a role model. In Sweden, museums had
worked together in the area of contemporary documentation activities since the
1970s. We examined their system, called SAMDOK (the name SAMDOK derives
from Swedish words samtid (present time) and dokumentation (documentation),
and we decided that with some small adjustments it would be appropriate for
Finnish museums as well.

SAMDOK had a structure where social and cultural topics were divided themat-
ically into several categories that were called pools. In these pools, museums
operated together by documenting certain themes in joint projects (Fägerborg
2008, pp. 14–15).

The pool structure was therefore adopted from the Swedish model and further
developed. The Finnish version included seven pools. The pool structure was
introduced and explained to the museum staff and they were invited to join the
pools of their choosing. The idea of networking, contemporary documentation
and the pool system received very positive and enthusiastic feedback from pro-
fessionals in the museum field (Hakomäki 2008). The network began to grow
rapidly, and pools began their operations.

The Pool System

Museums are free to join any pool they wish. They can be part of one or of several
pools, and they are free to change between pools as they wish. Therefore, it is
possible for a museum to take part in one individual documentation project, be
a long-term member of a pool, or take a position somewhere in between. In this
way, joining a pool has been made as easy and intriguing as possible.

The pools are:

• Pool 1: Human and Nature

Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  241

• Pool 2: Individuals, communities and the public sector

• Pool 3: Everyday life
• Pool 4: Production, services and working life
• Pool 5: Communications, traffic and tourism
• Pool 6: Art, education and the personal experience
• Pool 7: Trends, prominent figures and national turning points.

As with the SAMDOK model, the pools in TAKO try to represent the most essen-
tial themes in society, culture and human life. Although the pools are far from
all-inclusive, they have served their purpose well.

Each pool has a chair who is also a member of the steering group. In this way,
information inside the network and among the steering groups and the field
is coordinated as efficiently as possible. The pool decides independently what
themes they want to document and how the documentation will be carried out.
A pool is also free to join projects other than just contemporary documentation.
There have been very versatile projects regarding collections management and
development. Pools have, for example, created guidelines for deaccession and
disposals and have created guidelines for firms and corporations on how they
can preserve their histories (TAKO Webpage [Link]
hankkeiden-raportteja). Pools apply for funding for projects independently, from
different sources. The TAKO Network does not finance any projects, but instead
it has a yearly budget for travelling costs and the arranging of two seminars per
year. This means that members of pools are able to travel to pool meetings at no
cost to themselves (figure 2). This has made it possible, especially for members
from small museums and those who are in remote locations, to travel and meet
colleagues around the country.

Figure 2. Recollecting food-related memories from the 1970s in pool 7. Photo: Reetta Lepistö

Creating a Model for the Nationwide Division of

Collecting Duties
Contemporary documentation activities were a success and gave a nice start
to the co-operation. Museum staff was brought together, and they got to know
each other quickly. This resulted in active interaction, with quite steep learning
242 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

curves, and an exchange of best-practice solutions. Bonding and mutual trust

were being built, which are essential for successful networking (TAKO Annual
Report 2010–2011, pp. 1–2).

After three years of active co-operation, in 2012 the network was ready for taking
the next step in development. From the beginning, there had been an ambitious
goal to create a system that would divide collecting responsibilities and deepen
collaboration within the field. The work of establishing a model for the nation-
wide division of collecting duties began (TAKO Annual Report 2012, pp. 1–2).

What are the purpose and main features of this model? Firstly, the model tries to
create an overall picture of the field of collecting activities in Finland. The model
influences the central themes that museums preserve in their collections. This
is essential when trying to understand the structure of museum collections on
a national scale. With the model, it is possible to grasp the big picture of active
collecting themes in Finland.

Secondly, with the model it is possible to determine any overlapping areas of

collecting. Overlapping means that there are exactly the same themes that two
or more museums are involved in regarding collecting. Pinpointing and reducing
these areas is extremely important in order to save work resources and collec-
tion storage space. Furthermore, with this kind of optimisation, the quality of
collections will eventually rise.

The third feature is identifying the themes that no museums are preserving sys-
tematically in their collections. In the model, these missing themes are nicknamed
as the musta aukko (black hole) of collecting. With the model, it is possible to
point out these black holes and arrange for museums to take care of them. By
eliminating overlapping areas and filling in any black holes, the field of collecting
is getting more balanced and inclusive. As an example of a black hole, the health
care sector is a huge and very important area that is not currently systemati-
cally preserved. Museums that work in this area have joined efforts to ensure
the preservation of this field. Plans on how to preserve the health care sector in
co-operation with dedicated museums are in process (Sinisalo 2017, pp. 6–7).
The lists of different black holes can be found in the TAKO-museums’ shared
intranet. There, museums are able to add new missing areas of collecting they
have found or pick a theme from the list to take care of.

The fourth major purpose of the model is to make an overall change in the
mindset of museum staff and encourage them to be more open. Traditionally,
the distribution of information regarding one museum’s own collection has
been quite limited and restricted. It is extremely important that museum staff
members are as open as possible towards their colleagues regarding collection
information. This is the key when raising the quality of collections and collection
management nationwide.

Since 2012, this model has been in development. It is an ongoing process that
will never be fully completed, as museums will continue to fine-tune its contents.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  243

This was not the first time that such a model was constructed, however. The
Finnish Heritage Agency appointed a working group to create a similar model
in the 1980s. The layout of the end result was very nice and balanced, but for
some reason museums did not adopt the model. Finally, the model withered
away. Some of the museums still acknowledged the system years later, so it did
not completely vanish, but on a national scale it was not in active use anymore
(Museovirasto 1987, pp. 1–8).

The approach of the new model was quite different compared to the older one.
In the 1980s, the work group defined the structure and contents of the model in
a top-down way. In 2012, it was the museums that did the defining work, along
with the coordinator of the project. The fundamental idea was to advance from
the grass-roots level upwards. Museums were guaranteed that they had a voice
in the process. Furthermore, the responsibilities that museums were given were
as concrete and realistic as possible regarding their own collecting activities.
This had probably been the largest obstacle for why the 1980s model did not
succeed. It lacked a proper voice in the museum field and therefore museums
did not adopt the concept.

The target group of the TAKO model was all of the professional cultural-histor-
ical museums in Finland, 114 museums altogether. Teemu Ahola, the head of
collections from the Finnish Labour Museums Werstas and member of the TAKO
steering group, was appointed as the coordinator of the project. He contacted
personally all of the museums presenting the idea of the concept, discussing the
role of the particular museum in the model. The approach was so time-consuming
that other types of museums were left out as target groups at this point. There-
fore, art museums, natural history museums and non-professional museums
did not participate in the creation of the model. It was seen as easier to begin
with cultural-historical museums and later expand the activity to other types
of museums (Ahola 2012).

The end product was not as balanced as its predecessor, but it was done in
co-operation with museums. To let museums be an integral part of the model’s
creation was essential. It took lot of working hours to discuss and design the
concept but by doing this, museums were ready to adopt the model. It was de-
signed by museums, for museums.

Features of the Model

The fundamental idea of the model for a nationwide division of collecting du-
ties is the same as that of contemporary documentation pools, i.e., to create a
scheme that includes the main areas or features of our society and human life
as comprehensively as possible. The model is a hierarchical entity divided into
seven main categories. Within every category, there are two or three hierarchical
of sub-categories; under them the actual collection duties can be found.

The topics of the categories are nearly identical to the pools of contemporary
documentation. The categories are:
244 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

• Category 1: Human and Nature

• Category 2: Individuals, communities and the public sector
• Category 3: Everyday life
• Category 4: Production, services and working life
• Category 5: Communications, traffic and tourism
• Category 6: Education, art, culture and exercise/sport
• Category 7: Trends, prominent figures and national turning points.

The only modification can be found from category 6, where sport and exercise
are included in the topic and personal experience has been taken away. The
exercise/sport theme was seen as a large and important theme, which therefore
should be already mentioned on the category level. At the same time, personal
experience was seen to be included in the themes of the topic without the need
to express it on the category level.

The core of the model consists of individual collecting duties. They are the specific
duties for which individual museums have chosen to take nationwide responsi-
bility. When a museum signs up for a certain duty, other museums are able to
leave that theme out of their own collecting activities. This reduces overlapping
collecting and releases resources for other uses.

When collecting duties were discussed with the museums, two issues were strong-
ly emphasised by the coordinator. Firstly, the duties that different museums
choose should be from the core themes of the museum’s collection profile. This
means that the duties museum chooses should come from the core themes of the
museum’s collecting activities and collection identity. Otherwise, the end result
would be inoperative and superficial. Secondly, the number of collecting duties
per museum is not relevant or important, according to the model. What matters
most is the realistic number of duties for which each museum is willing to take
responsibility. When taking nationwide responsibility for a theme, a museum
must be sure that it can carry out that responsibility, so that other museums
may be assured that the theme or themes will be taken care of. Therefore, quality
over quantity was the underlying message given to the museums.

A central feature of collecting duties is the nationwide nature of them. There

are different kinds of museums; some of them operate on the national level,
but most of them have physical regional boundaries where they carry out their
collecting activities. Being a part of the model does not change this basic setting.
The museums that operate regionally continue to also do so in the model. The
basic assumption is that contemporary objects are not tied regionally, if think-
ing about their physical composition or appearance. For example, a cellular
phone or an iPad is the same, no matter where it is collected. In the model, the
regionally collected objects are examples from nationwide cultural phenomena
that certain objects are linked to.

An important notion is that with the model, museums are not prohibited from
collecting whatever they want. Museums are free to execute their collecting
activities as they wish. Naturally, museums collect many themes that they have
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  245

not included in the model. The collecting that museums do outside the model
is their private decision, and does not show as part of this national activity. For
example, there are certain local themes that regional museums want to preserve
outside the model, without including them in their national responses. This is
quite natural for regional museums and therefore very acceptable.

It is also noteworthy that it is not mandatory to fulfil every collection duty every
year. Museums are allowed to also do zero collecting regarding their duties. It is
only natural that there are years when certain themes are not relevant.

There are total of 402 individual collecting duties in the present version of the
model. At the time of writing the total number of museums committed to the
model is close to one hundred. There are also certain duties that are divided
between two or more museums. In these cases, museums have discussed the
matter together and made agreements on how responsibilities are divided within
that particular duty. Duties like these are typically very large-scale in nature, for
example different branches of manufacturing and industry. In cases like these,
it is only good to have more than just one actor collecting themes and sharing
responsibility. An example of a large branch of industry would be that there are
several museums taking care of the textile industry, with different types of pro-
duction, product lines, raw materials, etc. It would be impossible for one museum
to cover all these large areas. Therefore, it is better, for example, to have some
museums take care of the linen industry, while others take care of cotton. Some
museums concentrate on documenting industrial processes and manufacturing,
while others take care of research and design.

Presenting the Model

There are different options to explore this quite large and complex model. The
first option is to explore the main categories and their contents. All the collection
duties are hierarchically listed with categories and sub-categories linked to duties.
Within each duty the responsible museums are listed as well.

The second option is the museum-based viewpoint. All the responsible muse-
ums are listed alphabetically, and within each museum one can find information
about what the collection duties are, for which a particular museum has taken
responsibility.

Furthermore, there is a visual tool that combines these two options and gives a
variety of filters for arranging data and information. All the material is free for
everyone to explore and can be found from the network’s website: [Link]
[Link]/tallennustyonjako.
246 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Figure 3. Visualisation of the model. Image: Roope Tahvanainen

Using the Model

When the nationwide division of collecting duties was launched into operation,
all participating museums signed a contract with the Finnish Heritage Agency.
In the contract, museums stated that they would take responsibility for the
duties specified in the model. In this way, the model received an official status
among the museums and their activities. The idea with the official contract
was also to support museums. Small regional museums in particular often find
themselves in a situation where they may have to justify their existence. Being
part of nationwide division of collecting duties, they are able to show that they
have national responsibilities within the museum field (TAKO Annual Report
2014, p. 1).

It is essential to mention that the model is a constantly developing entity. Mu-

seums and their collection activities are not stationary, and the world around
us is in constant change as well. The model must be able to face this ongoing
change. Therefore, it will never be complete or finished. The coordinator for
developing the TAKO model acts as an administrator of collecting duties, also
having reporting responsibilities.

Although the model is under constant development, all new modifications to it

are done through planning and coordination. It is hoped that museums would
modify their collecting duties as little as possible, so that the model could stay
consistent, especially on a long-term basis. There is a certain time period every
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  247

year, from September to December, when the model is opened for modifications.
During this time museums are able to adjust their collecting duties by adding new
duties and modifying or removing existing ones. All modifications are executed
by first discussing probable changes with the administrator of the model. After
their approval, modifications are published in the next update of the model. The
annual update is published in January in a change log, where everyone is able to
see the new modifications. The change log is open to the public on the network
website: [Link]

The publishing of the new update also opens the reporting period regarding
collecting activities of the previous year. All museums involved in the model
must report their activities of the previous calendar year. The reporting period
is from January to May/June. The reporting is done through a dedicated online
survey tool that was created especially for the model. Museums report the con-
tents of the collecting duties of that particular year. Reporting must be done in
a concise manner, with the emphasis on the qualitative rather than the quanti-
tative. There is also space for numeric information regarding the contents. The
online survey tool posts all the material to the administrator, who assembles the
data. The results of this are presented in the network seminar every October.
After the results have been published in the seminar, all the data are open to
the public. Material is published on the network’s web page: [Link]
fi/tallennustyonjako/raportit.

The reported material is presented with Excel sheets and also visualisation.
The Excel sheets are a compact way of browsing the material, but also a quite
restricted approach. This is especially the case if one would like to look at the
contents from a wider point of view, for example by taking a glance through a
whole category with sub-categories. For this there is a visualisation tool created
especially for the model. This tool presents the model as a tree-shaped entity.
With such a tool it is relatively easy to have an overall view of the model and
its contents. There are several filters to shape the data, opportunities to make
different kinds of queries and other methods for processing the data. There is
the possibility to examine the data over one year or up to four years in a row.
This gives an insight into different kinds of trends within the collecting activi-
ties. For the administrator, the visualisation tool also gives information on the
same trends as to how active or healthy they are. If certain collecting duties
give zero results many years in a row, it is a sign that those activities should be
monitored and discussed with the responsible museums. The visualisation tool
can be found at [Link] (in Finnish).

Experiences from the Model

The model for the nationwide division of collecting duties was introduced to
the Finnish museum field at the beginning of 2013. There have been four cycles
of reporting and several years of adjustments so far. The model has proven to
be useful and, in general, needed. When introducing the model to the museum
field, the greatest fear was that museums would not adopt the model and modus
248 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

operandi, and that it would thus fade away. Fortunately, museums adopted the
model and have engaged very actively with it from the beginning.

The other fear was that the model would turn out to be non-functional or that
it would have some major flaws in mechanics or design. This fear was also in
vain, luckily. There are still some challenges with the model. The model lacks
some integrity and proportions. Some of its collecting duties are very narrow
and really specific, while others can be very broad and complex. An outcome like
this was to be expected from the beginning, since the model was created together
with numerous museums. With strict guidance from above, the outcome would
have been more balanced, but also more superficial. This is, however, a rather
small defect that can conceivably be at least partly fixed by further development
of the model.

Museums have taken a very active role in taking the concept further. They have
explored the structure and started to search for partners preserving similar
themes. This has led to a vivid dialogue among museums, and it has also pro-
duced fine tuning of the model.

Especially with their large and complex collecting duties, museums are making
adjustments and taking their shared responsibility further. Pool meetings have
been one very important forum where museums discuss roles and responsibilities
within the model. One very visible outcome of the model has been the revela-
tion of different overlapping areas of collecting. Museums have taken steps to
reduce these areas by rearranging their collection profiles and using of existing
resources. Collection relocations among museums has been one other very vis-
ible outcome. For example, Tampere Museums donated their indigenous Sámi
people collection to the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida. Anni Guttorm
examines this particular relocation case in this volume. The relocation of Sámi
objects was also noticed by the news media at the time (Haapanen 2015). The
case was also a great way to present some activities of the museum collection
management processes to the general public.

The identifying and taking care of any missing areas or black holes is one impor-
tant activity of the model. It must be stressed that through black holes, museums
are able to see any blind spots and weaknesses of our collecting activities on a
nationwide scale. Therefore, it is extremely important to see not only what we
collect, but what is not taken care of at all.

The fundamental issue with the nationwide division of collecting duties, as well
as with contemporary documentation activities, has been the increased level of
shared consciousness. Museums are getting familiar with each other’s collection
profiles and interests. This is the starting point, when developing collection
management nationwide. This must be done in co-operation, and the level of
knowledge regarding different collections must be adequate.

After the model was up and running museums approached the TAKO Network’s
steering group with the idea of further development. In addition to the existing
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  249

model museums, they wished for a platform where they could present and share
information regarding summaries of the specific collections or thematic entities
within their main collections. These would be collections that are not included
in the nationwide division of collecting duties, but collections or sub-collections
that a museum would like to present. Museums felt that sharing this kind of
information would push co-operation to the next level and raise the shared
knowledge of collections nationwide (TAKO Annual Report 2014).

The platform was created similar to a wiki site. Museums had their own pages
where they could publish their collection summaries and other information
regarding their different collections. The information they put onto the site
included the history and formation of the particular collection, a brief descrip-
tion of it, the types of objects it included, the number of objects and whether
the collection is digitalized and accessible online. With the platform there was
also a link to Finna, the national collection portal. By creating a link between
the TAKO platform and Finna (An open access search service for finding mate-
rial from archives, libraries and museums. [Link] they could
link information on a collection level and on an object level relating to those
collections. This is assuming, of course, that the objects regarding the particular
collections are digitized and published in Finna.

The fundamental idea of sharing this kind of collection information was excellent
and clearly needed; museums greeted it with excitement. It was, however, a bit
of a failure due to technical issues in the end. The platform format was too com-
plex to use, even with written instructions. Museums had trouble filling in the
information and due to that, the collection platform tool was not used very much.

In 2018, the TAKO steering group appointed a new work group that had a mis-
sion to create a new digital platform for sharing collection information. The idea
was to create a platform with similar content to the former platform. This time
however, the outcome was to be more visual, with advanced options to search
for and filter information. The new platform is very easy and quick regarding
the input of information. There is a simple web page where museums are able
to feed their collection information. The possibility to link collections with the
objects located in Finna is also included. The new platform has the working
title Collections Chart, and it is in its early stages at the time of the writing of
this chapter.

The model for nationwide division of collecting duties greatly affects deaccession
and disposal activities. With the model, museums get new tools for arranging
these activities. When museums are able to find out the collection profiles of
their fellow museums there are new possibilities, for example, for collection
relocations.

The model has had quite an impact on acquisition processes as well. Today,
museums are together able to coordinate acquisitions better. When a donor
offers an object to a museum that is not responsible for the collection of that
kind of objects, museums have the knowledge to forward the them to the right
250 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

museum. The level of activity among museums on this matter has greatly in-
creased lately. It is making things clearer for museums, and for donors it is
good customer service.

One might say that the model has increased the level of co-operation outside the
themes of the division of collecting. As museums have got to know each other
and have had chances to discuss different matters, they have begun to do all
kinds of collection management projects together. They have created manuals
for how to write collection policies, conducted surveys and given instructions
regarding deaccession and disposals and had projects regarding various open
data issues and its usage in museum environments. They have created and tested
the concept of the communal cataloguing of objects. This sharing of information
targets those situations where similar objects are housed in different museums,
for example, those mass-produced objects that are catalogued and owned by
several museums, but have unique context stories. Communal cataloguing brings
these context stories together, thus enriching the museum value of an individual
collection item (Hakkarainen & Salonen 2014).

Future Aspects of the TAKO Network

The TAKO Network celebrated its ten-year anniversary in October 2019. The
network has done a lot for developing museum collections management in Fin-
land. It has brought museums together like never before, and museums are
still very excited to work together. The nationwide division of collecting duties
is a unique model that has been presented to colleagues in several European
countries. In Finland, museums have realised that the only way to tackle con-
temporary challenges regarding collections management and collecting activities
is through co-operation.

The Network has reached many of the goals originally set in 2009. Yet there
is still a lot to be done. The world is constantly changing and museums need
to be ready to respond to change and adjust their operations. This naturally
also applies to the TAKO Network. A critical development regarding the future
planning of the network was the creation of the first TAKO Network Strategy in
2017, which presents the strategic outlines and key points of the network. The
current strategy was created for the years 2018–2021, and will be evaluated
after that (TAKO strategy 2018).

One of the major developmental issues is to broaden the TAKO Network to art
museums. There are a few art museums operating in contemporary documen-
tation activities, but not in the nationwide division of collecting duties. It would
be essential to develop the model so that we could welcome art museums to
take part in the concept. This requires, however, discussions with art museums
on how to execute this the best possible way. This was one part of the discus-
sion of the “Nationwide division of collecting duties version 2.0”, launched in
spring 2020. The model had served us well since 2013, but needed to be put
under critical evaluation. There are certainly themes and areas that could be
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  251

developed further and executed better within the model. The same goes with
the contemporary documentation and general activities of the network. The
network received its first external evaluation in 2019 and the recommendations
based on that evaluation were executed in 2020 and onwards.

It is a great joy to see that the future of the network looks very bright. After
ten years the network is still proactive, ambitious and constantly adapting to
achieve the next level of professionalism. This would not be possible without
museum professionals across Finland who are very passionate and open-minded
regarding the co-operation and collection management.

References

Unpublished Sources

Hakomäki, R & Metsänkylä, A 2009 Museoiden kokoelmayhteistyö –

kokous 23.1.2009 Suomen kansallismuseo, kokousmuistio.

Museovirasto 1987 Museoiden dokumentointi- ja tutkimustyöryhmän

muistio.

TAKO Annual Report 2009.

TAKO Annual Report 2010–2011.

TAKO Annual Report 2012.

TAKO Annual Report 2014.

Published Sources

Ahola, T 2012 Valtakunnallinen tallennustyönjakomalli. Available at

[Link] [Last
accessed 27 January 2020]

Fägerborg, E 2008 The Swedish Samdok network. In Fägerborg, E & Unge

E (von) (eds.) Connecting Collecting. Stockholm: Nordiska Museet.

Hakkarainen, M & Salonen, M 2014 TAKO Pooli 4: Tallennustyönjaon

jalkauttaminen –hanke – näkökulmapohjainen yhteistallennus,
raportti 24.11.2014. Available at [Link]
[Link] [Last accessed 27 January
2020]

Hakomäki, R 2008 Valtakunnallinen tallennusvastuu: tallennuksen

aihepiirit ja koordinointi, 15 April 2008. Available at [Link]
[Link]/doc/Kansallismuseo_tallennus.pdf [Last accessed 27
January 2020]
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Komiteanmietintö 31 1999 Museo 2000 – museopoliittinen ohjelma.

Helsinki: Yliopistopaino.

Kostet, J 2009 Kokoelmien muodostuminen. In Kinanen, P (ed.)

Museologia tänään. Jyväskylä: Gummerus kirjapaino Oy.

Pearce, S 1992 Museum Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study.

Leicester: Leicester University Press.

Sinisalo, H 2016 Suomen sosiaali- ja terveydenhuoltoalan museot ja

-kokoelmat 2016. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopistomuseo.

TAKO strategia 2018–2021 2017 Available at [Link]

[Link] [Last accessed 27 January 2020]

Vilkuna, J (ed.) 2000 Näkökulmia museoihin ja museologiaan. Saarijärvi:

Gummerus kirjapaino Oy.

Haapanen, L 2015 Saamelaismuseo Siidalle merkittävä kokoelmalahjoitus.

Available at [Link] [Last accessed 27
January 2020]
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  253

3D Imaging in Museums
Visa Immonen and Ismo Malinen

Abstract
In this chapter we give an overview of technological issues related to 3D mod-
elling in museums, but also discuss the broader impact that digitalisation has
on collections, research and public engagement. Although the technology for
3D digitisation of heritage sites and objects has been available since the 1990s,
it is only in the 2010s that its use has boomed. This development has received
institutional support by, e.g., the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry
of Education and Culture. Through the 3D modelling of museum objects, the
primarily public institutional set-up of cultural heritage becomes integrated into
both commercial and non-commercial international platforms. In museums, 3D
modelling is typically used to create accurate and widespread documentation
of heritage objects, conducting novel academic research and enhancing public
engagement. Much of the published work on 3D modelling of heritage focuses
on describing and developing a technological framework. Nonetheless, from
the point of view of heritage work, the most important issues are related to
the selection of the museum objects for digitising and the use of the models in
heritage institutions.

Keywords: 3D digitisation, digital workflow, heritage sites, metadata, museum

collections

Technical Issues and Heritage Discussions

The documentation of archaeological and other heritage sites with 3D model-
ling began in the 1990s, and the first digital models of museum objects were
created in the latter part of the decade. One of the earliest and best-known
ventures was the Digital Michelangelo Project in 1998–1999 (Levoy et al. 2000).
It scanned ten sculptures made by the Renaissance master and produced such
precise models that tool marks on their surfaces could be examined. In spite
of the technology being available, however, 3D modelling had its breakthrough
in museums only once the technology gained more of a foothold in other ven-
ues of modern life, becoming less expensive in the latter part of the 2010s. In
Finland, this development culminated in 2018 when the Ministry of Education
and Culture started granting special subsidies for the 3D digitisation of muse-
um collections. The European Commission expressed similar official interest
by producing the Declaration of Cooperation on Heritage Digitisation, signed
in spring 2019. The declaration stressed the importance of 3D digitisation and
launched a pan-European initiative for the 3D digitisation of heritage artefacts,
monuments and sites (European Commission 2019). The European Union is
254 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

also investing in many projects, which develop 3D modelling of heritage or are

based on applying the technology.

Although setting up and using the technological framework of 3D modelling

remains an important concern for museums, more and more emphasis is now
placed on questions specific to museums and heritage, such as what museum
items are chosen for digitisation, in what ways the results are made available
to different audiences and how 3D models affect the experiencing of museum
objects and heritage in general. Diane Zorich (2018, p. 75) argues that muse-
ums tend to digitise in “a way that reflects the past”, but the actual challenge
is to digitise in a way that is oriented to the future. In this chapter we give an
overview of technological issues related to 3D modelling in museums, but also
discuss the broader impact that digitalisation has on collections, research and
public engagement.

The technology of 3D modelling was not specifically created for heritage institu-
tions, and its advancement takes place largely outside museums. Global giants
such as Apple, Google and Nokia, as well as the video game industry, invest huge
sums in developing digital technology, while its use is gaining more and more
importance in the construction, design, entertainment and health industries,
as well as in the visual arts (Ahlavuo et al. 2016). Subsequently, the technol-
ogy is commercially ingrained, from the basic tools of digitisation to making
the results available and accessible online. Although Nanna Bonde Thylstrup
(2018, pp. 5–6) writes of the mass digitisation of cultural heritage, such as the
scanning of books, her remark that through digitalisation the primarily public
institutional set-up of cultural heritage becomes integrated into international
commercial platforms is also applicable to the 3D modelling of museum objects.
This technology brings with it a multiplicity of interests, including the processes
of standardisation and globalisation, which was previously not necessarily well
recognised in cultural heritage institutions. These processes have to be faced
and negotiated within museums and heritage settings.

Before Starting 3D Modelling Activities

In museums and the heritage sector, 3D modelling is seen as one of the key
solutions for documenting, analysing and presenting cultural heritage. The term
refers to the use of computer-based tools to capture and represent physical objects
in virtual space, allowing a free manipulation and rendering of the model (Dey
2018, p. 5). 3D modelling constitutes a form of documentation which, when done
correctly, does not cause any damage to the digitised items. Here, we concen-
trate mostly on 3D modelling of museum objects and other heritage collections.
Besides objects, however, monuments and sites like buildings, archaeological
remains and other immovable tangible heritage are usually key priorities for
3D digitisation. For instance, according to the European Commission’s (2020)
basic principles for 3D digitisation, it “is a necessity for tangible cultural heritage
at risk, for preservation and restoration purposes; 3D digitisation can provide
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  255

virtual access to cultural heritage that is difficult to access or inaccessible, e.g.,

underwater”.

Converting collections into virtual objects offers much more than just digital
3D copies of original artefacts. The 3D model produced is something other than
the physical object; it is a representation, or rather a digital surrogate of the
museum artefact (Häyrinen 2012, pp. 19–21, p. 24). Not only has the physical
appearance of the object been transformed into digital data, some parts of the
model are always created by software and, depending on the original artefact or
site and its level of complexity, the dataset never covers all of the aspects of the
original object. On the other hand, as an entity of the virtual realm, a 3D model is
not subject to the physical and temporal constraints of its material counterpart,
such as inhabiting only one location in the physical world.

In museums, the purposes of modelling usually fall into one of three major cate-
gories. Firstly, as an accurate and pervasive means of documentation, 3D models
help in the preservation and conservation of physical artefacts (Fay-Leino 2016).
Secondly, they allow new ways of conducting scholarly research on collections
and sites. Thirdly, 3D models offer novel opportunities for public engagement
in exhibitions, at heritage locations and online.

Despite the advances in digital technologies, 3D modelling is still a very time- and
labour-intensive undertaking. Compared with traditional photography, it requires
much more resources in terms of space, time, labour, skills and technology, as
well as experience, in order to be performed properly and sustainably. While
professional photographers can create and process 2D images of about 30–40
objects in a day, depending on the artefacts, in the same amount of time, they can
produce only one to three 3D models. Consequently, before even commencing
3D digitisation, museums should be certain that the effort is actually worth the
required investment (Malinen 2019).

If a museum wants to produce 3D models on its own, it needs to invest in ade-

quate digital equipment and software. Like many digital technologies, 3D mod-
elling evolves constantly and will probably become cheaper and more efficient
in the future. However, the resource intensiveness of 3D modelling becomes
more problematic by the rapid development of digital tools. The high-quality
equipment needed for laser scanning is in particular evolving swiftly, which also
means that it becomes rather quickly obsolete, and requires new investments
in infrastructure. Producing large amounts of 3D models of museum objects
may thus be a waste of resources, unless there is a sustainable plan for using
the models, or other relevant reasons for modelling.

An alternative to acquiring expensive 3D scanning equipment is to use com-

mercial services. This is a particularly attractive option when 3D modelling is
required only temporarily and for a limited number of objects. Outsourcing the
scanning activity, however, also has drawbacks, as the museum always loses at
least some control over the scanning process and the results. Museum objects
might end up handled and transported by persons not trained for the task.
256 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Moreover, inexperienced museums might not take into consideration all the
issues related to the standards of scanning and file formats, the metadata ac-
companying the models and intellectual property rights, which cover both the
raw data and the final products (Riksantikvarieämbetet 2019).

When a museum lacks previous experience in 3D modelling, usually it is best

to start with small projects. Even when a very limited number of objects are se-
lected for digitising, the museum has to address fundamental questions of both
a technical and heritological nature. With small sample sizes, making incorrect
decisions is not fatal, and the production processes can be altered with relative-
ly small consequences. Nevertheless, planning remains crucial. The Swedish
National Heritage Board has compiled a useful checklist, which museums can
follow when planning their 3D modelling activities (Riksantikvarieämbetet 2019):

• What is the overall goal of creating and publishing 3D models (e.g., conser-
vation, documentation, increased availability, replacing or supplementing
physical objects, printing copies, digital exhibition, teaching aids, etc.)?

• Does the museum have a vision with which the production and publication
of 3D models can be linked?

• What kind of resources, staff, expertise, technical equipment and funding

does the museum have for creating 3D models?

• What are the main target groups and what needs do they have?

• Does the museum already have a publication policy, including, e.g., free
use, and for whom and why are the 3D models published?

• What channels will the museum be using in publishing the 3D models?

• Does the museum have a plan and facilities for long-term maintenance
and updating of 3D data?

The museum should be able to answer this series of questions, at least provi-
sionally, when commencing its endeavour to produce 3D models. In 2020, the
European Commission published a document titled Basic principles and tips
for 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, which was compiled with the
help of experts on 3D modelling. It contains ten principles, along with further
instructions, to help heritage institutions, museums, authorities and profes-
sionals in increasing their use of 3D digitisation (European Commission 2020).
The document contains many aspects similar to the Swedish National Heritage
Board’s list, and should be consulted when planning any form of 3D digitisation
of heritage objects.

Since digitising is such a strain on resources, the museum should be able to

articulate what added value 3D modelling would actually bring to different
end-users instead of, e.g., publishing digital photographs of the same objects
online. A justifiable reason might be that through 3D models audiences can
visually access museum objects from different angles and observe details which
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  257

would not be possible in photographs or by looking at the actual object through

a protective glass in an exhibition.

Selecting Objects for 3D Modelling

Much of the published work on 3D modelling of heritage focuses on describing
and developing a technological framework. Nonetheless, from the point of view
of heritage work, the most important issues relate to selecting the museum
objects for digitising and the use of the models in heritage institutions. In fact,
the selection of objects and sites for 3D modelling should be the cornerstone
of any heritage digitising process, and it is largely determined by the intended
audience and the types of 3D models that are relevant to it.

To some extent, the selection of objects for 3D modelling is conditioned by the

technological framework, as different digitising techniques pose different kinds
of limitations. For almost all the available techniques, there are some materials
and shapes that are extremely difficult or almost impossible to model. Data
capture has difficulties with such reflective surfaces as lustrous metals, glass
and marble, with their translucent and heterogenous structures (Frischer 2016),
and, conversely, with very dark surfaces. Thin or otherwise small objects, as well
as artefacts with complex and movable parts, can also be problematic. There
are some procedures to circumvent such situations. For example, the surface
of a shiny object can be sprayed with pigment to create a matte coat for better
scanning results, but such techniques might not be suitable for museum objects.

As is typical of the introduction of new technologies to museums, the objects

chosen for digitising are often well-known token items, which institutions like
to use for their publicity. Sometimes a selection based purely on the popularity
of certain museum objects is justified by the reduced handling of such objects.
However, as Jacob L. Dahl (2018) points out, the continual development of
new and more precise documentation technologies, as well as the unavoidable
physical change of all museum objects, means that the same objects are actually
documented and digitised again and again, and consequently their handling is
not necessarily reduced. Yet, 3D modelling can be pivotal in minimising the
need to move and touch very fragile objects after they have been digitised. The
frailty of objects and sites as a selection criterion can coincide with the difficult
accessibility of the artefacts and locations for visitors. For instance, wrecks and
other underwater sites remain unattainable for most.

Besides the criteria of popularity, fragility and accessibility, scholarly research can
also be a principle in selecting objects for 3D modelling. Digitisation can bring
otherwise inaccessible objects within reach of a larger community of scholars,
or enable them to examine objects hosted in different museums at the same
time. By the same token, fragments of the same object dispersed in different
collections can be reunited, and partly destroyed objects reconstructed by digi-
tally combining documentation from different periods (Dey 2018, pp. 28–30).
In some cases, 3D models can also be used for measuring objects precisely.
258 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Increasingly, however, the most exciting applications of 3D models in scholarly

research use digital means such as reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) to
virtually enhance, manipulate and analyse objects and their properties (Jones
et al. 2015; Tolksdorf, Elburg & Reuter 2017).

The selection of objects for 3D modelling in heritage institutions has largely been
based on criteria defined and measured by heritage professionals, even when
public engagement is the foremost motivation (Jones & Rapley 2018, p. 82). This
seems problematic, since the empowerment of communities as part of heritage
endeavours and management has a growing impact on the role of museums
and how they see their mission. However, many museums are still testing and
learning 3D modelling, and probably with more experience the selection process
will become more inclusive (Jeffrey et al. 2020). Freya Roe (2014, p. 42) suggests
that opening up the selection processes and engaging communities in every step
could turn one-off visitors into long-term users. In the future, local communities
will perhaps also have better access to 3D modelling infrastructure (Lowe 2018,
p. 56), and be able to utilise their own devices, such as smartphones, to digitise
heritage objects and sites in crowdsourcing campaigns.

3D Modelling Techniques
The creation of 3D models can be accomplished using various techniques, but in
heritage work, there are three main techniques: photogrammetry, laser scanning
and structured light scanning. They all have different benefits and shortcomings,
and the quality of the 3D models depends on the technical equipment and soft-
ware, as well as the operator’s skills and experience. The best technical result
is reached when the geometry of the models, their textures and optical material
properties are as high quality as possible. Going for the highest resolution might
sound tempting, but as Diane Zorich (2018, p. 75) points out, this creates huge
processing and storage demands, which can be impossible to meet. Hence the
resolution should be decided based on the actual use of the model. For instance,
will the 3D model be part of the scholarly documentation of the object, where
the resolution should be high, or is it to be used for public engagement in which
lower resolutions are better suited for the task?

The first one of the three techniques, 3D photogrammetry, is a relatively old

technique based on converting two-dimensional data obtained from digital pho-
tographs into three-dimensional measurements and the final product. In this
method, known as structure from motion (SfM), tens or hundreds of overlapping
photographs of the object are taken from different angles, and then matched
and compiled into a digital model. The photographs can be shot with ordinary
digital cameras, but special software is needed to process the image data and
generate a dense point cloud, which is a set of spatial coordinates sampled from
the external surfaces of the physical object.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  259

Figure 1. Creating a 3D model of a piece of prehistoric pottery with photogrammetry. The item to
be digitised is placed on a rotating platform, while the camera takes digital photos of the piece from
different angles. Photo: Annukka Debenjak-Ijäs.

Photogrammetry has quickly become easier, faster and cheaper than other forms
of digital imaging, especially as the different software tools needed for creating
the final products have evolved. Presently, it is the best and least expensive way
to start creating 3D models, although it still requires a trained person, prefer-
ably a professional photographer with an interest in IT. It is recommended to
use advanced shareware or commercial products, of which there are usually
trial versions available for free (Agisoft 2019; CaptureReality 2019; Historic
England 2017).

Nowadays it is no longer that difficult to do basic 3D photogrammetry using

ordinary smartphones with a modelling application. Most of these apps are based
on photogrammetry, and many of them are free. The quality of the models and
the ease of using the apps vary, but smartphones nevertheless offer a useful
way to learn some basic 3D scanning and can create models for temporary use
(Obudho 2019). They can also be easily used in crowdsourcing campaigns.

A step up from smartphones is using a digital camera with appropriate lenses

and lightning (Etienne 2018; Historic England 2017). When artefacts are being
photographed, a tripod and an external lightning rig are a must, and for smaller
objects a light tent can be especially handy. In addition, a turntable lessens the
need to move either the object or the camera when the required number of im-
ages is taken. For terrestrial photogrammetric imaging, a fixed or extendable
tripod or mast is needed, while aerial photogrammetry requires a camera drone
or other remotely controlled aircraft.

The second technique, laser scanning, also shows great variation in its operating
principles, precision, accuracy and price (Artec3D 2019). This technology is based
on active data collection, where a laser beam is emitted and received to deter-
mine the distance to a surface. In addition to a stationary tripod, the collection
of data can be carried out from a vehicle or from the air; even handheld and
backpack systems are available, allowing data collection while walking around
a site or an object. Many museums have acquired handheld laser scanners, as
260 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

prices have become more affordable and their use is quite easy to learn, though
some of the devices may not be of the highest quality or have other limitations.

Like photogrammetry, laser scanning has many applications. It is routinely

used in archaeological and architectural documentation (Debenjak 2015; Sa-
volainen 2019), as well as in creating 3D models or 2D illustrations of portable
artefacts and collecting data for 3D printing. The technique nonetheless has its
limitations, and the desired outcome usually requires expensive equipment to
attain the highest quality, as well as a significant amount of time for scanning
and processing the data.

Most importantly, unlike photogrammetry, laser scanning cannot record the

colour data or texture of the surface, which must be added by other means. One
solution is to integrate laser scanning data with point clouds created by means
of 3D photogrammetry. This kind of hybrid approach to producing high-quality
3D models gives the best results in terms of resolution and texture, especially
if the sites and objects are difficult to digitise with a 3D laser scanner alone
(Historic England 2017).

Like laser scanning, the third technique, structured light scanning, requires
specialised equipment (Dey 2018, p. 24; Historic England 2018). Such a device
projects a structured light pattern of stripes and grids onto a surface that is then
recorded by an infrared camera. By measuring how the pattern is transformed
by the surface, the device calculates variations in depth. The measuring device
is often accompanied by a digital camera, which records the colour data of the
scanned surface. Structured light scanning is a safe and quick method, as mod-
els are often generated in real time on a computer screen. The disadvantages
include the need of a controlled environment, as ambient light can affect the
quality of the scan, and it produces a low quality of resolution and surface detail
compared with the other two methods.

Regardless of the chosen method, a high-performance computer, such as a state-

of-the-art gaming computer, is needed to run the software and process the raw
data. Usually, the computer should have as much memory (RAM) as possible and
run a high-speed multi core CPU for processing the data. Specifically, a dedicated
3D graphics card or graphic processing unit (GPU) is essential. Lastly, ample
amounts of data storage space are needed to assist the processing and storing
of large data sets (Agisoft 2019; CaptureReality 2019; Historic England 2018).

In addition to the basic recording hardware and software, many manufacturers

offer equipment needed for automating the whole process of 3D digitisation
(Cultlab3D 2019; Santos 2017). Automated or semi-automated processes may
integrate several components. For example, CultArc3D comes with an auto-
mated conveyor belt system, glass carrier disks and a scanning station, while
other products utilise robotic arms. Some of these solutions were originally
designed for the needs of e-commerce and were offered to museums only later,
while others were designed and tested from the start to suit the requirements
of heritage institutions.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  261

Archiving and Distributing 3D Models and Data

After the 3D model has been processed and finalised, another set of issues emerg-
es regarding the distribution, use and archiving of the results. In fact, for heritage
institutions, these are crucial concerns that should be resolved before digitising
begins. Firstly, it should be decided how much of the raw material and related
datasets are to be preserved alongside the actual model. The final 3D model
comprises only a small part of the data collected during the digitising process,
and ideally a portion of the other material is also stored. The raw data includes a
series of digital images or other digital information. Since digitising technology
evolves rapidly, some of this raw data should be preserved for reuse in the future,
when the same datasets can be utilised to make 3D models of much better quality
and accuracy. Moreover, the preservation of the datasets allows examining the
process later and increases its transparency and openness. However, the more
datasets kept in digital archives, the larger the storage capacity has to be.

Secondly, transparency and usability of 3D models in heritage institutions re-

quires that they are accompanied by adequate metadata. The term metadata
refers to data that is affixed to the actual content to provide information about
the model, including the technical framework of the production process, but
also the heritage context and content of the model. Each different digital genre
usually has specific standards, which define the information that should be
provided along with the data, but because 3D modelling is a relatively recent
development in heritage institutions, there is no widely acknowledged frame-
work for its metadata. Some museums and organisations, however, have already
developed metadata models and offer them for open use (DPO 2018; Europeana
Network Association Members Council 2020).

Thirdly, while some of the 3D models are intended for use only in museums,
more and more of them are put online for public viewing and use, often under
a Creative Commons licence. There are several websites offering free services
for publishing, sharing and viewing 3D models. Among the most popular are
Sketchfab and Thingverse. In addition, such public platforms for digital cultural
heritage as the European Union’s Europeana and Finna in Finland are being
developed to provide content management and sharing for 3D models as well.

Fourthly, archiving and distributing 3D data requires plenty of storage space

and dealing with various interfaces and items of software. It is problematic,
however, that supercomputers and cloud-based data storage consume a lot
of energy, which goes against the principle of sustainable development. Con-
sequently, when 3D digitisation is planned, sustainability and reducing CO2
emissions should be taken into consideration. A good starting point for this is
the document Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) published by the United
Nations for 2015–2030 (United Nations 2015).
262 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Uses of 3D Models in Heritage Institutions

Since digitising collections has become popular in heritage institutions, numer-
ous 3D modelling projects are in progress in various parts of the world. Here
we present three different Nordic projects, each with its distinct characteristics.
The first one is an example of how an archaeological find can be digitised for
conservation and public engagement purposes, the second is a project that aims
at establishing best practices for 3D modelling and the third shows the successful
digitisation of entire museum interiors.

Firstly, in 2019, the Finnish Heritage Agency launched a project to pilot and
develop 3D processes in digitising its collections. Even though this was not the
first time the Finnish Heritage Agency used 3D methods and created 3D models,
the project revealed that embedding 3D modelling into collection management
is time-consuming and still requires a lot of experimentation and mistakes to
ultimately be successful.

Unlike in many other 3D modelling projects, the artefacts chosen for digitisa-
tion varied substantially in size, age, material and significance. A representative
example of the chosen artefacts was a portion from a 1684 shipwreck, known as
the Hahtiperä wreck, found on dry land in the centre of Oulu, Northern Finland
in 2019. The find was 3D modelled with photogrammetry before its conserva-
tion started, which involved disassembling the remains (Museovirasto 2019).
The 3D model could be used to visualise the construction of the ship, but most
importantly to reassemble the wreck after the conservation. This and similar
3D projects in Finland and internationally have produced experiences and data
which are being developed into best practice guidelines.

The second project is based at the Department of Archaeology at the University

of Turku, and was one of the recipients of the Ministry of Education and Cul-
ture’s special subsidies for the 3D digitising of museum collections in 2018. In
collaboration with the Aboa Vetus Ars Nova Museum in Turku and the Turku
Museum Centre, the project aimed at digitising archaeological finds from the
collections of the three institutions (Immonen & Ratilainen 2019; Turku Museum
Centre 2020). In addition to testing and comparing a range of 3D modelling
techniques, equipment and practices, the project has also designed and held a
university course on 3D modelling with lectures and workshops, and eventually
it collected and put all of the latest know-how into an open access guide on best
practices in the 3D modelling of archaeological finds (Debenjak-Ijäs 2020). It
is common for commentators on heritage 3D modelling to state that the aims
and audiences of digitisation should be defined clearly before starting the actual
activity, but one of the observations of the Turku project was that many ideas
for inventive ways of using 3D models emerge only during and after the actual
digitisation. Perhaps 3D modelling projects should have some space for exper-
imentation and making adjustments throughout the process, in order to better
reach novel and original outcomes.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  263

Figure 2. A 3D model made of a piece of prehistoric pottery. The item is part of the collection of the
Department of Archaeology at the University of Turku. Photo: Annukka Debenjak-Ijäs.

Thirdly, creating 3D models of heritage can bring advantages to both museums

and wider audiences, some of which the heritage institutions might not have
even imagined. Since 3D models have the potential to allow better access to her-
itage, regardless of one’s location and background, they can reach out to entirely
new audiences. A case in point is the Hallwyl Museum in the historical Hallwyl
House in central Stockholm. The house, built from 1893 to 1898, belonged to the
Count and Countess von Hallwyl, but was donated to the Swedish state in 1920
and opened as a museum in 1938. The house’s sumptuous interiors exhibit an
extensive art collection. Recently, the museum produced various high-quality
3D models of the museum’s interiors and published them online under Crea-
tive Commons licences, allowing free re-use also for commercial purposes. The
virtual 3D exhibition includes not only the documentation of the museum space
and its artworks, but also textual information on individual exhibited items and
internet links to other websites.

With the help of 3D modelling, the Hallwyl Museum became available to everyone
with internet access, which raised general awareness of the museum, but which
did not reduce the number of physical visitors. In 2018 the Hallwyl Museum had
a total of 309,434 visits to the physical museum, while the 3D models of museum
interiors on Sketchfab alone were accessed over 117,000 times (Hallwyl Museum
2020; Lernestal 2020). As a further benefit, the Hallwyl Museum’s 3D models
on Sketchfab were utilised in many virtual reality and other projects. Through
these secondary applications users and players in virtual reality around the world
came into contact with cultural heritage of the Hallwyl Museum (Lernestal 2020).

3D Models as a Heritage Phenomenon

The introduction of 3D models in museums involves many technical and practical
problems, as well as imposing infrastructural demands. Importantly, the digi-
tisation of heritage objects and sites also brings up issues of a more conceptual
and cultural nature. These require further research and analysis, and remain to
be fully addressed by future scholarship. However, in this concluding section of
our article, we have identified three areas of particular interest which should be
taken into consideration when museums engage in 3D modelling of their col-
264 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

lections. The first is the relationship between museum objects and their digital
surrogates, the second is the user experience and engagement with 3D models
and the third is the role of museums as digitising institutions.

From a technical point of view, the relationship between museum objects and
their digital surrogates is largely defined by the 3D model’s accuracy and pre-
cision in representing its physical original. The situation is more complicated,
however, if this relationship is seen as also affecting our culturally and socially
conditioned relationship with objects. Like the artefacts in museum exhibitions,
3D models are encountered and seen in a historically conditioned framework,
mixing our real and virtual encounters with artefacts. In fact, 3D models bring
together very different kind of audiences to experience museum objects in digital
space, which is very dissimilar to the museum environment. For instance, unlike
physical objects, which are affected by continual, although not necessarily rapid
change, 3D models are frozen images from the material itinerary of their real
counterparts (Jones & Rapley 2018, p. 83). This forms a stark contrast with the
way modern conservation and preservation of heritage objects embraces the
continual physical change of artefacts and sites.

It is revealing of our historically conditioned relationship with museum artefacts

that the objects chosen for digitisation are almost always finished products and
usually of high material value, not half-finished products, tools of manufacture
or otherwise less valued items. Tiia Suorsa (2017) argues, in contrast, that 3D
modelling should take more into consideration the actual production and use
processes of which the heritage objects have been part. Digital models should
allow heritage items to be seen as unfinished and perpetually changing. Nev-
ertheless, although 3D modelling could open up novel ways of thinking about
our relationship with museum artefacts, and some scholars have called for a
radical reconsideration of digital heritage, presently the applications of 3D digital
technology tend to reiterate ossified conceptions of heritage objects and their
valuation.

Among the applications of 3D modelling is a physically accurate reproduction

of the original artefacts with 3D printing. This is a process in which some raw
material is joined or solidified under computer control to create a physical 3D
object. 3D printing makes it possible to manufacture copies of heritage objects
for the commercial market, but there are also more inventive applications, like
the creation of tactile replicas, which museum visitors can touch and handle.
Printing physical copies of objects can even help heritage institutions to address
issues of repatriation and the decolonising of collections (Samaroudi & Rodriguez
Echavarria 2019). Moreover, instead of exact copies, 3D printing has been used
to create physical puzzles or puzzle-like objects to engage audiences in museum
exhibitions (Rodriguez Echavarria & Samaroudi 2018; Samaroudi et al. 2017).

Besides the object-focused approach, the second area of interest in 3D modelling

involves the users of the digital surrogates. It is slightly misleading, however, to
integrate the terms user and user experience from a commercial context into the
analysis of 3D models in a heritage environment. The terms problematically cast
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  265

the variety of encounters with 3D models into an abstracted notion of a uniform

user and his or her stereotypical experiences. Whatever terms are chosen, there
are pivotal questions of 3D modelling to be studied in museums (Li et al. 2018).
On the one hand, the questions are relatively uncomplicated, addressing, e.g.,
the user profile. Is the intended audience of the 3D model already experienced
with heritage institutions, i.e., regular museum visitors, or are they members
of the public who rarely go to museums? On the other hand, 3D modelling rais-
es rather intricate questions regarding the technology’s cultural implications.
How do 3D models change our understanding of the past and ancient artefacts,
as well as our experiences of heritage? Museums have traditionally controlled
visitors’ behaviour in a highly assertive manner, thus creating homogenous
embodied experiences of heritage spaces. However, digitisation, including 3D
modelling, potentially challenges the idea of a passive, obedient body in the
museum environment, offering fresh means for “mapping and remediating the
tangible and intangible heritage encompassing embodiment” (Kenderdine 2016,
p. 23). How do these digitally created virtual environments alter the embod-
ied interpretation of heritage? The effects of heritage digitisation are manifold,
covering various factual, emotional, institutional and individual spheres of life.
Despite the importance of questions concerning the impact of digitalisation on
heritage, research on the variety of encounters between 3D models and people
is still more limited than studies on the technological aspects of 3D modelling.

Thirdly, 3D modelling, along with other forms of digital technology, necessarily

alters museums and other heritage institutions. Digitising creates new demands
for the museum infrastructure in terms of both equipment and online presence,
as well as for personnel with practical knowledge of how to use the new tech-
nologies (Roe 2014). Some of these technical challenges can be mitigated by
establishing new forms of collaboration among individual museums, as well as
among museums and other actors in the heritage sector. Museums could, for
instance, share their equipment and experiences of 3D modelling among them-
selves. There are, however, even broader institutional challenges. For instance,
as Suorsa (2018) points out, digital heritage calls into question the established
distinction between heritage institutions and audiences, epitomised by the glass
case which separates the heritage object and its viewer. In contrast, 3D models
are potentially available to everybody and allow equal access to heritage, whether
you are a professional, amateur or even just passingly interested in some item
of heritage.

As digital and cultural phenomena, 3D models are highly flexible and multi-
faceted objects (Fay-Leino 2016, p. 15), and unleashing their potential requires
not only technological know-how, but also a historically sensitive approach. If
these two aspects of 3D modelling are successfully combined, it will potentially
break new ground in heritage institutions. At their best, 3D models could help
turn single-visit museumgoers into persons with an enduring interest in her-
itage and culture.
266 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

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Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  271

Between Private and Public –

Corporate art collecting and
collaboration with art museums
in Finland
Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski

Abstract
In this chapter, I discuss corporate art collections as part of national cultural
heritage and semi-public collections. Corporate art is seen through the lenses
of collecting, various professions and corporate social responsibility (CSR). I
highlight the motives and the meanings of visual art in the context of business
and practices of collection development, with the similarities and differences to
museums and the museum profession. The essence of corporate art collecting
is connected with business objectives, and thus this field of collecting differs
in many ways from the objectives of museum collections and ethics. The main
motives for corporate art collecting are aesthetics, well-being, CSR, corporate
image and branding.

Professionalisation of Finnish corporate art took place during the 2000s, but
it is not as widespread as it is in large companies in North America and Cen-
tral Europe. Art-field professionalism generally indicates an increased focus
on clarifying collecting polices, questions of displaying art and audience en-
gagement. Sometimes a semi-public collection becomes public. Collaboration
between profit-making companies and museums is also discussed. In Finland
the public sector is still the main patron of the arts, and corporate art collecting
and partnership deals with museums are supplementary means of financing
of culture. The time span of the chapter covers mainly contemporary culture.

Key words: corporate art collections, corporate social responsibility, private

patronage, professionalisation, semi-public collections

Introduction to Corporate Art Collecting

During the last three decades corporate art collecting has been discussed by
scholars and some research has been also carried out in Finland. Different as-
pects of corporate art, such as the motives for collecting, nature of collections,
professionalisation of corporate art and communication possibilities of fine art
in business, have been researched, mainly by Western scholars.1 Despite the

1. See for example Barendregt et al. 2009; Becker 1994; Behnke 2007; Hoeken and Ruikes 2005;
272 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

increasing literature and publicity of collections and collectors, it is still diffi-

cult to picture an all-inclusive understanding of corporate art because of the
diverse development of collections and their parent companies. Research is often
case-specific and access to private materials may be limited, or documents may
be fragmental. There are no domestic catalogues of companies which maintain
art collections. Information on Finnish collections is also scarce in the Inter-
national Directory of Corporate Art Collections, which is the leading source
publication for the topic.2

This chapter is based on my PhD thesis, Corporate Art Collections in Finland –

Collecting policies, practices of displaying art, and meanings of art in business
(Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015) and selectively updated case studies relating to
collection disposals and corporate partnership with museums. The case studies
in my PhD were 25 Finnish and four European corporate art collections. The
companies represented various branches of business, from manufacturing to
services, and the size of the collections ranged from 200 to nearly 7500 works
of art. These Finnish companies altogether owned around 29,000 works of art.
The research was multidisciplinary, with three different theoretical frameworks:
the theories of collecting, various professions, and corporate social responsibility
(CSR). The fieldwork was carried during 2006–2007 and updates continued until
2014. The data were collected through thematic interviews, on-site observations
and a short questionnaire. The informants were responsible for art purchases and
collection management (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015). Fine art and economics
are not seen as being opposing dynamics in this chapter.

Some concepts of museum studies can be applied to research on corporate col-

lecting, such as the concepts of collecting and collections. I discuss collecting as
a social process introduced by Susan Pearce. Referring to Pearce’s three modes
of collecting – collecting as souvenirs, as fetish objects and as systematics – I
regard corporate collecting being closest to systematics. The selection process
and the role of the corporate curator is important, but without the objective of
“filling a gap in the collections” (Pearce 2005, pp. 14–18, pp. 28–33). Due to
the special context of business, collecting has differences when compared to the
collecting practises of families and individuals. Corporate collecting is generally
based on written rules and values of business organisations instead of private
passions. Compared with the private consumption of art, the corporate curator
spends the company funds on art purchases, not his or her personal funds or
tax revenues.

Jacobson 1993; Kottasz et al. 2007 and 2008; Landensperger 2002; Leber 2008; Lindenberg and
Oosterlink 2011; Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015; Martorella 1990; Ullrich 2004; Wu 2003. MA theses
on corporate art have also been completed in many countries, two of them in Finland, with a third
forthcoming.
2. Despite fragmented information, the International Directory of Corporate Art Collections, that
has been published since 1983 by The International Art Alliance, is the major source of information
on companies that have collected or has collected art. Nowadays the catalogue lists nearly 800
companies worldwide and is updated regularly. The publisher has both printed and online editions.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  273

Quoting previous research on corporate art (Martorella 1990, p. 4; Witte 2009a,

p. 34) and applying the definition of collection by Susan Pearce (2005, p.15,
p. 159) it can be concluded that corporate art collection consists of all art in a
collection which is founded by a company or corporate foundation. As Arnold
Witte notes, there is no universal understanding of corporate art collections,
since the concept of art varies and sometimes the products of the company or
other artefacts than works of art are included in a collection (Witte 2009a, p.
34). The element of displaying should be added to the definition of corporate
art, since a collection is displayed on the company’s premises (Luukkanen-Hir-
vikoski 2015, pp. 58–59), as seen in figure 1.

Today a typical Finnish corporate art collection comprises around 400–800

works of art created by canonised Finnish and regional artists. The largest Finn-
ish corporate art collection currently numbers around 3000 works. The focus
in many companies is on maintaining and displaying the collection instead of
acquiring new. This means that corporate support in the form of art purchases
of the latest Finnish visual art is currently modest.

Figure 1. Works of art in the collection of Fortum Art Foundation in Espoo 2017. Photo by the author.

Differences With Museum Collections

There are a few essential differences when comparing corporate collecting with
museum collections and collection management practices. Business activities and
profit-making objectives impact companies’ interest in launching and maintain-
ing art programmes. Corporate collections are highly fluctuating, which is the
main difference to public collections, especially in regard to collection disposals.
Permanence is essential for museum management (see also Levä, this volume).
Business enterprises do not have any public liabilities relating to the collecting
or preserving of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. That is the role of a
public museum. Companies can even disregard the ICOM’s Code of Ethics for
274 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Museums but of course they abide by national and international legislation on

cultural properties (see also Eero Ehanti, this volume). Without the obligation
to follow museum ethics, this means, for example, that collection disposals can
be made quickly and decision-making may be based on one person’s vision or a
sudden change in collection policy. But as Nina Robbins shows in her research
on collection disposals in Finnish art museums, disposals are multidimensional
questions and burning issues in the museum field too (Robbins 2016).

Another example of ethics and differences to museum collections relates to

collection management and the expertise involved in it. Apart from corporate
foundations, the people responsible for collection management in Finnish com-
panies seldom hold degrees or have work experience in the arts and culture. Their
expertise is usually in economics, communications, human resources or business
administration. There are a few external curators and art advisors who assist
boards of directors and art committees of companies, but professionalisation in
the area of corporate art is not widespread in Finland. In 2015 nearly one third
of the 25 Finnish corporate art collections were professionalised, meaning that
companies had employed a curator or had established a non-profit foundation
(Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015). When a company or foundation recruits a spe-
cialist in the arts and culture, ethics and museum practices are applied to daily
work. There are case-specific differences in the professionalisation of corporate
art, but generally speaking, professionalisation in corporate collecting started
to take place in North America and Central Europe in the 1980s to the 1990s
(Behnke 2007, p. 228; Jacobson 1993, p. 9; Leber 2008, p. 284; Martorella 1990,
pp. 140–141; Witte 2009a, p. 38, pp. 46–48; Wu 2003, pp. 212–213). In Finland
the same development began slightly later. External art market professionals
and interior designers are sometimes involved in decision-making, for example
when new facilities are finished, monumental art is commissioned and questions
of financial values or authenticity are seen as important.

The general economic situation affects on corporate art collecting (Barendregt et

al. 2009; Martorella 1990; Wu 2003). When the economy is booming, corporate
art programmes are developed, and during a recession collecting declines. When
essential changes take place in the business environment, such as mergers or
changes in market position, these are usually reflected in collection policy and
practices. According to Christophe Behnke (2007, p. 231) museum collections
have a more secure existence than does corporate art. Some companies have es-
tablished art or cultural foundations to take care of their collections and to provide
a more stable environment for them. Today several corporate art foundations in
Finland co-operate, and they have established the Association of Finnish Fine
Arts Foundations (Suomalaisten taidesäätiöiden yhdistys, STSY), which is a
similar network to, e.g., the Netherlands Association of Corporate Art Collections
(Vereniging Bedrijfscollecties Nederland, VBCN).3 In contrast to companies
with the objective of profit maximisation, corporate foundations are non-profit

3. Further information on STSY available at [Link] and VBCN: [Link]

EN/ [Last accessed 28 June 2019]
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  275

organisations aiming for the public good. Corporate foundations operate closely
with their parent company in regard to financing and the composition of board
members (Minciuollo 2016). Sometimes there is a division between corporate
collection and the collection managed by a corporate foundation, although both
collections are displayed on the same premises and the same personnel is re-
sponsible for collection management. In such cases, art of low economic and
art historical value is managed by the company and the foundation takes care
of the more valuable art. In-house hierarchies within a collection refer to the
appreciation of art, and sometimes the most valuable part of the collection is
defined as museum quality. These works of art are loaned to public exhibitions
and are the collection highlights (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015).

Usually the whole collection, or at least the majority of it, is displayed at a compa-
ny’s premises. This is one of the differences to museum collections. Small storage
areas exist for damaged works of art or art that will be relocated or disposed from
the collection. Only two Finnish collections out of 25 were located in permanent
storage, because of new facilities and changes in architecture. Questions of public
vs. private, especially from the point of space and patronage, concern corporate
collecting. The origins of public and private dimensions are political in nature
(Ruohonen 2013; Wu 2003), but in corporate art collecting these are practically
linked to accessibility and funding of the arts. I discuss corporate art collections
as semi-public collections. From the perspective of space and financing they are
collections that can be seen as something between public and private. On the
one hand, working places are usually places with limited right of access. On the
other hand, corporate art involves different kinds audiences, such as personnel,
owners and clientele, or even wider audiences in cases when the collection is
displayed on the internet or in a public exhibition (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015,
pp. 104–105). It should be noted that companies have no obligation to display
their collections in public or to support the arts, but many companies have an
interest to do so, or have commissioned or donated site-specific public art.

Documentation and contextual information separates museum collection from

other collections (Robbins 2016, p. 69). All but one Finnish corporate collection
out of 25 were inventoried, but there were many differences in the quality of in-
formation. Basic information, such as the name of the artist, title of artwork, the
year it was completed and acquired, size, materials and location, was recorded.
Financial values or purchase prices were generally included. Collections were
photographed, but in many cases the inventory data and photographs were kept
in separate databases. Only corporate foundations and a few other companies
had web-based or tailored databases similar to museums. Sometimes there was
additional information, such as exhibition history and conservation details. Ex-
cept for corporate collections that are professionalised, it is a common practice
that the inventory is conducted by secretaries or assistants, and updated by
students of art history. When financial values are needed or are updated, there
is an external art advisor or art dealer recruited for evaluation. When compared
to these valuations and art market databases, it can be noted that sometimes
financial values of corporate collections are either undervalued or overvalued
276 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

(Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015). That is because some art lacks a resale value.

The other problem is that updating financial values usually takes place on a
long-term basis, when short-term changes in the art market might be ignored.

From Wallpaper to Corporate Social Responsibility

Programmes
The majority of Finnish corporate art collections were established and devel-
oped during the 20th century. A few financial, insurance and wood processing
companies had made their first art acquisitions at the end of 19th, century but
collecting became more systematic only later. The roots of early corporate art
were in commissioned Finnish landscape paintings and portraits of top man-
agement. Some companies even had a role as patrons for individual artists,
and their works of art became the origins of corporate collecting. After Finnish
independence in 1917, corporate art, as well as fine art, generally had national
dimensions. Nationalism had an impact on art for many decades (Pettersson
2012; Robbins 2016). Finnish landscapes, mainly rural and sometimes depicted
with production estates, agricultural work and figures and scenes of Kalevala
mythology, as well as national and business heroes, were at the core of early
corporate art. Corporate art collecting quickly increased during the economic
boom in the 1980s and after the years of domestic recession at the beginning of
the 1990s. In the 2000s, collecting slowed down and collection management,
as well as collection policies, are under reassessment in many companies. Some
companies showed more interest in displaying their collections and gaining
other publicity for their art programmes, rather than expanding the number
of artworks in their collections (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015, pp. 300–302).

What are the motives for corporate collecting? As table 1 shows, there are several
overlapping motives for it among Finnish companies. The reasons for collecting
are similar to what has been found in previous international research on cor-
porate art (Barendregt et al. 2009; Becker 1994; Jacobson 1993; Kottazs et al.
2008; Leber 2008; Martorella 1990; Wu 2003) but there are differences among
the emphases of various motives. In summary, corporate art is mainly linked to
human resource management, corporate social responsibility, communication
and branding. These motives indicate that there are practical reasons for cor-
porate art collecting, with extrinsic values of art being emphasised.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  277

Table 1. Motives for corporate collecting in Finland 2006–07. ©Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski.

According to Finnish respondents, the most important motive for corporate

collecting is to create an inspiring and comfortable working environment. This
has been the main reason for corporate collecting over the decades, and this is
connected to the well-being of personnel and corporate image. But does corporate
art enchance individual performance, well-being or competitive advantange?
It is widely assumed, especially among scholars of arts-based learning, that art
has a positive impact on people and business performance. The impact of art
on well-being or business performance is difficult to evaluate, since it is implicit
and may appear only in the future.4 Regarding personnel, further research on
art’s impact at workplaces is needed.

In the future, the aesthetic and well-being aspects of corporate art may have
different emphases, at least in some branches of business, due to open-plan office
designs, digitalisation and branding. Some companies that operate nationally
or globally tend to design all their premises similarly, so that the experience
and brand become familiar to customers in different cities. This development is
happening in Finland, for example, on some customer service premises, where
there used to be corporate collections on display. When aiming at visual similar-
ities in an office design, original works of art do not fit anymore with branding
objectives. However, this is only the Finnish case. For example, the front offices in
many European financing businesses look both different and extravagant, since
collection highlights are located in spaces where clients enter, and these spaces
and art are tools for building and communicating a corporate image. Referring to

4. See also Denise Sumpf’s research (2005) on Siemens long-term art programme Kulturzeiten.
278 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

table 1, Finnish respondents reported that other aspects of well-being relating to

personnel were provided outside the collection, in the form of in-house art clubs
and corporate support for art hobbies, such as compensation for entrance fees.

Some 17 out of 25 Finnish respondents reported that they wanted to support

young or local artists and local galleries by purchasing and displaying their
works of art. They also said that this aspect of collecting is part of their CSR
activities. CSR, corporate image and representing the history of a company or
branch of business can be discussed together, because they all have a connection
to reputation, which is intangible capital. The origins of CSR are in the idea
of sustainable development and corporate philanthropy. In Finland corporate
philanthropy related, for example, to health care and children’s day care, as
well as to the leisure time of workers, before the welfare state became stronger
in the 1960s. There are many definitions for CSR, as well as arguments for and
against it. In short, CSR is generally understood as business ethics and voluntary
activity towards society and the environment that goes beyond what is required
by legislation. It is a self-regulating activity with economic, environmental and
social dimensions. Some examples of CSR are corporate support for the arts,
climate protection projects or humanitarian aid. It should be noticed that de-
spite the terms philanthropy and responsibility, corporate art programmes are
not charity work. As many researchers of CSR have noted, an understanding of
responsibility is time-, culture- and case-specific. Critics of CSR see it mainly
as a marketing tool (Buchholzt & Carroll 2009; Carroll 1999; Dahlsrud 2006;
Fleming & Jones 2013; Garriga & Melé 2004).

Permanent and temporary exhibitions of corporate collections on the internet

with open access are rare in Finland. Copyright fees and the slow profession-
alisation of corporate art are the main reasons for this. Many large European
companies present their collections and art policies on their websites and in the
social media. In Finland, mainly corporate art foundations have information on
collections and foundations on their websites, and curators usually communicate
in the social media. Gaining positive media attention and publicity are important
for any business. Corporate collecting and displaying collections are ways to
show that a company is interested in its surroundings by supporting the local
and national art worlds, and that it takes care of the well-being of its personnel.
Art collection also communicates values such as creativity, risk-taking, prosper-
ity, diversity, humanity, nationality or internationality (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski
2015). There are lots of differences in practices regarding how companies apply
corporate art in branding, but since the focus of this article is on Finnish cor-
porate collections and collecting, it is not possible to discuss corporate image
and branding issues in more depth.

As table 1 shows, investment value, learning and interest in collecting art were
minor motivations for Finnish corporate collectors. Surprisingly, art was not
considered a financial investment, although some valuable Finnish corporate
art collections do exist and commissioned monumental art requires a lot of
funding. Some Finnish respondents were reluctant to discuss the economic
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  279

value of their collections. This aspect also came out also in Rosanne Martorella’s
research on North American corporate art. According to Martorella, companies
avoid discussing the economic value of art because they have to ensure their
stakeholders and the public that all decisions have been carried out on solid
ground, and thus it may be more comfortable to mention well-being or support
for local artists than to speak of art that has a low financial value (Martorella
1990, pp. 43–44). In Finnish collections there are also works of art with hardly
any financial or resale value, for example, the portraits of top management
and amateur art. The majority of the portraits depicting top management are
commissioned from canonised artists, and according to the archive materials,
the prices paid to these artists are sometimes higher than, for example, other
works of art by the same artists. The values of portraits are usually linked to a
corporation’s image and history, and sometimes to local or national histories,
which have other values than just financial.

As others have noted, tax deductions sometimes motivate companies to collect

and run art programmes (Jacobson 1993, pp. 13–17; Higgs and Salzmann 2012,
pp. 111–115; Kottasz et al. 2008, pp. 239–240; Martorella 1990, pp. 25–26; Wu
2003, pp. 23–24, pp. 218–219). This economic advantage can be considerable,
since the prices of fine art on the international art market are much higher
than in Finland, and large companies invest in sponsorship programmes from
six to eight figures in euros or in US dollars. Finnish tax legislation is different
compared, for example, to France, the UK or the United States. So far, there
are no tax deductions for business or individuals on art purchases or donating
funds to public collections.5

Aesthetic values and the autonomy of art were important for respondents who
represented family-owned companies and co-operative businesses. Even during
recessions, these companies continued to make new art acquisitions. This sug-
gests that these types of companies are more open to using art as part of their
CSR programmes. Two CEOs representing family-owned companies reported
that their art purchases were based mainly on aesthetic reasons. However, few
respondents working in co-operative business regarded the quality of art or the
artist’s position in the art world as the most essential criteria when considering
new works of art, with this being the case in only one fifth of the 25 Finnish
companies.

Outside the White Cube and Public Obligations

In the following sections, I briefly introduce what kind of art Finnish companies
collect and how collection management, including disposals, is managed. This
information is derived from interviews and archival material from my PhD.
At times, personal taste and ideas of good Finnish art were starting points for
collecting. The concept of good Finnish art was mentioned by respondents, and

5. Finnish tax legislation enables tax deductions on sponsorship and philanthropy for arts and
science, but not on art purchases by private companies.
280 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

it referred to canonised art and themes representing Finnish landscapes and

culture, as well as traditional techniques of art such as oil paintings and bronze
castings, along with stone and wooden sculptures.

Today most companies, and all Finnish corporate foundations, have collection
policies and written rules, which generally follow the values and visions of the
parent company. Art is supposed to communicate these values, and at the same
time help make the company unique (Kottazs et al. 2007; Martorella 1990;
Wu 2003). For example, financial and insurance companies highlight financial
strength and modernity, so these companies have traditionally collected works
of art with high economic and art historical values. In Finland this means can-
onised art, for example by Helene Schjerfbeck, Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Pekka
Halonen, Eero Järnefelt and other artists representing so-called the Golden Age
of Finnish art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Financial and insurance
companies are good examples of the changes in corporate image and business
activities. After the 1960s and 1970s, non-figurative art became important in
Finnish financial companies because of its connotations to modern times, without
an emphasis on nationality. Today diversity, creativity and internationality are
values of many large companies. In many European countries this means that
international contemporary art is the core of collecting, but Finnish corporate
art is mainly Finnish modern and contemporary art, because companies do not
purchase as much art as they did two or three decades ago.

Few Finnish companies have adopted the example of IBM developed in 1937–
1940 to collect art of all the countries they do business with.6 These collections
have artworks by international artists, but the focus of the international part of
the collection is mainly on Scandinavian, Baltic or Russian art, and the collection
is usually exhibited in the headquarters in Finland. For example, there are two
corporate collections representing the wood processing industry that comprise
a substantial part of international contemporary art. The first one is the result
of a merger with a German company and the collection developed by a German
CEO, while the second one relates to the anniversary year of the company,
that was purchased by it. The latter collection is on display in the company’s
headquarters in Finland, and the German collection is located at the company’s
German branch. Art as a cultural ambassador, meaning that art of the compa-
ny’s country of origin is displayed in foreign offices, along with artists of that
country (Wu 2003), is not widely favoured by Finnish companies. Corporate
art navigates a complex combination of national legislation, different cultures
and religions (Horowitz 2011; Rectanus 2002). Transnational companies have
especially taken these regulations into account in their collection policies since,
for example, displaying nudes is forbidden in many Arab countries. Besides
culture, there are safety issues, such as fire safety relating to staircases, that do
not allow the use of certain materials and mountings.

6. See further information on IBM’s art programme in Jacobson 1993, pp. 10–13.
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  281

I have grouped the 25 Finnish collections into two main categories based on their
contents, which is one way to classify collections. The first category is eclectic,
and the majority of Finnish corporate art collections fall into this category, be-
cause of diverse collection development and changing collection policies. The
second category is thematic. These are usually based on regional or emerging art
or themes linked to the business of the company or certain artistic movements,
such as naïvism.

One interesting difference within the culture of collecting contemporary art

relates to photography and media art. Despite its recognised status as being
collectible (Horowitz 2011) and the international success of much Finnish pho-
tography in the art world, the majority of Finnish companies avoid collecting
photography and media art. Referring to the interviews with Finnish corporate
art curators, this avoidance of photography was based on the traditional con-
cept of art favouring oil paintings, stone, metal and wooden sculptures and
works on paper, such as drawings and prints. Video art was regarded as difficult
because of the moving images and loud voices. Still, there are screens in the
entrance halls and lobbies of large companies where business presentations or
news are running. Besides the traditional concept of art, it can be interpreted
that those respondents without art-field expertise do not know all the possibil-
ities for displaying media art, and their understanding of media art is limited.
Avoiding collecting photography and media art in Finnish corporate collecting
is deliberate, and is thus one difference when comparing corporate collections
to museum collections. Art made of very fragile materials and materials that
will vanish is avoided in corporate collecting because of security reasons and
the context of collecting.

Sometimes regional, uncanonised art or even amateur art is regarded as collect-

ible. Uncanonised art is favoured among companies that concentrate on young,
emerging artists or on regional art. Currently there are two annual corporate art
awards awarded in Finland. Both companies purchase the winning work of art
for their corporate collection. Each year the awards are connected to a specific
theme, such as innovation, networks or an artistic medium such as sculpture. In
both cases, the collection is linked to corporate social responsibility programmes
and participation. Participation in these cases means that either the personnel
or exclusive clientele can vote on their favourite work of art, but the jury makes
the final decision as to the winner. Both companies co-operate with external
art-field professionals in organising these awards. One company designates the
award for young visual artists under 30, the other for all visual artists.

When doing business outside the art world, the workplace is a different kind of
context for art experiences than are museums and galleries (Rectanus 2002, p.
49). Besides security, there are matters of individual taste and visual percep-
tion. People usually visit museums and public art exhibitions voluntarily and
do not spend years or decades looking at the same art while working. Nor do all
employees share the same concept of art as do corporate curators. Among per-
sonnel and management there are people that enjoy art, hate it or simply ignore
282 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

it. As noted before, there is very little research regarding empirical material on
how personnel experiences corporate art (Becker 1994; Martorella 1990; Witte
2009b; Wu 2003). This applies to the Finnish context as well.

Corporate art collections are sometimes characterised as conservative. Due to the

context of collecting and displaying art, certain themes are deliberately avoided
in corporate collecting (Martorella 1990; Wu 2003). Certain themes are regarded
as difficult to display in museums too (see also Thomas, this volume). In com-
panies, overtly sexual, political and religious artworks are generally disregarded
because companies avoid possibly creating controversy among their key stake-
holders. This policy may be changing with the increasing professionalisation
of corporate art, and in cases where art is an essential part of the company’s
image, as well as a platform for entertainment. There are already examples of
this among large transnational European companies that organise worldwide
touring exhibitions of their collections. In their projects, they take various cli-
ents into consideration or collect art that deals with social problems or sexual
identities. It is difficult to communicate diversity and show serious interest in
contemporary art if some themes or techniques are neglected. There is only
one Finnish corporate collection that includes, for example, a single artwork
by Robert Mapplethorpe. However, line drawings and naïvism with sexual or
political themes are regarded as acceptable. This interpretation is based on the
formal qualities of artworks and on their distance from realistic representation.
Finnish sauna (bathing) culture depicting nudes at their summer cottages or on
the beach is considered decent to display at workplaces. Bathing nudes are often
linked to nature or garden themes, which are usually regarded as acceptable.

The majority of the 25 Finnish companies acquired new works of art, either from
galleries, other exhibitions or directly from the artist’s [Link] is different
from Behnke’s findings, where art fairs were regarded as an important source of
art for corporate curators (Behnke 2007). Only a few corporate curators visited
art fairs, and only five out of 25 Finnish companies purchased art from auction
houses. Besides explicit collection policies, things such as mergers, gifts, ex-
changes and coincidence characterise the shaping of many Finnish corporate
art collections. Works on paper in large editions, small size sculptures, design
objects and craft products have been popular business gifts. These are usually
included in corporate art collections, and they generally are the first items con-
sidered when disposals are discussed.

The Phase of Large-scale Disposals

According to Susan Pearce (2005) the selection process is fundamental in col-
lecting. It has an even more fundamental role when disposals are carried out.
As Nina Robbins argues, collection disposal has been a delicate and debated
subject in Finnish museums. In principle, the idea of a collection disposal con-
flicts with the objectives of a publicly-funded museum. A lot of tacit information
and questions of ethics are involved in this last phase of collection management.
However, attitudes of museum professionals towards collection disposals have
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  283

recently changed. Active collection disposals are regarded as part of collection

management, and deaccessions and disposals have also been carried out in Finn-
ish art museums (Robbins 2016). Collection disposals not involving economic
problems or bankruptcy are a quite new phenomenon in Finnish corporate art
as well. There are, however, many examples of disposals from European and
American corporate collections, and some corporate collecting policies stress
the constant circulation of artworks. Christie’s and Sotheby’s have corporate
art departments, which also conduct private sales, but Finnish auction houses
do not have special departments for corporate art. Businesses have different
reasons for disposals than do memory organisations. The criteria for collection
disposals in companies follow mainly case-specific interpretations of CSR, as
well as changes in top management, business operations or environments with
revised collection policies (Higgs 2012; Leber 2008; Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015;
Martorella 1990). Instead of ethics, questions of corporate image and finances
are more relevant when collection disposals are considered in companies.
Traditionally, only single or small groups of artworks have been disposed of in Finnish corporate
collections, but during the 2010s several large-scale disposals were carried out. What were the motives
for these large-scale disposals? I will briefly introduce some recent cases of disposals in corporate art.
The first regards portraiture. Portraits of board members and CEOs are examples of the changing
nature of preferences of corporate curators. Finnish business has a long tradition of commissioned
portraits, which are in most cases displayed in boardrooms, corridors and auditoriums, as figure 2
shows. Large collections often comprise dozens of portraits representing CEOs or other board members.
Today, a few of them are usually on display in each collection, and the rest are either put into storage,
donated to other collections or sold. Some respondents who were working as CEOs or board chairs
said that they did not want the company to invest in portraits anymore. This culture of displaying
business heroes, which are mainly males in formal suits with an office view in their background, seems
to be changing. As noted in previous research, the tendency to separate ownership and leadership
sometimes results in collection disposals or terminating a corporate collection altogether (Barendregt
et al. 2009; Betts 2006; Leber 2008). Alongside changes in organisation culture and people who are
responsible for corporate image, the legitimisation for disposals is gradually taking place.

Figure 2. Portraits of top management in SOK’s Art Collection. SOK is a co-operative with a long art
collecting history. The portraits are permanently displayed in the conference room of the headquar-
ters in Helsinki. Photo by the author.

In 2017, Finland celebrated its centenary of independence, which also increased

corporate art activities. There were many public art exhibitions in Helsinki, but
also touring exhibitions elsewhere in the country. One exhibition organised by
284 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

the Finnish Chambers of Commerce even displayed hundreds of portraits of

past and current business figures, and it was designed to be experienced online.
The pictures with context information were collected from various companies.
This was a kind of counterattack to the prevailing attitude of hiding the portraits
of top management. Due to copyright fees, it is not available online anymore.

The second case represents a financial institution and the largest scale of collec-
tion disposals in the history of Finnish corporate art. The information of this case
is based on unpublished annual reports in 2013–2016 and the minutes of the
board meetings of Art Foundation Merita in 2015–2017. Art Foundation Merita
was founded in 2002, and the foundation is linked to Nordea Bank Finland.
This collection, together with its predecessors, is one of the oldest corporate
art collections in Finland. At times, the collection numbered more than 10,000
works of art, while today the number is around 1000.7 During 2013–2015 the
foundation disposed of thousands of works of art, retaining the art objects with
the highest economic, historical and art historical values. Selling was the major
way that these disposals were put into practice. When collection disposals are
carried out in companies, there are no disposal hierarchies, as there are among
Finnish museum professionals, who consider donations to other public collec-
tions as the most acceptable, and sales as the least desirable method of disposal
(Robbins 2016, pp. 174–175). Art Foundation Merita established a pop-up sales
room at the Nordea premises in Helsinki, and sales were also organised in bank
offices. These sales were advertised in newspapers and on the internet. The
prices of artworks were set deliberately lower than the prevailing price level
of the Finnish art market. In addition to these public pop-up sales, about 100
works of art were sold at auction houses, based on their high economic value,
and a few works of art were donated to charity.

During the last two decades, the number of bank offices and employees has de-
creased, as many financial services and operations have been digitalised. Open-
plan office design has reduced the number of walls. Together with these changes
in the business environment, and according to the minutes of Art Foundation
Merita, new branding objectives of Nordea Bank were the reasons for large-scale
collection disposals. Disposals from the collection of Art Foundation Merita
gained plenty of media attention, since the collection is well-known and appre-
ciated in Finland. Some journalists were even a little confused when reporting
on sales of artworks seen to have national importance, but local people loved
to purchase art at modest prices from a well-known collection. When corporate
art is sold to anyone who is interested, interpretations of national heritage may
reawaken, as happened among journalists in this case. The sales reached the
financial objectives set by the board of the foundation. After this large-scale
disposal, Art Foundation Merita has extended its scholarship programme, and
the foundation collaborates with the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

7. Further information on Art Foundation Merita available at [Link]

[Last accessed 28 June 2019]
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  285

The third case of collection disposals relates to museum collections. Instead of

numerous new acquisitions, Finland’s centenary year 2017 made corporate art
more accessible to the public. One case of corporate contribution to museums,
and a result of active collection disposal, was Nokia’s donation of 27 works of
art to the Espoo Museum of Modern Art. According to press releases and the
museum’s own exhibition information, this donation related to the centenary
year, and was a manifestation of Nokia’s CSR programme. An interesting point
in the donation is that the company disposed of art that was mainly created
by canonised international artists such as Bill Viola and Anselm Kiefer, whose
art is very rare in Finnish collections. My interpretation is that this donation
comprised such contemporary art that could make Nokia’s collection somehow
blue-chip and unique compared to other Finnish corporate collections, which
mainly lack international contemporary art.

Disposals from corporate collections are usually made by three different types
of gatekeepers, which relate to the phases of professionalisation of corporate
art. The first group consists of individuals without any art field background. The
second group is a board or art committee including an art field professional or
professionals. The third group is corporate curators specialised in the arts and
culture. As the motives for collecting are multidimensional, so are the reasons for
disposals. Collection disposals result from changes in the business environment
and top management, office architecture, taste, fluctuating attitudes towards
the idea of corporate social responsibility and professionalisation (Barendregt
et al. 2009; Leber 2008; Martorella 1990; Wu 2003).

Business Collaborates with Art Museums

Corporate art is a visible phenomenon in-house, but also outside a company’s
premises in the form of collaboration with art institutions and events. Typical
forms of corporate support for art museums are loans of artworks for exhibitions,
donations to museum collections, sponsorship and partnership programmes
(Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015; Oesch 2002; 2010). For example, in Frankfurt the
Städel Museum displays collections of German corporate art, and the museum has
received numerous private and corporate donations.8 In Finland the STSY and
the Amos Anderson Art Museum (now Amos Rex) in Helsinki have collaborated
for over ten years. This partnership has produced seven public exhibitions with
art education programmes, exhibition publications and numerous corporate
social events. From 2017 onwards, the STSY has changed its exhibition policy,
and today it aims to organise touring exhibitions in various Finnish cities and
art museums, as figure 3 shows. In Finland, the increased number of corporate
foundations has influenced the growth of public exhibitions of corporate art,
based on the objectives of the foundations.

8. Further information on the Städel Museum’s private support and corporate partnership available
at [Link] [Last accessed 28 June 2019]
286 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

Figure 3. The STSY’s exhibition One Hundred Years, A Thousand Meanings (2017) with online
publication and numerous art education activities, was organised in collaboration with the Jyväskylä
Art Museum. This exhibition was the most-visited one in 2017 at the Jyväskylä Art Museum. Photo
by the author.

If museum ethics can be avoided in corporate collecting, companies do follow

the ethics of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The ICC has pub-
lished guidelines for marketing and advertising, and principles of sponsorship
and corporate social responsibility are included in the guidelines.9 There is a lot
of literature on sponsorship and different definitions of it (Lewandowska 2015;
Olkkonen 2002). Below is the definition by ICC:

The term “sponsorship” refers to any commercial agreement by which

a sponsor, for the mutual benefit of the sponsor and sponsored party,
contractually provides financing or other support in order to establish
an association between the sponsor’s image, brands or products and a
sponsorship property, in return for rights to promote this association and/
or for the granting of certain agreed direct or indirect benefits. (ICC 2011)

Corporate partnership with art institutions refers to co-operation, communica-

tion and shared expertise, as Kaija Kaitavuori shows in her chapter on corporate
partnership agreements carried out in the Finnish National Gallery. It is a more
profound activity than corporate donating or putting company logos on the walls
of an exhibition hall. It is a relationship that implies the combination of resources
and expertise for maximising kinds of outcomes. Results can be, for example,
exhibitions, art education programmes or other kinds of audience engagement
(Lewandowska 2015; McNicholas 2004). Since the 1990s, corporate sponsorship

9. Further information on ICC’s guidelines for sponsorship available at [Link]

uploads/[Link] [Last accessed 28
June 2019]
Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  287

and partnership programmes have become frequent in Finnish museums (Oesch

2010), which is about a decade later than elsewhere in Europe.

The fear of losing the autonomy of art or an art institution is one of the main
obstacles to developing partneship programmes in museums (Alexander 1996;
Borchardt 2009). Sometimes this fear is justified, but as Victoria D. Alexander
shows in her research on American museums, the sponsor usually does not put
pressure on exhibition programmes or other functions of museums, because
they are interested in audiences and good publicity (Alexander 1996). Such fear
rarely exists in companies, because collaboration with art museums and events
is seen as part of the marketing mix. Companies are interested in well-educated,
middle and upper-class audiences, which are frequent museum visitors too.
But as Wu (2003) notes, corporate sponsorships and partnerships bring one’s
brand outside the museum to exhibition halls. Besides artwash (Evans 2015),
CSR programmes have been criticised for their emphasis on short-term activity.
The general economic situation also impacts corporate partnerships with art
institutions. As project work has become more frequent, companies constantly
search for new projects to support for their CSR programmes, and thus support
for art institutions may be short-term (Borchardt 2009, p. 71).

During the last two decades there have been many international examples re-
ported regarding ethical problems relating to corporate collaboration with art
institutions. These are usually related to the financing of art institutions, public
exhitibions of corporate art collections, especially sponsorship. For example, the
Liberate Tate movement and its interventions in London (Evans 2015) ended
some sponsorship agreements. So far in Finland, similar public criticism and
activism are almost absent regarding corporate partnership with art museums.
The reasons for this may be that the funding of arts is mainly based on state
patronage and other public sector funding, and the support of oil companies is
not so visible in Finland as in the UK. As Pekka Oesch (2002 and 2010) notes,
Finnish companies do not have enough information on culture and possibilities
for collaboration. According to the cultural economist Ruth Towse, the mixed
economy of public and private ownership is typical of the cultural sector in
developed countries. The main difference between countries is the balance of
public and private funding, and how the funding of arts is provided (Towse 2010).

According to the annual museum statistics published by the Finnish Heritage

Agency,10 the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki, for example, has established
and renewed sponsorship and partneship programmes for many years. However,
few other museums in the capital city region have regular corporate partnership
activities, with some museums doing this only occasionally. The majority of
Finnish museums do not have any corporate support. In recent years, the annual
sponsorship support varied from thousands to half a million euros per museum,
which means under 1% of annual budgets of Finnish museums (Finnish Herit-
age Agency 2019). Usually the department of communications or the museum

10. Further information available at [Link] [Last accessed 28 June 2019]

288 Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development

director take care of corporate partnerships, but compared to large art museums
in Central Europe, personnel specialised in corporate partnerships in Finnish
museums is virtually non-existent. As Wu (2003) notes, the museum director
is a key figure between the museum and business initiatives.

There are many motives among companies to support the arts and heritage.
Some of them are CSR programmes, growing globalism, competition among
companies, neoliberal economics the privatisation of culture and the experi-
ence economy (Borchardt 2009; Lewandowska 2015; Pine and Gilmore 2011;
Rectanus 2002; Wu 2003). The Western debate on art vs. economics has a
long history and still exists, but at the same time many successful partnerships
have also been carried out in Finland, based on win-win objectives and shared
expertise (Luukkanen-Hirvikoski 2015). New audiences and funds are the ma-
jor advantages for museums, but there have been failures as well because of
incompetence and conflicting objectives of partners. Corporate collaboration
with art institutions definitely requires further research.

Conclusions
In the business context, fine art goes beyond decoration. The motives for corpo-
rate art collecting are linked to prevailing organisational culture and case-specific
dimensions of human resource management, corporate social responsibility,
communications and branding. Corporate collections can be discussed as part
of national cultural heritage. Due to changes in the business environment, the
nature of corporate art is constantly fluctuating, which involves crucial questions
of power, expertise and ethics. In business, the values and appreciation of art
are generally based on practical needs and the external values of art instead of
on altruism. As semi-public collections, the accessibility of art and available
information on collections are resticted.

The public discussion on privatisation of culture and research on sponsorships

and corporate partnerships indicate that corporate art programmes will also
concern many Finnish museums in the future. Donations, exhibitions, art educa-
tion and sponsorship agreements are some examples of corporate interventions
in art museums. Corporate support for the arts is supplementary financing for
culture in Finland. Successful partnership programmes with business require
new competences and leadership in museums, due to the of different values
and activities of partners.

References
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Art Foundation Merita.

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Section II – Collection Management Leading to Collection Development  289

Annual Reports 2013–16. Unpublished. The Archives of Art Foundation

Merita, Helsinki.

Minutes of the Board Meetings 2015–17. Unpublished. The Archives of Art

Foundation Merita, Helsinki.

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 293

Section III

Communities
and
Audiences
Section III – Communities and Audiences
294 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Audience engagement has gone through a vigorous change in recent decades.

The question Whose Museum? has been asked in many countries. The chap-
ters in this section highlight work done in Finland in this sector – how Finnish
museums have engaged audiences and answered the question. No doubt this
section and the next one are very closely connected to one another, since it is
often through exhibitions that museums speak to their audiences. In addition
to these traditional channels, museums have expanded their comprehension to
exhibitions and audiences and are showing a multitude of approaches to keep
museums relevant. Museums produce pop-up events, co-operate with various
other institutions or grassroot programmes and organise satellite functions, to
name a few. Eventually, it is through audience engagement programmes that
museums are able to show contemporary impacts as one way of measuring the
importance of museums in our society. Museums need to be ever more sensitive
and inventive, engaging themselves in various participatory projects in order to
make their work matter for current and future audiences. Furthermore, we might
legitimately ask which audiences museums should try to engage with: is it the
local community or the enjoyment of tourists that is more important econom-
ically to a museum? Similarly, are certain corporate connections, which often
bring with them new potential and actual funding streams, to be encouraged or
put under careful scrutiny? At the same time, the global trends of participatory
practices within museums and museum research, with notions of co-production
and co-creation, are coming to the fore (sensu Connolly 2015; Simon 2010).

Kaija Kaitavuori’s chapter highlights the developments in museum education in

the Finnish National Gallery through her case-study article. She looks at both
the benefits and drawbacks of corporate sponsorship, suggesting that sponsor-
ship deals do not necessarily guarantee inclusive museum experiences for all
audiences. Mari Viita-aho’s chapter studies the trend of participation in muse-
um work as expressed in the literature, especially within Finland and the wider
Nordic context. She reviews the different kinds of participatory practices used
in the Nordic countries, and considers the challenges these practices present
for the refined work done in the museums. This exploration of participation
also reveals some of the expectations towards future museums, and widens our
understanding of social museology.

Erja Salo draws similar conclusions in her case-study chapter. The example of
the Vuosaari – In Other Words project illustrates the reasons that the museum
wants to operate outside of its own walls and do regional cultural work. What
are the goals of the art institution and how do they relate to the goals of the
residents/local communities and funding? Is there two-way action? What does
the art institution gain? What is the impact of the activity on the organisation,
and is it reasonable to think that regional inclusive/participatory projects will
be a permanent form of audience work for all art institutions one day? Dorothea
Breier writes about the citizen activism point of view, working closely with a
grassroots community in the Helsinki district of Kallio, thus making the voice
of so-called non-visitors (and the barriers they experience) much more visible.
Both chapters emphasise the important role of museums in making public spaces
Section III – Communities and Audiences  295

more inclusive. The final chapter is written by a former visiting Fulbright scholar,
Benjamin Filene, from the North Carolina Museum of History (who has sub-
sequently moved to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History).
He brings his personal insight to the Finnish museum scene, gained from his
time spent at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki City Museum. In his
essay he describes how the concept of public domain, which includes museums,
allows a multitude of questions to be presented, and various approaches to be
valued, in order to allow visitor experiences to flow freely. This requires trust
and the ability of museum professionals to share some of their expertise for the
common good.

The concepts of co-creation, active participation and taking museum work outside
the institution’s walls are all presented in this section. In the spirit of life-long
learning, museum professionals are reaching out to new audiences and extend-
ing their expertise to new areas. These are factors that will leave a mark and
make museums significant in the future. These new audiences, with their new
innovative approaches, will help carry knowledge from the past to the future.

Kaija Kaitavuori
The Museum and its Audiences – A configuration of interests, the case of the
Finnish National Gallery

Mari Viita-aho
Participating How, Why and in What? – Analysing Nordic museum research
case studies 2008–2018

Erja Salo
Outside Museums’ Own Walls – Experiences with participatory projects as part
of the Helsinki Model

Dorothea Breier
Accessibility Means More than Ramps – A critical approach to the (in-)acces-
sibility of museums, galleries and cultural institutions

Benjamin Filene
What Finland Taught Me about Doing History in Public

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Simon, N 2010 The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.

296 Section III – Communities and Audiences

The Museum and its Audiences

– A configuration of interests,
the case of the Finnish National
Gallery
Kaija Kaitavuori

Abstract
Various professional groups within and around museums are interested in their
audiences. Curators, of course, produce exhibitions for the visitors, but the spe-
cialists dedicated to working for and with audiences are museum educators.
Communication and marketing specialists also work for current and potential
audiences. Funders, for their part, have a keen interest in who comes to a mu-
seum and how the museum is experienced.

Although an educational ethos has been integral to the DNA of the public museum
from the start, the current attention to audiences stems from somewhat different
aspirations. This chapter explores the history of educational programmes in the
Finnish National Gallery since the 1980s, particularly in relation to various edu-
cational and economic interests guiding audience orientation. In some instances,
these interests support each other, in other cases they conflict.

The research shows how funding structures have had an effect on programming
and education work since the early days of the museum. Using some specific pro-
jects from the past and present as examples, I further discuss both the common
and differing concerns of the various actors working for and with audiences,
and how they affect the ways in which museums conceive, study and classify
their visitors.

Keywords: museum education, audiences, new museology, corporate funding,

the Finnish National Gallery

Introduction
While an educational ethos and an interest in its visitors have been integral to
the public museum’s DNA from the start, the reasons behind this interest and
the ways in which museums have conceptualised their audiences have varied.
The current attention to audiences reflects rather different aspirations from
those of the 19th century, as the interest groups who run and fund museums
have multiplied.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  297

The birth of the public museum was firmly associated with state-building and
the cultivation of public taste (Bennett 1995; Hooper-Greenhill 1992; see also
Pettersson, this volume). These civilising functions were defined by the ruling
classes with the aim of educating citizens, as well as creating a sense of nation-
hood and cultural heritage (Duncan 1995). It can therefore be said that the
museum has served as an instrument for public education, as well as having a
disciplinary function in regard to its constituencies.

In post-war Europe and America, museums’ relationships with their publics

started to change. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the role of the museum in society
was questioned, and it was argued that museums should be more responsive to
the needs of the public which they serve (Davis 2008, p. 398). The new orien-
tation has been theorised as new museology, a discourse around the social and
political roles of museums (McCall & Gray 2013). According to Peter Vergo,
this reflected “a state of widespread dissatisfaction with the ‘old’ museology,
both within and outside the museum profession” (Vergo 1989, p. 3). The new
conception and practice entailed significant changes as to how museums were
conceived and in activities that they undertook. The focus shifted from collec-
tion-based and object-centred organisations to visitor-oriented museums. The
motivation for engaging audiences is to give a more active role to visitors, to
encourage self-directed learning and generally to offer wider access and rep-
resentation to various sections of the population. The change was characterised
as, e.g., a move “from being about something to being for somebody” (Weil
2002, p. 28) or re-imagining the museum “beyond the Mausoleum” (Witcomb
2003). Concepts that are used to describe museums’ new relationship with the
public include empowerment, dialogue, inclusion and social change (McCall &
Gray 2013; Rodney 2019).1

The changing ideas of the museum were accompanied by the specialisation of

museum work, leading in the 1970s to what Vera Zolberg calls the post-profes-
sional era. It is characterised by the introduction of new professional groups,
particularly what she calls managerial specialists, into the museum, alongside
traditional museum professions (Zolberg 1981, pp. 103–125).2 Among these
new specialist areas are human resources, development, finances, marketing
and communications, as well as new ancillary activities, such as shops, cafés
and events. The post-professional phase is marked by a separation between
artistic and administrative control, together with a huge increase in the size
and number of museums.

Zolberg describes the situation in North America, but a similar development

has also taken place in Europe (see also Paunu, this volume). New museology

1. Whether a real change has also taken place in practice, is studied by McCall & Gray (2013).
2. Zolberg identifies three stages: the pre-professional era, characterised by lay collectors, donors
and amateurs. This was replaced by a professional era that gave prominence to academic professio-
nals; the museum profession was defined in cognitive and scientific terms, collections and exhibitions
followed art-historical principles (as opposed to taste) and only academically-educated experts had
a legitimate say in the affairs of the museum. Finally, there is the post-professional era.
298 Section III – Communities and Audiences

discourse appeared in several languages and countries, with subtle differences

in the ways in which it was understood, and its implementation is affected by
respective national cultural policies (Ballé and Poulot 2004). For example, in
the Francophone and Hispanic worlds, the idea of the communal or ecomuse-
um grew particularly strong (Davis 2008, pp. 398–400). In Britain, audience
orientation got an additional boost with the advent of New Labour to power
in 1997 and its active policy regarding education and inclusion. In Finland the
discussion is largely based on the Anglophone debates.

This necessarily cursory overview of museums’ public orientation serves here to

introduce a reflection on similar questions of who, today, is interested in muse-
um visitors – both within and outside museums – and why. The investigation
evolves through two case studies of visitor-oriented activities in the Finnish
National Gallery and analyses the driving forces behind them. The cases span
a period of twenty years, the first located in the early stages of educational ac-
tivities in the museum and the second in the new millennium, in a profoundly
altered cultural, economic and political landscape. The connecting point between
the two projects is that they were each funded by a corporate sponsor, thus
introducing into the process an actor from outside the museum. The questions
leading the investigation are as follows: Who is interested in audiences? Whose
interest matters and on what grounds? (see also Pettersson, Myllykoski, Salo
and Viita-aho, this volume).

Museum Education in the Finnish National Gallery

The first museum educators in Finland were appointed at the beginning of the
1970s, in the National Museum and the National Gallery. Before that, teaching
in museums, mostly in the form of guided tours, had been the responsibility
of museum directors, researchers, collection officers and curators, and occa-
sionally of temporary guides who were employed for short periods, especially
for the summer months. The main target group of the first museum educators
or museum lecturers (Fin. museolehtori), as they were called, were schools, in
response to the demand, identified in public discussions, that museums should
complement school teaching (Salo 2010). Following the example of national
museums, the 1980s saw a few more educators being appointed, although much
of the education work, particularly in smaller museums, was still carried out by
other professionals as part of and in addition to their other duties. It was not
until the turn of the millennium that a specialised audience worker became an
indispensable member of the professional team in all big, medium-size and even
smaller museums. In 2005, staff working in different capacities within muse-
um education felt the need to become more connected and organised, and The
Finnish Association for Museum Education, Pedaali, was founded, first among
art museum educators and then expanding to include the whole museum field.

The proliferation of specialised museum educators conformed with the growing

attention paid to the visitor experience, as opposed to the previous emphasis on
collections, objects and the distribution of expert knowledge. This, obviously,
Section III – Communities and Audiences  299

did not happen overnight, and was not totally without problems. Focusing on
lay visitors was not always appreciated by professionals (Salo 2010) and there
was a differing, even conflicting, understanding of why, how and which audi-
ence groups should be served. For the pioneers, important factors affecting the
possibilities of carrying out work successfully were support from the director
on the one hand, and sufficient resources and an independent budget on the
other (Salo 2010, pp. 28–29). At the same time, Finnish museums joined the
post-professional era, with an increase in managerial, financial and administra-
tional jobs that also had an interest in audiences and attendance.

The National Gallery was among the first museums to appoint an educational
worker, in 1973. In addition to the usual guided tours, along with some new
target groups and activities, such as nursery group visits, an exceptionally large
and visible educational effort was realised in connection to a major contempo-
rary art exhibition, Ars83. This show was the fourth in a series of international
contemporary art exhibitions, arranged at irregular intervals since 1961, that
take over the whole museum building. The exhibitions have had as their mission
to introduce to the Finnish audience the most recent trends and movements in
contemporary art. In 1983 the museum faced a new situation and an economic
challenge: it was no longer a question of just transporting studio-made works
to Finland, but a large number of the artists were to come in person to install
or create their work in situ. Ars83 was the first major exhibition to introduce
in Finland the new art forms of site-specific and installation art. The term in-
stallation (Fin. installaatio) is hard to find in Finnish art writing or literature
before 1983, but it proliferated quickly after this show. The new way of producing
art and art exhibitions demanded more economic resources than the museum
could afford and so, for the first time, it approached a private corporate funder,
specifically a bank. The choice was made based on the previous contact by the
curator (or commissaire, Fin. komissaari, as the position was then called), who
had been the advisor regarding the bank’s art collection. The bank accepted
the invitation and gave not only financial aid, but also help with, for example,
communication and marketing, while making clear it would not have anything
to do with decisions about the content and the programme.

Partnering with a bank brought a new element to the exhibition-producing

process. A coordination committee was set up for the task, including members
from the museum and bank. It was in charge of creating and monitoring the
budget, and all communication and marketing had to be approved by the com-
mittee. The collaboration meant a noticeable change for education within the
museum. The bank was actively concerned with the audiences for the show, and
for the first time an important investment was made to support an educational
programme. The bank’s aims were made explicit in their marketing plan, in
which they explained that the decision to support the exhibition “reflects the
emphasis put on the soft values of the 1980s and the bank’s endeavour to stay
in touch with the customers in their free time as direct banking contacts become
less frequent” (SKOP Bank’s staff notification).
300 Section III – Communities and Audiences

The sponsorship deal, the first of its kind in Finland, attracted considerable
attention among the press and created a small scandal in the art field, so much
so that one of the invited contributors to the catalogue withdrew his article
in protest. For education, the deal represented an unforeseen boost from the
private side. The programme was built on existing work, but was expanded to
a new scale. For the bank, it was particularly important to reach families, so a
special programme called Children’s Ars was created. It included a separate
youth catalogue, a rich programme of nursery and school visits, and even a
special opening arranged for young audiences.

Figure 1. Ars83 exhibition catalogues. The special youth catalogue is on the left. Photo by the author.

For museum education, the new sponsorship deal undoubtedly had a positive
effect. It was given more importance, resources and visibility than before. At
the same time, it was set apart from the exhibition’s core: in the exhibition
documents, Children’s Ars is dealt with under the title marketing operations,
separate from the exhibition content planning. Hence new audience orientation
at the Finnish National Gallery did not grow entirely from within the museum,
but was introduced by an external player. Education work was positioned under
the wider heading of public relations. This reflects the position and status of
educational work in (art) museums as the interface between the museum’s expert
area and the public, at the cross-section of several interests (see also Kaitavuori
2011 and Paunu, this volume).

The novelties of Ars83 – transporting artists instead of artworks, creating projects

in situ and raising funds from the private sector – have since become standard
Section III – Communities and Audiences  301

practice. This also means more network-based ways of working and combining
various actors and their interests in the same project. An increasing number
of both old and new professionals (or, in Zolberg’s terms, post-professionals)
come together to produce an art exhibition: curators, artists, educators, techni-
cians, producers, lawyers, funders (both public and corporate), administrators,
editors, communicators, marketers, front office staff, etc.3 Regarding audiences,
this means a multiplication of groups and actors, all of whom have a slightly
different approach to them, stemming from their various interests.

From Sponsorship to Corporate Collaboration

During the 1990s, the Finnish National Gallery went through an organisational
change as it became part of the state administration and began to apply state-im-
posed New Public Management methods, such as management by outcome
and net budgeting. Needless to say, the process brought the museum into a
managers’ and administrators’ era. At the end of the decade, the contemporary
section of the National Gallery moved to its own purpose-built premises and
became known as the Contemporary Art Museum Kiasma.4 As a new museum,
it looked for and indeed attracted a good deal of corporate funding. Private
fundraising was evolving and started to be seen as business partnerships rather
than sponsorships. It was no longer a question of simply giving money to the
museum in exchange for logo exposure, but of a dialogue in which the needs of
the two parties are negotiated and put into practice. (In this chapter, corporate
arts funding is viewed in connection with educational work; see also Luukka-
nen-Hirvikoski, this volume).

The new museum’s first educational project funded by a sponsor was the Kiasma
School on Wheels, a three-year-long project running 2003–2005. The project
was funded by the electric company Vattenfall, which had already been Kias-
ma’s business partner for the previous three years, and was now looking for a
new type of collaboration for the second three-year term. The concept and the
programme were developed by the Kiasma educational team and approved by
the company. The School on Wheels was a large-scale programme that toured
schools in chosen areas remote from the museum. It travelled in a specially
customised van and stopped for one or two days at each school, depending on
the number of students. In the morning, it gathered all the 9th graders (14- to
15-year-olds) for a 90-minute performative and interactive session taught by
two artist/educators, who took them through various school subjects by using
artworks as material, original ones as well as reproductions and images. The

3. In the early 2000s, the Finnish National Gallery conducted a collective mapping of its exhibi-
tion-making practices and processes. This was deemed necessary in order to better coordinate the
multiple actors involved in the process (Kaitavuori & Roine 2006).
4. The Contemporary Art Museum was founded in 1990 as the contemporary section of the Finnish
National Gallery, but it was first located in the same Ateneum building as older Finnish art. It moved
into its own building in 1998. At the same time, Kiasma got its own education team, consisting of
three members.
302 Section III – Communities and Audiences

afternoon programme consisted of a session with a local artist and an art-making

workshop based on a school subject, such as history, biology or home economics.
The programme was built on the idea of learning various school subjects – except
art – via contemporary art. A teachers’ manual with examples and tasks was
given to each school that they visited.

Figure 2. Kiasma School on Wheels art van in a schoolyard. Photo by an unknown project participant.

Without external funding, an outreach programme on this scale would have

been beyond the means of the museum. It allowed the museum to cater to
audiences outside the capital area – a mission that it had as a national muse-
um. The methods drew on and helped to further develop the multidisciplinary
approach that the museum education team had already been using with school
programmes inside Kiasma.

The project made the national news and was well covered by local newspapers.
It even gained international interest and was presented at three international
conferences, as well as making a tour of three cities in Estonia. The Vattenfall
communications director, however, complained that the company did not get the
media attention it deserved; the media were reluctant to mention the company’s
name, even though it gave ample exposure to the project and to Kiasma (Rait-
maa & Venäläinen 2006, pp. 10–11).5 Yet, the project was invited to a number of
events and seminars on the topic of collaboration between both the museum and
schools, as well as the museum and companies. The case also served as a success-
ful example of a new kind of cultural sponsorship in marketing literature (Rosti
2004, pp. 43–45). For the company, the project was a way of being recognised
for unusual and innovative cultural sponsorship. Their business partners were
envious of the idea and its implementation. According to the CEO, the company
wanted to invest in youth and bring art to areas in which their customers were

5. Isohanni (2005) challenges this in her MA thesis: on the contrary, she says, two thirds of her data
that analyse media coverage of arts sponsorship (including articles about Kiasma School on Wheels)
mentions the name of a sponsor.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  303

located. The partnership built their reputation as a responsible actor in the local
area and helped their collaboration with communities (Rosti 2004; Raitmaa
2003). They saw the project equally as internal marketing; School on Wheels
workshops were also arranged for the staff. They strengthened team building
and created “brain energy” (Rosti 2004, p. 44). The collaboration was enacting
their motto of “putting energy into life”.

Discussion
Has private funding done a service for museums in general, and for museum
education in particular? The two cases – and more could be presented – show
that corporate sponsorship has allowed museums to set up projects that they
would not otherwise have been able to realise. Furthermore, it can be said that,
particularly in the first case, it was the external sponsor that gave the audience
orientation a new impetus, as it was important to the sponsor that the exhibition
could gain maximum attention. We can assume that after this experience the
status and importance of educational work slightly changed within the museum.
Some of the activities – such as a separate exhibition publication for a specific
audience group – were repeated in subsequent exhibitions. Audiences and the
way they experience exhibitions are important to sponsoring companies. There-
fore, it could be said that corporate sponsorship worked for new museology; it
was in favour of opening up the institution to the general public, in opposition
to the image of cultural authority, exclusivity and the isolation of museums
from the modern world.

At the same time, education – already aligned with lay audiences as opposed to
experts – gets distanced from what is predominantly considered the professional
core of the museums: collections and specialist knowledge of them. Particularly
with art museums there is a strong tension between experts and lay audiences
(Bennett 1995, pp. 170–173), and education practice is often questioned regard-
ing its position in serving the interests of their respective needs. Bennet (1995)
explains this in relation to art museums’ particularly high investment in the econ-
omy of invisibility as the mechanism that distinguishes art and museum objects
from the rest of the material world. As nothing visible distinguishes museum
objects from the world of objects around them, their status is based on cultural
knowledge and recognition that allow for those in the know, those appropriately
educated, to appreciate the objects. The division between those who can see and
those who cannot is at the core of the art museum. Therefore, it is fundamental
to keep unqualified lay interpretations and instrumental interests at a distance.
Museum education, particularly with regard to art, challenges art’s specialism
by critically exposing some of the background assumptions and mechanisms by
which such a distinction operates, therefore inviting suspicion from the inside.
In this respect, it has features in common with sociology, which according to
Bourdieu (1993, p. 139) makes an odd bedfellow with art. These reservations
also reflect the ambiguous status of education, which is simultaneously at the
core of the museum and counteracting its protective segregation. Marketing and
304 Section III – Communities and Audiences

the pragmatic ambitions of sponsors further blur the boundaries that guard art
against the common world.

For corporations, the sponsorship process is part of marketing (Olkkonen 2002).

This was clearly expressed by the Vattenfall CEO, who explained the relation-
ship between corporate citizenship and responsibility towards shareholders:
“When we invest in young people, we are also investing in their families, which
means we are investing in our customers who are the basis of our success”
(Raitmaa 2003). Even when the expressed motive is corporate citizenship and
social responsibility, it touches upon the question of reputation and visibility.
Companies look for image enhancement: connecting their brand with positive
associations. It is an exchange with monetary value. Other desirable returns
on their investment are media visibility, promotion, networking, contacts with
interest groups (staff, customers, clients, investors, media, sub producers, etc.),
goodwill, cultural competence and new ways of marketing (Rosti 2004, p. 32).

These aims obviously set limits as to the kinds of projects that get sponsored.
Despite the above-mentioned encouraging examples of privately-funded edu-
cational projects, we can also ask about what is left in the shadows and what
kind of projects are not picked up by corporate sponsors. Certain audiences
are more popular than others. Children, for example, are always a good target
group; they bring along their parents and generate goodwill.

After Ars83, the next important sponsor connection in terms of education was
a relationship of several years with the main national newspaper, Helsingin
Sanomat. The format for this collaboration was twofold: family-oriented publi-
cations and children’s weekend events. Through the newspaper, these events got
a lot of marketing and were hugely popular and well-attended. Again, from the
funder’s perspective, the educational programme was understood as marketing,
and collaboration was managed by the newspaper’s marketing department. For
the education team, such collaboration allowed the development of new activities
and the organisation of a programme for families, on a scale that would not have
been otherwise possible.

More challenging groups (or those who have lower potential as consumers),
however, have to be addressed with public funding. Public funding, on the
other hand, is tied to policy targets. Increasingly, these targets have been de-
fined by social criteria: health, well-being, social cohesion, etc. According to
McCall and Gray, “this instrumental policy rhetoric is very much in line with
the ‘new museology’” (McCall & Gray 2014, p. 22). Many of these expectations
are directed to education services, tasked with serving various audiences. Edu-
cation departments, as I have argued elsewhere (Kaitavuori 2011), work at the
intersection of multiple, often contradictory demands regarding the audience.
Corporate interests, the focus of this article, are only one set of demands among
many. For the administration and management, it is important to show that
publicly-funded institutions interest and serve the public widely and efficiently.
They also channel and monitor governmental policy interests, according to
which museums and galleries must demonstrate their social relevance and
Section III – Communities and Audiences  305

use. In addition, educational activities are accountable in terms of academic

quality at the core of the institution, as discussed above.

The varying interests meet in the multiple meanings of the term audience de-
velopment and in discourse about new audiences. How are audiences devel-
oped and are the developments more qualitative or quantitative? Marketing
goes for numbers, sponsors also prefer large audiences, but of the right kind,
art professionals tend to think about their peers and education may have very
specific and narrow targets. These varying needs and different standards can
lead to internal tensions among professional groups (Zolberg 1981; McCall &
Gray 2014) and to double-speak as museums translate their work into policy
form (McCall & Gray 2014).

Different interests also generate different knowledge about audiences. Visitor

surveys in the Finnish National Gallery coordinated by learning departments,
collect demographic data and information about visitors’ needs and experiences.
Qualitative research is also conducted occasionally about specific visitor groups
or themes. In 2006, Kiasma commissioned a new kind of study in which it sought
to identify audience segments for marketing purposes. The study defined five
segments based on their perceptions and attitudes about culture in general and
contemporary art in particular. The respondents were also asked, among other
things, how they spent disposable income, whether they were familiar with certain
shops and what media they followed (Dagmar 2007). According to Ahola and
Uusitalo (2008), market segmentation of audiences is rare in Finnish museums
and should be used more. They also conducted a segmentation exercise of art
consumers in the three museums of the Finnish National Gallery.

Without going into the studies in more detail, it becomes apparent that the various
museum functions ask different questions about audiences and consequently cre-
ate different pictures of them. Whereas museum education looks at, for example,
age-specific or special-needs groups, marketing seeks “devourers of high culture”
and “contemporary art-averse friends of popular culture” (Dagmar 2007), or
“traditionalists” and “art enthusiasts” (Ahola & Uusitalo 2008). The concepts
they operate with – market segments vs. target groups, consumer behaviour vs.
learning styles – come from different contexts, carry different meanings and
construct the institution’s audience relationship on different terms. Needless
to say, both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusion
At the beginning of the new millennium’s third decade, we have come a long way
in the development that was launched by the Ars83 exhibition. Would the strong
reaction of the catalogue writer who felt it was necessary to withdraw from the
bank-sponsored project and not perform “as an advertising pole” (Sandqvist
1983) be understood today? What would be a valid reason to now do such a
thing? Corporate sponsorship as such hardly awakens strong feelings nowadays,
but occasionally ethical questions provoke reactions, such as the controversial
306 Section III – Communities and Audiences

BP partnership with the Tate and the British Museum (Evans 2015), or the
scandal around the Sackler family, who have a number of education facilities
in museums and galleries named after them in recognition of their sponsorship
(Goukassian 2018).

Funding structures have affected programming and education work, as we have

seen above. In addition to these concrete consequences of sponsorships – in-
creased visibility and weight for education, internal tensions and new hierar-
chies concerning which audience groups should be approached and how they
are evaluated – there are more subtle changes in the ways in which museums
understand their role in society. Maybe the most important effect has been a
cultural change in the ways in which we look at and understand museums and
their ethos.

As companies, museums today are treated as brands. A prime example of pro-

fessional branding is of course the Tate – or just simply Tate as it was rebranded
in 1998 (Stallabrass 2013; Dewdney, Dibosa & Walsh 2013). Kiasma was, to
my knowledge, the first Finnish museum to treat its identity as a brand and to
conduct a brand awareness study in its opening year of 1998. A brand is meant
to be an assurance of quality, immediately and visually recognisable throughout
the organisation’s products. Brands not only sell products, but also experiences
and life-styles. Through brands, museums and businesses, in a way, speak the
same language and understand each other – they are on the same wavelength
(Olkkonen 2002).6 This allows for private-public brand alliances, such as Nokia
and Kiasma, or the Finnish aviation company Finnair and Kiasma. Logo-mar-
riage, however, can also turn sour, as demonstrated by the above-mentioned
cases of BP and Sackler.

With the advent of businesses into the museum world, a new secretive culture
has gained a foothold in the operations of cultural institutions (Wu 2002, p. 116).
In the case of the Finnish National Gallery, the museum declined my request
for information about the first brand awareness research regarding the Kiasma
brand twenty years ago. The request was declined on the grounds of business
confidentiality (email message on 22nd August 2019 from the Business Infor-
mation Manager). A state-funded cultural institution is thus viewed as part of
the corporate field, and obeys its operational logic.

This perhaps reflects the central change and the question that we should be
asking: what is the game that museums believe they are part of? There are var-
ious signs that tell about changing standards. For a long time already, museums
have seen themselves as competing with commercial attractions, thus aligning
themselves with the entertainment or edutainment industry. “Competition for
people’s spare time” is frequently mentioned in the Finnish National Gallery’s
planning documents. In economic terms, the pressure of fund-raising pushes
museums to arrange gala parties and other private occasions outside public hours.

6. In fact, Olkkonen’s research shows that when it comes to norms, values and beliefs, sponsors
and sponsees most of the time were not “on the same wavelength” (Olkkonen 2002, pp. 235–253).
Section III – Communities and Audiences  307

This recreates the museum as a private club for which you need a VIP invitation
and formal attire. Curatorial and the sponsor’s statements appear side-by-side
in exhibition catalogues, speaking about art and products with the same voice:
Nokia and Kiasma are united in cutting-edge creativity and innovation, Vat-
tenfall and contemporary art radiate energy and Finnair builds an air bridge to
the Far East, bringing to Kiasma art from their newly opened flight destinations
in China, Japan and Korea (exhibition catalogues in 1998–2009). These and
other changes, such as the conceptualisation of the visitor as consumer (Rodney
2019) or public spending being referred to as investment (Belfiore 2012) reflect
the shift from the state to the market, from the political sphere to the economic
sphere, as the value base for policy choices. This new game has indeed become
so natural that it is hardly conceivable how or why any of this would have been
considered so inappropriate in the early 1980s.

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310 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Participating How, Why and

in What? – Analysing Nordic
museum research case studies
2008–2018
Mari Viita-aho1

Abstract
Ever since museums shifted their focus from collections to visitor engagement,
participatory practices have become increasingly widespread in the museum
field. Discussions about participation have mostly focused on museum visitors:
how to design exhibitions, how to make other museum content more relevant
and how to make visitor experiences more rewarding. Outcomes, benefits and
challenges for museums when using participatory approaches have been less
studied, as are the ways participation might be changing museum work and
knowledge production.

In this chapter, I argue that participation is often seen as a practical tool for
engaging with the public. Thus, it is treated as public engagement or exhibition
design, when in fact, implementing participatory practices substantially changes
a museum’s everyday work and their institutional objectives. Using participatory
practices challenges museums to be more dialogic and to consider their practice
from a more democratic perspective. Hence, thinking about participation opens
new perspectives for museums when defining their societal role. By studying
Nordic museum research published from 2008–2018 on the topic of partici-
pation, this chapter offers an overview of participatory practices in the Nordic
museum field and points out some of their challenges.

Keywords: participation, democracy, museum institution, knowledge pro-

duction

Introduction
At the beginning of the 21st century two processes occurred in Europe that changed
society profoundly. The first of these was the strengthening of neoliberal govern-
ance, which affected the managerial styles of institutions, as they strove to become
more focused on strategies and result evaluations (Harvey 2005; Löppönen 2017).
Another change occurred in communications, mobile technology and social media.
Along with this second change, i.e., the process of digitisation, the communi-

1. This chapter has been peer reviewed.

Section III – Communities and Audiences  311

cation habits between individuals and institutions changed. Participation is an

outcome of these policy and communication processes. It is discussed widely, yet
the practice itself seems to be ambiguous, holding a variety of meanings. In this
chapter, I investigate what is being referred to when talking about participation
in a museum, particularly in the context of a Nordic museum.

Participation seems to have become a buzzword of museum policies in the 21st

century. In Finland, the latest museum policy programme, The Museum of Op-
portunities (Mattila 2018), strongly emphasises participation of individuals and
communities in museum work. In Denmark, Anne Scott Sørensen notes that
cultural policies have gone through a strategic shift from the dissemination of
knowledge to emphasising user engagement and experiences, something that was
already visible over a decade ago, in 2008, in the Danish Ministry of Culture’s
programme for cultural policy Reach Out (Sørensen 2016, p. 190). Besides the
Nordic countries, participation is widely discussed in cultural policies all over
the world, the UK and the USA being the strongest cases.

In this chapter, I explore different ways to approach participation in museum re-

search. I have reviewed nine Nordic museum research articles from 2008–2018,
which mostly handle case studies of participatory projects in museums. In them,
participation is approached as:

• a practical tool for improving the visitor experience in museums

• a way of creating exhibitions collaboratively

• the museum’s inner management process

• an act of democracy.

These case studies show how participation can be defined as a practical or the-
oretical concept, depending on the objectives.

Museums define and develop cultural heritage by following international and

national cultural policies, general progress within the museum field and their
own ideals and objectives. Participation, however, is a wider phenomenon than
cultural policies. It is used increasingly in city policies, for example. In this
chapter, I consider different approaches to participation found in the research,
and challenges related to them. I ask what kind of practices are referred to
as participation, and what the objectives of these practices are. Based on the
analysis, I consider what kind of challenges are there for museums when using
participatory practices.

The chapter is divided into sections. First, I explore theories of participation,

after which I present the research articles I have used as data. Second, I elaborate
on four approaches to participation, based on my analysis, and finally, I make
a summary of the results and discuss them.
312 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Theories of Participation
During the 2000s, participation became a popular topic in museum practices,
as well as in cultural policies in the Nordic countries (Saurugger 2010). It has
also been discussed in other public sectors since the 1990s (Lane 2005). The
growing movement of inviting the public to participate in institutional practices
has been called the participation paradigm (Livingstone 2013). It has been noted
that museums’ orientation has shifted from collections to the public (Weil 1999).
Participation is a widely explored topic in multiple research fields. Here, I look
briefly at the different perspectives on participation and how it has become
such a diverse topic.

An often-cited, older but still relevant study about participation comes from
Sherry Arnstein (1969). In A Ladder of Citizen Participation, Arnstein divides
participation into three main categories: degrees of citizen power, tokenism and
nonparticipation (1969, p. 217). Arnstein’s ladder is a useful tool for thinking
about qualities of the practice and level at which decision-making power is be-
ing shared. Even if Arnstein does not discuss museums per se, she does discuss
institutions, along with their possibilities for and challenges in sharing power.

A more detailed interpretation, concentrating on the role of the participant

in the art field, is offered by the art historian Kaija Kaitavuori. She offers four
categories for the visitor: target, user, material and co-creator. The different
categories depend on the extent to which the visitors are able to make choices
on how to participate (reactive versus active), and how much they can influence
the outcome (participation in display or in production) (Kaitavuori 2018, p. 17).

A somewhat similar categorisation can be found from Nina Simon, a former

museum director and founder of the non-profit organisation OF/BY/FOR ALL.
However, while Arnstein and Kaitavuori are writing from the perspective of the
agency of an individual user or a citizen, Simon focuses on museums. She di-
vides participation into four categories, according to what kind of role is wanted
for the institution in relation to the participants: contributory, collaborative,
co-creative or hosting (Simon 2010, pp. 190–191; see also Salo, this volume). It
must be noted that almost all the research case studies reviewed in this chapter
referred to Simon’s book The Participatory Museum (Simon 2010). For Simon,
the participatory museum allows visitors to interact and to co-produce contents
in diverse ways. It also enables encounters and encourages conversations. Taking
part in co-creative content production is highly emphasised in her approach. She
sees participation as providing a toolkit for museum professionals to interact
with visitors. Simon might be cited so often because of her pragmatic way of
writing. Practicalities are useful when planning everyday practices. While most
theories on participation stay on a theoretical level, pointing out flaws and giving
few if any actual suggestions on how to proceed, Nina Simon does the opposite.
However, she emphasises that before implementing participation, museums
should take a moment to consider their strategy, and determine what they want
to achieve with participatory practices (Simon 2010).
Section III – Communities and Audiences  313

Another way to approach participation is to consider the terminology museums

use when referring to the public. The audience, a customer or a consumer all
refer to a more passive museum visit, while a user, visitor, or citizen might de-
scribe a more interactive visit. The nature of participation hence evolves from
whatever possibilities the museum opens up for the public, whether visitors are
able to play a part in the exhibition production process, or whether the choices
for interaction are determined by the museum beforehand (Carpentier 2011b).
Participatory practices can be considered tools for fulfilling different kinds of
goals. They can offer some interaction and involvement as a way of enhancing
the museum experience, but can also create a feeling for people to be able to
engage in and to influence their own cultural heritage.

The recent shifts in the relationship between museums and their publics can
be traced to the theories of new museology. New museology is often thought to
have begun with Peter Vergo’s (1989) book. However, since the 1970s, social
issues have been increasingly raised in museum discussions and in the field of
public engagement (see also Smeds, this volume). After the introduction of new
museology, relevance, inclusion and democratic practices have become valued
terminology and perspectives in museum work. For whom are the contents pro-
duced, and how is institutional power shared? These are core issues in today’s
museums (Marstine 2006, p. 5). Introducing participation to cultural policies
has also been a big influence on practice. In the Nordic countries, for example
in Denmark, participatory practices seem to have increased notably in everyday
museum work ever since the cultural policy programme emphasising participa-
tion and outreach was published in 2008. I assume something similar might also
be expected in Finland, for the latest Museum policy programme (Mattila 2018)
also strongly emphasises participation, dialogue and communities. However,
during recent lockdowns, museums have been obliged to rethink their social roles
and actions, and in many countries, using digital platforms and social media
has as much as doubled. The availability of online contents has increased the
number of distance visits and seems to be attracting new kinds of audiences,
but at the same time, visiting durations have shortened (see for example a case
study from Italy, Agostino, Arnaboldi & Lampis 2020). What the impact of the
pandemic on participatory museum work will be in the future, is yet to be fully
seen. A closer look into Nordic museum research before the pandemic gives
us a perspective on how the concept of participation can be implemented and
developed in years to come.

Producing and sharing are key concepts relating to participation. Media and
communication scholar Nico Carpentier sees participation and democracy as
being deeply connected (Carpentier 2011b, p. 15). In Carpentier’s approach,
participation means participation in decision-making. This is a truly demo-
cratic practice because the equal sharing of decision-making power with the
public is the actual definition of democracy. Thus, Carpentier differentiates
full participation from interaction and accessibility. The latter he classifies as
tools for practice, while full participation cannot have an additional purpose,
for the power to make decisions concerning outcomes should be in the partici-
314 Section III – Communities and Audiences

pants’ hands (Carpentier 2011a, p. 14). Carpentier’s interpretation is strict, and

applying it to public engagement could prove to be difficult. Museums usually
have precisely defined procedures, e.g., on how to make decisions concerning
exhibitions. Carpentier states that the term participation can be used to justify
a variety of practices, not all of them aiming to increase democracy. In this
sense, the nature of participation remains unanalysed and unacknowledged,
and as Carpentier notes, the concept is “used to mean everything and nothing”
(Carpentier 2011a, p.14).

Finnish social scientist Teppo Eskelinen (2019) is also interested in the devel-
oping role of democracy and democratic practices. He presents the concept of
democratic experience, stating that often when practices are intended to increase
democracy, they instead end up producing only the illusion of democracy. This
happens when the factual power to make decisions is not really shared, and only
minor decisions are allowed for the public from pre-selected choices. Often these
pre-selections might be introduced as part of the democratic process. Eskelin-
en’s approach to democracy resembles Carpentier’s concept of full democracy.
Both of these views separate participation and interaction from each other in
theory and in practice.

A similar theorization of participation can be found from museum researcher

Bernadette Lynch, who writes about how participation comes to fruition in the
museum environment (Lynch 2014; 2016). She interviewed people involved in
participatory projects. While realising the prospects of participation in democ-
racy, with potentials for sharing ideas and also sharing decision-making power,
factual participatory practices have not convinced her. On the contrary, Lynch’s
research points out the inequalities of intended participatory projects, and she
introduces the concept of empowerment-lite. According to Lynch, it might often
happen that when a museum invites participation in a project, both the direction
and the outcome of the project are often pre-determined. A museum takes an
expert position, giving participants a set of choices from which to choose. Based
on her findings, Lynch asks what the reason for inviting people into the museum
is, if the conclusion is that this is “a way to legitimize museum intentions under
the guise of consensual approval” (Lynch 2014, 11). In this way participation
becomes participation-lite (Lynch 2014).

In the literature, participation has been seen as a tool within cultural politics,
often with the objective of justifying a museum’s impact on the policy field, the
funders and the taxpayers. Among others, John Holden (2004) argued in the
UK, that during neoliberal governance a need to measure the impact of culture
has become more common. Measurement is not focused on cultural values, but
on statistics; culture is considered an instrument towards achieving something
else. The instrumentality of culture has been a hot topic (Belfiore 2002), and
participation can be used as a measuring tool to justify the relevance and impact
of culture. After all, it is easier to argue for the importance of museums if 100 000
people have been involved, than if only 10 people have, regardless of what the
long-term impact might be. Having a large number of participants, regardless
Section III – Communities and Audiences  315

of the small impact which practice has on individuals, can also be discussed as
tokenism (Arnstein 1969), i.e., making a minor effort for formally complying with
policy requirements. In the field of general policies, participation can be viewed
as a wider trend, which emphasises consumer behaviour and individualism, but
also takes into account communality, collaboration and dialogue. If defined as
collaborative planning for common goals, participation can be a democratic act,
with the objective of building dialogue and mutual understanding (Eskelinen 2019).

The Australian museum researchers Fiona Cameron and Lynda Kelly state that
museums are on the verge of a new era in their institutional forms. This is an
opportunity to involve communities more in decision-making processes (Camer-
on & Kelly 2010, pp. 53–75). Museums should engage people with controversial
topics as much as needed, and participation and dialogue are seen as functional
ways of doing this. In fact, participation appears in Cameron & Kelly’s writing as
a form of dialogue, aiming for concrete practices and societal change. Museums’
prospects in creating societal change are realised on the everyday level of museum
work. This refers to all of the designed activities and various novel experiments
(Cameron & Kelly 2010, pp. xi–xv). Cameron & Kelly’s social museum research
confirms that museums have better prospects than other institutions for exploring
controversial and difficult matters. They note that handling controversial topics
and being relevant to the public support each other as practices. Additionally,
museums have a critical role in contemporary knowledge production, and they
need to acknowledge this by developing novel ways of operating in the global risk
society (Cameron & Kelly 2010).

Danish museum researcher Britta Tøndborg, on the other hand, seems to be

more pessimistic about the opportunities of participatory practices for creating
change. She reviewed three studies considering museums and societal change,
concentrating on exhibitions approaching difficult issues. Participation was
considered a tool for enhancing discussions and raising sensitive and difficult
questions on safe grounds. Even though the studies Tøndborg addressed handle
difficult social issues in museums, her research concludes in a rather pessimis-
tic position towards museums’ role in bringing about social change. Powerful
and potential, or just the opposite, Tøndborg sees participation as a strong
trend in the present museum field and one in definite need of further research
(Tøndborg 2013).

Institutional perspectives on participation and museums can also be found from

the Estonian museum researchers Pille Runnel and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt,
who studied participation and its implications for the museum institution. They
created a categorisation for it, which is used as an analytical tool to reflect practic-
es, i.e., museums as cultural, economic and public institutions. These categories
are roles that museums use in different contexts. Cultural, economic and public
institutions provide a tool for considering different rationales museums utilise in
their everyday practices. According to Runnel & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (2014),
museums function in contested and intersecting fields. Thus, museums’ roles in
their operational fields vary according to the objectives they pursue. As cultural
316 Section III – Communities and Audiences

institutions, museums can fulfil the traditional purposes of preserving, collecting,

interpreting and mediating heritage for the public. As public institutions, their
purpose is to educate and to increase democratic practices and social wellbe-
ing, when economics demand competing in the market-society and providing
attractive leisure activities to customers (Runnel & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt 2014,
pp. 40–41). Runnel & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt note that participation has the
potential to both support the commercialisation of the museum institution and
to strengthen its democratic potential (Runnel & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt 2011).

The theories elaborated above were often referenced in the research articles I
inspected. It can be stated that in the Nordic research regarding participation
issues in social responsibility, the purposes of the museum institution, changes
in those purposes and everyday practices are the most discussed themes. These
theories form the background for participation research. Next, I elaborate on
how I selected the articles to study for this chapter.

Selection of the Articles for This Review

The data for this chapter consist of journal articles published on museums and
participation. I wanted to look at how these themes have been approached in the
Nordic countries, especially since most of the research on museums and partic-
ipation comes from the Anglophone world, namely the UK and the USA. There-
fore, I decided to concentrate on case studies regarding participatory museum
practices. I set the time frame to research publications from the past ten years,
after the economic decline, which is also a period when participatory practices
have increasingly been taken into use.

For mapping the literature, I limited the data to peer-reviewed journal articles,
published in 2008–2018, which mention both participant*2 and museum in
their title. I wanted to find research handling actual case studies that implement
participatory practices. For searching the articles, I used ProQuest, Web of Sci-
ence, Google Scholar and the University of Helsinki’s Database Helka. All search
engines gave slightly different results,3 but in total the hits were less than 90 from
any specific one. From these articles, I selected the ones published on research
in the Nordic countries. In order to include the articles that had influenced the
field most, I selected articles which had been cited more than once.4 At this point,
I had seven articles from Denmark, one from Norway and one from Finland.
To equalise the situation by giving a broader scope than primarily Denmark, I
then included another Norwegian article,5 which had been cited once, and two

2. By using * it was possible to include different forms of the word.

3. Web of Science: 39, Proquest 46, Google Scholar 63 (participation + museum) and 86 (participatory
+ museum), Helsinki University Database Helka 81. Search performed on 20.5.2019.
4. Knudsen 2016; Smørdal 2014; Mygind 2015; Tøndborg 2013; Querol 2017; Rudloff 2012; Riber
Christensen 2010; Söderqvist 2010; Giersing 2012.
5. Ogundipe 2018.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  317

Finnish articles, which were parts of dissertations finished in 2009 and 2016.6
Next, I eliminated three Danish articles, which appeared only in Google Scholar
and had not been published in museological journals. Instead, I included one7
article published in The Journal of Inclusive Museum, discussing the topics of
participation and democracy, even though it had not been cited.

Titles (chronolo- Key themes The context of the Participation

gically) case is defined as:

Salgado, M, 2008 Participatory Two case studies: The Enriching the

The Aesthetic design, digitiza- Sound Trace and The visitor expe-
of Participative tion, aesthetics, Conversational Map, rience, making
Design Pieces: co-experience in which participatory an exhibition
Two Case Studies objects were added to more appealing
in Museums exhibitions, with an and a tool for
emphasis on aesthe- creating enga-
tics gement
Rudloff, M, Outreach, An outreach project, Inclusive, dialo-
2012 Extending digitization, The Wall, in which gic and enabling
museum walls. professional participants added the sharing
Reaching out with and experience their own images to a of knowledge
site-specific, digi- knowledge digital wall brought to networks
tal, and participa- the city environment
tory interventions
Bhowmik, S, 2013 Participatory A participatory light A possibility to
Light is History: exhibition, installation, Light is combine re-
A Community sustainability, History, exploring search and art
Participated Mu- artistic research public and private and to surpass
seum Installation space and influen- the conventions
in Helsinki cing people’s energy of a traditional
consumption museum
Holm, H, 2014 Democracy, During participato- An act for in-
The Democratic museum fu- ry process gipSMK, creasing demo-
Future of Mu- tures, collabo- high school students cracy in society,
seums: Reflec- rative curating curated an exhibition emphasising the
tions on a parti- based on the Royal process over the
cipatory project Cast Collection of outcome
named gipSMK the Danish National
– The Royal Cast Gallery
Collection Goes to
Town

6. Salgado 2009; Bhowmik 2016.

7. Holm 2014.
318 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Smørdal, O, 2014 Actor-network Visitors explored and A dialogue and

Experimental theory, experi- created contents in museum com-
zones: two cases mental zones, two experimental munication,
of exploring digitization, spaces, which were happening
frames of partici- communities of built inside and out- between visitors
pation in a dialo- interest side of the museum: and staff in an
gic museum Akerselva Digitalt exhibition space
and My Commitment
Knudsen, L V, Participatory Two participatory A pragmatic, in-
2016 Participa- processes, processes, during clusive, collab-
tion at work in actor-network which a digital plat- orative process
the museum theory, digiti- form titled The Map and a situation-
zation of Danish Rock Mu- ally networked
sic was developed phenomenon
collaboratively with
participants and the
museum
Høholt, S, 2017 Museums as The Model exhibition A practice
The Art Museum cultural, public in Arken, Copenha- through mean-
Today – Partici- and economic gen, and an overview ingful, empow-
pation as a Stra- institutions, of the Participationist ering spaces can
tegic Tool visitors as research project in be created
co-creators or 2015 in Denmark
prosumers
Sancho Querol, Museum The OPTI model was A potential
L, 2017 Born to management, developed collab- managerial tool
be OPTI – A new sociocultural oratively with the for museums for
model for partic- networks staff, for the use of systematising
ipatory museum the Finnish Labour their organisa-
management Museum Werstas in tional structure
Tampere and crystallising
their strategy
Ogundipe, A, 2018 Socratic dia- Two online platforms, A practice for
How Digitized logue, visitor DigitaltMuseum and prompting ex-
Art May Invite experience, Thingiverse, were perience-based
or Inhibit Online digitization used for exploring the knowledge from
Visitor Participa- visitor experience and participators
tion (and Why It the possibilities for and increasing
Matters for Art deepening the under- understanding
Museums) standing of art through person-
al experiences

Table 1. The Nordic museum research articles chosen for this review presented
in chronological order.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  319

Additionally, I included an article published in the Danish Arken Bulletin re-

garding participation, even though it was not visible in the databases. Finally, I
excluded two Danish articles, which reviewed research cases. These choices gave
me all together nine peer-reviewed articles, of which four were from Denmark,
two from Norway and three from Finland. Sweden and Iceland didn’t appear
at all in my searches. Besides the one article published in Arken Bulletin, the
articles included in the data were published in Nordisk Museologi, International
Journal of the Inclusive Museum, Museum Management and Curatorship and
Digital Creativity.

The articles included in this review had some similar qualities. Most of them
handled practical museum activities or case studies. Digitization was one of the
strongly emphasised themes. Museum spaces were discussed through outreach,
the democratic nature of practices and diverse forms of knowledge were con-
sidered and experience-based knowledge compared to professional knowledge,
was emphasised. Most of the cases were pilot projects, aimed at reaching a small
number of participants. Only a few projects were open to the public; most were
by invitation only.

Denmark was strongly represented in the searches. As mentioned in the intro-

duction, the cultural policies in Denmark have strongly emphasised participation
for well over a decade, which could explain why outreach and participation
have appeared as well-presented themes in Danish museum research since the
beginning of the 2010s. It must also be noted that my literature searches con-
centrated on articles published in English, and thus publications targeted only
to a local audience were not included in my data. Additionally, it can be asked
if Denmark is targeting research more to an international audience, through
policymaking and funding of research, than are the other Nordic countries, and
whether searching in the various Nordic languages as well would have yielded
substantially different results.

Four Approaches to Participation

Participation is an ambiguous concept, holding a variety of opportunities for
realisation. In this section, I take a closer look into the concept, and categorize
four different approaches to it as revealed in the articles, discussing the qualities
emphasised in each of them. The first category approaches participation as a
tool for improving the visitor experience. The second considers it as a way to
produce exhibition contents, while the third looks at it as a longer process, one
that can also take place in an organisation’s internal strategy planning. The fourth
approach emphasises participation as societal practice, and as a democratic act.
Often these approaches overlap, with more than one objective identifiable in
all of the reviewed articles. Through identifying different approaches to partic-
ipation, I elaborate on a diversity of understandings about the concept itself.
320 Section III – Communities and Audiences

1. Participation is a way of improving the quality of the visitor

experience

Visitor studies is a growing field in museum research. The quality of the museum
visitor experience has been discussed a lot in recent decades. The most known is
probably John Falk’s studies on identity and its construction through the museum
visit (2009). Falk bases his research on interview material, just as design-led
museum scholar Tiina Roppola (2012) does. Both Falk and Roppola approach
the visitor experience from the perspective of visitors and their personal lives.
The articles in my study differed from this approach by concentrating mostly on
exhibition design. Here, participation is understood as improving the experience
by deepening it, designing it to be more interactive, more accessible and more
aesthetically appealing.

As an example of an aesthetic approach, doctoral researcher Mariana Salgado

(2008) sought to improve the experience through design and with it the aesthetics
of the experience. She introduces two case studies, The Sound Trace and The
Conversational Map, both of her own design as part of her doctoral research.
The Sound Trace was an audio recording device that the visually impaired could
take with them and record their experiences of touchable sculptures in the ex-
hibition in the Finnish National Gallery Ateneum. Afterwards, the recordings
were open for other visitors to listen to. The Conversational Map, on the other
hand, was a platform on a wall imitating the exhibition visitors had just seen,
which allowed them to attach online comments and observations to the art-
works. When designing these participatory installations, she concentrated on
building a visual appearance, which would be tempting and invite more visitors
to contribute. Salgado notes that in order to attract a visitor’s initial interest,
the participatory piece must be aesthetically interesting and appealing, inviting
interaction. Aesthetic experience is thus not merely a surface design, but it offers
a possibility to communicate the exhibition’s message in an additional way.

Participation as a way of making the exhibition’s message more understandable

was discussed by Anne Ogundipe (2018). She performed two case studies intend-
ed to study participants’ reactions to digital art presented in online platforms.
She also observed how interacting with digitized art would enhance the visitor’s
understanding of it. The platforms that Ogundipe used, DigitaltMuseum and
Thingiverse, were designed for exploring digital artworks. Ogundipe was pres-
ent when participants explored the platforms and interviewed them afterwards
about their experiences.

Aside from the fact that participation can be used to create a deeper under-
standing of the art, Ogundipe states that often, participatory practices refer to
activating visitors by offering several tools for interaction. Actively taking part
and interacting with a museum or artwork can of course improve the experi-
ence, and, as noted in the theoretical section, the number of active participants
is easy to measure. Therefore, by designing easy-to-approach environments, in
which people are invited to interact, the impact is easy to justify. The bigger the
number of visitors is, the bigger the assumed impact of the practice is. Therefore,
Section III – Communities and Audiences  321

Ogundipe asks, what kinds of experiences are we talking about, if the emphasis
is only on active participation, interaction and visible improvement of the visitor
experience? What is excluded from these practices? She answers by exploring
ways of deepening the experience by using dialogue as a method, emphasising
the quality of the experience (Ogundipe 2018).

An interesting observation about the museum’s changing role is made in an article

by Danish museum curator Stine Høholt. She notes that, recently, visitors have
learned to expect more interaction, experiences and individual attention, and
with this, the focus of museums has shifted from nations and shared stories to
individuals. The building of a national identity and nations has been identified as
one of the main functions for museums in past centuries (Kaplan 2012, p. 152).
However, as Høholt states, nationalism no longer defines individual identities
so strongly. Thus, museums must find new stories to tell if they want to reach a
wider audience. What then is important, is to create experiences, an aesthetic
design and increase the opportunities for visitors to interact with exhibitions
(Høholt 2017).

Participation is a tool for measuring visitors’ commitment and as such, something

to be added to the statistics. But it is also a way to create a deeper understand-
ing of the matter at hand, and to increase visitors’ interest through designing
aesthetically more appealing exhibition contents. Here, the focus has been on
participation as part of the visitor experience. Next, let’s look at participation
as a way of creating contents collaboratively.

2. Participation is used to create exhibition contents

collaboratively

Nina Simon discusses museums doing collaborative production and co-creation

with visitors (Simon 2010, pp. 190–191). By co-creation she refers to using collab-
orative design tools in answering the needs of the public. Simon states that this
kind of visitor participation is most challenging for cultural institutions because
it requires aligning institutional objectives with the visitor’s needs. However,
when successful, co-creative projects can be rewarding and help institutions to
became more relevant to visitors (Simon 2016).

In their case study, Ole Smørdal, Dagny Stuedahl and Idunn Sem (2014) ap-
proached the topic by establishing two experimental zones in the Norwegian
Museum of Science and Technology, one inside and one outside of the muse-
um space. These experimental zones were situational spaces, which were open
to visitors passing by and in which museum professionals were able to study
reactions and outcomes for practices, as well as to try out new technical tools
for participation (Smørdal, Stuedahl & Sem 2014, p. 225). In the outside zone,
Akerselva Digitalt, visitors were given touchpads for exploring, commenting on
and uploading contents to the digital platform. The platform was usable through
touchpads hanging in the space, and moving from pad to pad also required
moving through the space physically. The other zone, My Commitment, was
designed in a series of workshops. The zone was noted to resemble an offline
322 Section III – Communities and Audiences

social media space. In the zone, visitors could take pictures, add their personal
commitments concerning environmental issues and post them on a digital wall.
The outcome, a wall filled with visualised, environmental commitments, such
as post-it notes, formed an installation during the time that the zone was open,
and inspired more visitors to contribute. The cases reviewed were museum
focused, but they emphasised the perspective of the individual participant. In
both examples, most of the content was produced by visitors, and the ways to
participate were defined beforehand. Participation was reactive, and the materials
of the exhibition were produced by visitors. In Kaitavuori’s terms, participants
were here given the role of a user (2018, 17), even though Kaitavuori’s research
concentrated specifically on the artworks and participation with them.

Another example of participatory content-production was Maja Rudloff’s Extend-

ing Museum Walls (2012). The case study was about an outreach project titled
The Wall, organised in Copenhagen, in which participants were able to add their
own images to the digital wall built in a city space. Participation was discussed
as inclusive, dialogic and a practice of sharing knowledge collaboratively. Since
the project was organised in a digital format, it meant that digitization was also
an essential matter of discussion. Rudloff, as well as Smørdal, Stuedahl & Sem
(2014), can be interpreted as what Simon calls collaborative production.

In The Wall, the experiences of the public were shown and emphasised, and
the museum’s role of holding expert knowledge of culture was not emphasised.
Rudloff scrutinized feedback from the public, and, interestingly, found that
the museum’s decision to put its professional voice in the background evoked
questions and even irritation. Even though the format of open participation was
popular, the public hoped for a professional contribution in editing the enormous
number of downloaded pictures. In addition, feedback was given from schools,
indicating that they were not able to use any of the contents. From the schools’
perspective, the challenges were similar to those experienced when they used
the internet – fact-checking and editing are needed (Rudloff 2012).

Smørdal, Stuedahl & Sem (2014) saw museums as institutions holding onto
their traditional structures in curating exhibitions and producing professional
knowledge, but with an increased need to engage visitors in social media-based
dialogues. Even though museums are striving to be more dialogic and participa-
tory, it is challenging to experiment with new approaches, while simultaneously
holding onto old habits. The biggest challenge for museums, in both examples,
seems to be combining professional knowledge with the everyday experience
knowledge of the public. As Rudloff discusses in her study, the novel ways of
practice are at the core, in which knowledge is produced and articulated. Accord-
ing to Rudloff, museums’ agency is shifting from “being an institution holding
cultural authority and autonomy, toward providing a space where interpretations
are individually and socially determined” (Rudloff 2012, p. 40). Outreach and
audience engagement are in the centre of these changes, when the idea is pro-
moted that the audience can also contribute to mutual knowledge production.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  323

To conclude, participation is changing exhibition design, and affecting the ways

in which museums talk to the public. Museums communicate daily with the
public, and thus discourses used are under constant negotiation. Museums are
going through a transformation, from transmitting objective knowledge with a
professional voice to opening up for a dialogue, and are positioning themselves
on more equal footing with the public. Participatory content production is one
form of this transformation. Participation is also used as a processual manner
of organising internal museum work, which I consider next.

3. Participation is changing internal museum work

Participation as a process refers to a practice in which participants are involved

from the planning stage, and objectives, as well as techniques for reaching them,
are defined collaboratively. More than one article discusses participation this
way. Without predetermined goals, practice sounds like Carpentier’s concept
of full participation, participation as an act of democracy (Carpentier 2011a).
It also resembles what Kaitavuori calls co-creation (2018, p. 17) or what Simon
describes as collaborative production (2010, pp. 190–191). When considering
collaborative planning, starting from the beginning of the project, with partici-
pants defining the objectives together, we are also climbing closer to the top of
Arnstein’s ladder (1969), to the section of citizen power.

The examples I explored were strongly focused on exhibition processes. Amongst

them was only one concentrating on participatory museum governance. This
suggests that organisational research or development inputs are not (yet) very
popular in museums having strong traditions as institutions of hierarchy. How-
ever, participation has been used as a tool in both strategy work and organisa-
tional management.

Lorena Sancho Querol, Kalle Kallio and Linda Heinonen (2017) interpreted
participation through the development of the museum organisation from with-
in. Sancho Querol performed a consultation for the Finnish Labour Museum
Werstas on participatory managing, on which their article is based. Sancho
Querol, Kallio and Heinonen argue that organisational development of the mu-
seum would be most beneficial if it were realised as a participatory managerial
project. In this case, the purposes of participation were defined as improving
the museum’s efficiency, employees being listened to and discussions being
organised throughout the whole process. Participation is connected to the idea
of evaluation: the need for developing a novel managerial tool grew from the
desire to evaluate practices more thoroughly.

Another perspective for participation as an inner process is presented by Dan-

ish scholar Line Vestergaard Knudsen (2016). Her case study was based on a
participatory project, which aimed at developing a digital platform called The
Map of Danish Rock Music. A selection of people from outside of the museum
field was recruited for the project. The process went on for two years, during
which time a group of participants gathered regularly for planning the platform,
together with the museum staff. The museum’s role was more of a facilitator than
324 Section III – Communities and Audiences

leader in the project. Knudsen notes that participants were aware of different
types of knowledge and the museums’ traditional role as knowledge providers,
as well as their own expertise, both in their everyday experiences and their pro-
fessional knowledge in other fields. Professional versus experience knowledge
was discussed a lot in the focus group, as expected. It became obvious that a
professional role was expected from the museum, but also that a process that
would give space and voice to various areas of knowledge needs to be developed
(Knudsen 2016, p. 207). Although participants expected museums to contribute
with their professional knowledge, there was simultaneously an expectation to
acknowledge all the diverse forms of knowledge present, and to open the space
for museums to learn as an institution from the process.

The focus here was on work practices and on how to manage a project using
participatory approaches. Based on these cases, participation might not be a
quick or efficient way to carry it out, but the outcomes can be very satisfying for
everyone involved. However, the role of expertise and authority in knowledge
production should be considered. Based on these cases, utilizing participation
requires a thorough design of work practices. This kind of participatory planning
of work is close to being a democratic practice, which I look at next.

4. Participation is building democratic practices, or is it?

What determines if a practice is democratic or not? If we look back to Nico

Carpentier’s (2011a) theory of participation, interaction and accessibility are
tools for already-designed practices, while full participation, on the other hand,
requires participating in decision-making in an equal way. If the objectives of
a project are determined beforehand by a museum, what kind of decisions are
meant with shared power? In the case studies, participants were able to influence
the content to be made and, in some cases, also the format of the exhibitions. In
none of the cases were they able to influence the objectives, which were decided
by the museums when the projects were launched.

Interestingly, there was only one article included in the data that had the objective
of creating societal change. This was a case study by art researchers working
in Aalto University in Finland. The case was an installation set in an outside
space, a city square. This research was most critical towards museum practices
and pointed out prospects for changing them. Researchers Samir Bhowmik,
Karthikeya Acharya and Lily Diaz (2013) named their project A Museum In-
stallation to point out that a similar approach might be also used in museums.
According to them, museums need to develop their skills in using technology
and collaborating with researchers. For testing this idea, they designed a partic-
ipatory installation, Light is History, in which people from the neighbourhood
were asked to record their daily energy consumption. The data was used as a
light installation, which presented the latest energy consumption of the partici-
pants, and which was updated daily. Discussions and gatherings were organised
around the installation. The aim was to discover if the visualisation of energy
consumption, together with the live happenings, would encourage participants,
Section III – Communities and Audiences  325

as well as random people passing by, to decrease their energy consumption

(Bhowmik, Acharya & Diaz 2013).

In Bhowmik, Acharya and Diaz’s research, museums were discussed as traditional

institutions, which have opportunities, by utilizing novel technological ideas,
to invite people to act and thus create societal change. Stine Høholt (2017) also
states that museums have been rather stagnant institutions, and that they have
mostly been maintained for one purpose, i.e., the building of nations. According
to Høholt, national identity has been a major theme in museum contents and
as an objective of museum work. Through the lens of national identity, nation-
alism and the building of nations, museums have been creating social change
throughout their history, and continue to do so (Knell 2011; Bennett 1995).

This image of what a museum once was, was brought up in several articles in
different forms. For example, Maja Rudloff considers museums to be knowledge
disseminators and keepers of monologues (Rudloff 2012, p. 35), Britta Tøndborg
describes them as being solidifiers of culture (Tøndborg 2013, p. 7) and Lorena
Sancho Querol describes them as being authoritative and inward-looking (Sancho
Querol, Kallio & Heinonen 2017, p. 118). The vision of the past museum as a
solidifier of culture, a transmitter of knowledge and an inward-looking author-
itarian institution keeping up a monologue induces a reader to ask where such
images stem from, and if this kind of museum has ever really existed? Is the
image merely created as a juxtaposition to justify the necessity of participation,
dialogue and communal, collaborative practices?

The universal purposes of future museums were articulated as democracy, inclu-

sion and open dialogue, which might all be needed in creating changes in society.
Increasing societal democracy as a purpose of museum work was brought up
in all the articles. When the objective was to participate, people were given the
opportunity to affect content. In this regard, this is the strongest determiner
for participation. Giving space to visitors to influence content means allowing
them to also influence the message that the museum is sending. It might be
stated that this is not light participation (participation lite), but participation
at the boundaries, which is defining museum institution practices. Some of the
contents must be defined by professionals, and some of the decisions cannot be
equally shared with everyone. Therefore, in many cases in the articles mapped
here, the concept of interaction would be more descriptive than participatory.

With participatory practices, there can be traced a shift in how museums create
exhibition contents and produce knowledge. When considering the objectives
discussed relating to participation, and in the general museum field, it was
striking that in only one case can the objectives be defined as political, i.e., the
sustainable development goals in Bhowmik, Acharya & Diaz’s research. This
was the case even though often visitors were encouraged to contribute, to share
ideas and to interact. To conclude, even if participation is a social practice in
the museum field, it does not usually appear as political, nor does it have the
objective of raising awareness on societal issues or initiating social change.
326 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Participation is Used as a Practical and Societal Concept

At the beginning of this chapter, I asked what is meant by participatory practices,
and what kind of objectives are given for these practices. In the previous sec-
tions, I have analysed different approaches on participation in Nordic museum
research. Based on this analysis, the definitions of participation vary according
to the user and the context in which the concept is used. Participation was
discussed by emphasising the individual experience of a museum visit, or by
understanding it as a collaborative method for content production. It was also
discussed as an inner working process, taking place before exhibitions open. In
addition, participation was approached as a democratic practice, considering its
nature from the perspective of societal agency. The selected approach and the
aims for practice affected what was meant by participation.

Participation was seen as a practical tool for museums, which meant thinking
about the practice from the individual perspective. The concept was used as
a means of getting visitors involved in the action and for creating content for
exhibitions. However, it was also used as a way of making the exhibitions more
inclusive and multivocal than if they had been created only by the museum staff.
This practical approach can be traced to the theories of new museology, and in
the endeavours of making the museum space safer and more human-centred
than before.

Participation was approached as a societal concept in several ways. Relating to it,

the ideals of democracy were discussed and aimed for. However, participation’s
potential in measuring results and impact was also recognised. Brita Brenna,
a Norwegian Professor in museum studies, notes that participatory practices,
or their results, are in many cases easy to measure for reporting. Even though
measuring the real quality of a practice is problematic, it is possible to measure
the number of participants or evaluate their feedback. In this way, participation
can fulfil new managerial goals, and including it more in museum activities
might even become recommendable from the evaluation’s perspective. Even if
the articulated intention is to improve the museum experience, participation
is based on governmental, aesthetic and economic grounds, and thus its status
is complicated (Ogundipe 2018, p. 53, citing Brenna 2016). However, none of
these studies dealt with counting the number of participants for measuring their
impact, but did recognise that it is possible to evaluate situations in that way.

The International Council of Museums ICOM is developing a novel definition for

museums using partly participatory practices (see also Ehanti and Enqvist, this
volume). This process is about the transformation of objectives and practices
in museums. However, in this transformation there are also means of com-
munication, and a multitude of social media, which have their own demands
for museums in developing communication. By redefining their purposes and
practices, it can be said that the institutionality of museums is in transforma-
tion. Moreover, participation is located in the core of this transition. It is not
a coincidence that participation increasingly raised discussion in the museum
Section III – Communities and Audiences  327

field during the 2000s. The debate has also begun in other institutions, which
are struggling with the demands to legitimise themselves and to point out their
societal impact. Ways of communication, and the practices institutions possess
involving individuals and the greater society, invite further research.

Based on this study, using participation as a method gives prospects to muse-

ums for creating societal change, and for trying and stretch their institutional
boundaries. An important thing to consider with participation is the concept of a
safe space. We have argued elsewhere (Turunen & Viita-aho 2021) that building
safer spaces and creating networks with other organisations increases the po-
tential for creating societal change. Especially at present, when abysses between
people are growing deeper, it is even more necessary to increase understanding.
Through a mutual past, in an impartial space, opportunities for dialogue and
making shared decisions are enhanced. However, this requires accessibility, i.e.,
spaces, in which everyone is able to get involved and experience equality, i.e.,
spaces in which all feel appreciated for participating.

Museums are societal institutions. They work in society, aiming for mutual ben-
efit. As noted, museums’ use of participatory practices creates several societal
opportunities. They can increase democracy, create networks and inspire people
to act collaboratively. When considering the current need we have for unifying
humanity’s practices to solve future crises, it is noteworthy that only one article
discussed participation as a means for societal change. As brought up above,
participation can be reduced to a measuring tool for evaluating a museum’s im-
pact by counting the number of participants. It would be regrettable, however,
if participation should be understood only like this, and if the opportunities it
has to build and strengthen democracy are also not seen.

Discussion
In this chapter, I have analysed nine Nordic research articles on participation in
museums. I have discussed the representativeness and reliability of my review,
and consider what it tells about participation in Nordic museums.

The selection of the articles for this review cannot be regarded as representative
of the whole Nordic museum sector. There are many public engagement pro-
jects which can be called participatory – collection crowdsourcing, collaborative
cooking events, yoga classes on a museum premises, workshops and discussions,
to mention just a few. Interestingly, none of these were visible in my literature
searches. On the contrary, even though public engagement is the usual suspect
when discussing participation in museums, most of the articles I found dis-
cussed how museums use participatory practices in designing exhibitions. The
reason for this remains unclear. Could it be the case that the research on public
engagement has moved into a more specific titling than mere participation? Or,
might it be that Nordic countries are focusing more on participatory exhibition
design than on participatory public engagement? It might be that articles about
public engagement are more often published in other languages than English.
328 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Whatever the case may be, a wide spectrum of participatory practices was left
out of this research.

Another observation about the data is that the articles were a selection of case
studies taking place in museums. The reason for selecting research articles
instead of, for example, museum strategy plans, was that I wanted to review
the actual practices and realisations of participation. When evaluating plans,
strategies and purposes, the target is different. Evaluation of strategies happens
on a more ideological level and disregards the factual boundaries of practice.
Here, I wanted to review what is actually done, and how it is perceived. When
discussing a practice that takes place between an individual and an institution,
the factual circumstances become the most important aspect. It is easy to make
general plans as to what museums should or should not do, but when these plans
are realised, often a thing or two that were unforeseeable become evident. The
strength of this review is that it also regards feedback and miscalculations of
participatory practices, in the same way in which they were critically reflected
in the research articles.

The articles included here cover a wide range of perspectives on participation

in museum work. I have pointed out that there are several understandings of
the concept of participation, several ways for approaching it and several un-
derstandings about what can be achieved by it. There are also expectations
targeted to museums from the public concerning participation. I have pointed
out questions about museums’ changing positions, and shed more light on the
ways in which participation is influencing the museum institution. Thus, even
though this review does not claim to depict a full understanding of participation,
it does give some possible steps for continuing with it.

The range of museum types presented in the articles is wide, and included art,
city and cultural history museums. This suggests that participatory practices
take place in all museums, without exception. In the articles different exhibition
types were also present, i.e., short-term projects happening inside museums and
larger city space projects. Interestingly, most of the cases were projects with a
pre-determined beginning and ending. Even cases that were aiming to develop
a longer-term practice were realised in the project format. Museums, as produc-
ers of exhibitions, are naturally also familiar with the project-type of practice.
However, it might be asked if this type of short-term planning and working,
previously labelled as projectisation (Brunila 2009), will become more common
in the museum institution in the 2020s. And if so, how will this affect museums
working as public institutions hosting several long-term practices and goals?

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have examined recent museum research literature from the
Nordic countries regarding participation. The concept of participation has be-
come more popular during the past 20 years. In the Nordic research articles
reviewed, participation was often treated as a practical tool for designing public
Section III – Communities and Audiences  329

engagement and measuring the impact of museum work. However, the concept
of participation is deeply tied to an understanding of museum institutions’ op-
portunities, as well as to museum policies.

I have demonstrated above four different approaches on participation and a

variety of understandings for the concept. Participation is regarded both as
practice and theory, and it often takes shape in museums as an experimental
space or an outreach practice. In this chapter I have shown that there exists a
vivid and diverse discussion about participatory practices. In this regard, par-
ticipation was not comprehended only as a tool for engaging the public, but it
was rather used in many types of activities in museums. Participation played
an unexpectedly big part in producing exhibition contents.

Based on the research, I suggest that participation is an ambiguous concept,

which can be used and understood in several opposing ways. When starting to
design participatory practices, museums might benefit by asking a few critical
questions of themselves. First, they could evaluate what kind of changes will be
required from them as organizations to take this step, and how these changes are
going to be realized. Participation is a laborious process, but the outcomes might
be very rewarding for all involved. Second, it is always useful to pause and to
think about the objectives. What are the desired outcomes of this practice? Who
are the participants the museums wish to involve? Is the objective to develop
the whole organisation, or to enhance the visitor experience? Lastly, from this
reflective stance, museums could consider even more the prospects and pitfalls
the designed practices give them. Participation might be a great opportunity for
building spaces for dialogue, democracy and collaborative endeavours. It can
strengthen and deepen shared cultural heritage, and, when used for communi-
cation between institutions and communities, it can promote societal change.
However, it can also lead to creating a mirage of shared power and democracy,
and with them end up legitimising current institutional practices instead of
developing them for a better future.

Acknowledgements
I would like to give my warmest thanks to the Oskar Öflund Foundation for
kindly supporting the writing of this chapter.

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Guttormsen, T.S & Swensen, G (eds.) Heritage, democracy and the
public: Nordic approaches’, London: Routledge. pp. 189–199.

Tøndborg, B 2016 The Dangerous Museum. Participatory practices and

controversy in museums today, Nordisk Museologi, 2. pp. 3.

Turunen, J & M Viita-aho (2021) Kriittisen museon mahdottomuus?

Gallen-Kallelan Afrikka-kokoelman uudelleentulkinnat 2000-luvulla,
In Koivunen, L & Rastas, A (eds.) Marginaaleista museoihin.
Tampere: Vastapaino.

Vergo, P 1997 New Museology. London: Reaktion Books.

Weil, S 1999 From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The
Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum, Daedalus vol. 128,
no. 3. pp. 229–258.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  333

Outside Museums’ Own Walls –

Experiences with participatory
projects as part of the Helsinki
Model
Erja Salo

Abstract
The Finnish Museum of Photography worked with eleven other art institutions on
regional, inclusive cultural work in four different pilot areas in several Helsinki
suburbs (Kaarela, Vuosaari, Maunula and Jakomäki) in 2016–2018. The aim
of this action, known as the Helsinki Model, was to promote cultural inclusion
by motivating art institutions to move outside their own walls to a suburban
area, with potential new audiences. From the perspective of the city, the model
was looking for new ways of engaging audiences/residents with the art world.
After this three-year pilot period, the Museum received funding from the City
of Helsinki to continue its work in Vuosaari during the years 2019–21, together
with KOM Theatre and Klockriketeatern.

In this chapter, the experiences gained by the Finnish Museum of Photography

during the first three piloting years of 2016–2018 are reflected through Nina
Simon’s Chart of Participatory Model of Engagement which she presents in
her book The Participatory Museum (Simon 2010). The chapter addresses the
following questions: How has participation been achieved? What do the art
institution and participants get from the activities? What are the goals of the art
institution and what is the impact of the activity on the organisation/audience
work?

Keywords: social museology, outreach, participation, audience engagement,

inclusive museum practices

Some Day
In April 2019, I sat in the basement of Mellunmäki Sports Mill with twenty other
museum professionals and cultural workers. There were cultural producers,
community managers, theatre educators, visual arts educators, audience man-
agers and audience leaders from twelve different art institutions in Helsinki. The
Helsinki Model Evaluation and Final Report, hosted by the City of Helsinki’s
Culture and Leisure Business, was about to begin. For the first time, we got
to read and discuss the final report Toisenlainen taidemaailma (Another Art
World, Tolvanen 2019) published by the Helsinki Cultural Centre, to which we
334 Section III – Communities and Audiences

had all provided materials throughout the late winter. I opened the publication.
Stuba Nikula, ex-cultural director and cultural services manager at the City of
Helsinki, writes in the opening words of the report:

And one day, this will no longer be funded separately, but regional work
will be as integral to the arts as it is to publicity and internationalisation.
Some day. (Nikula 2019, p. 6. Translation by the author)

This chapter does not explain how participatory thinking is embedded in the daily
life of an arts institution or sponsor (public funding), but is a case study based
on the experience of one art institution on inclusive cultural work in 2016–2018.
As an example, I use my own museum, the Finnish Museum of Photography,
where I work as the Head of Learning and Public Programmes. The example of
the Vuosaari – In other words project illustrates the reasons why the museum
wants to operate outside of its own walls and do regional cultural work. What
are the goals of the art institution and how do they relate to the goals of the res-
idents/local communities and funding? Is there two-way action? What does the
art institution gain from it? What is the impact of the activity on the organisation,
and is it reasonable to think that regional inclusive/participatory projects will
be a permanent form of audience work for all art institutions one day?

The chapter has three sections. At the beginning, I present the Vuosaari – In
other words project, as well as the institutional goals and level of commitment
of the Finnish Museum of Photography, funding from the City of Helsinki and
how this has all been achieved. After that, via two case-studies, Polkuja (The
Paths) and the HOAS (The Student Housing in the Helsinki Region) Photography
Wall, I present two ways of approaching audiences and participatory practices.
I reflect them on the action in relation to Nina Simon’s Museum Participation
Chart, which is published in her book The Participatory Museum (2010). I
find that Simon’s chart provides a practical tool to reflect on the case studies I
present and mirror what is achieved with participatory practices that are aligned
with institutional goals and policies from the funding side. In choosing Simon
as a reference I am definitely not alone; her pragmatic way of writing has been
an extremely popular reference among museum professionals and researchers
ever since (see also Viita-Aho, this volume). In conclusion, I look at the plans
and future of the second project period and how they have been influenced by
past activities and experiences.

Who Is Interested in the Outcomes?

Public funding and policy targets

Outreach projects by museums and cultural institutions in Finland have been so far
carried out mainly in Helsinki, which is probably because the City of Helsinki (the
city administration) has consciously supported the cultural work of art institutions
outside their own premises. This cultural policy goal is an international trend, part
of an urban strategy of combating segregation and strengthening social capital
outside urban centres (Tolvanen 2019, p. 7; see also Kaitavuori, this volume).
Section III – Communities and Audiences  335

In 2014, the Helsinki Cultural Centre launched a pilot project involving inclusive
cultural work. The Helsinki Model was modelled on the Lyon Cultural Work
Model, which was visited by representatives of the Cultural Policy Department
of the Helsinki Cultural Centre in October 2011 (Kuusi 2017, p. 8). The aim
of the Helsinki Model was to balance access to cultural services and increase
accessibility to a wide range of audiences. The Interim Report of the Helsinki
Model Towards a More Equal Cultural Helsinki also describes the project’s
objectives as follows:

The model encourages cultural institutions and artist groups that receive
public support to invest in those neighbourhoods and social groups that
have been left behind in cultural services. It is a cultural activity shared
by artists and residents, which encourages residents and communities to
become involved as artists in the making of art and culture. At the same
time, art organisations are reaching out to new audiences and develop-
ing their operating models. (Kuusi 2017, p. 7. Translated by the author)

After the pilot phase of 2014–2016, the first three-year model operated in 2016–
2018 and is, at the time of writing, in operation for the second three-year period
of 2019–2021. In 2015, The Finnish Museum of Photography received funding,
together with eleven other art institutions, for regional work in Vuosaari for the
first three-year period1 and then again for 2019–2021. In addition to Vuosaari,
the other residential areas designated by the city were Kaarela, Maunula and
Jakomäki.

The Perspective of Museum Policy

When I started at The Finnish Museum of Photography in 2004, my title was
Educational Curator, and I was the museum’s first specialist dedicated to working
for and with audiences. Then, during the sixteen years that has since passed, my
work content has grown and changed from pedagogy and learning to the wider
topic of audience engagement. The change in my job and its focus reflects well
the changed role of museums. In general, education has been replaced by a more
holistic concept of learning, diversity of audience structure, community response
and supply diversification, all of which require a participatory approach that is
strongly linked to the museum’s public relations and roles (see also Kaitavuori,
this volume).

The latest expression of this thinking is the Museum Policy Programme of the
Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland (Mattila 2018), which outlines the
key success factors of the Finnish museum sector through 2030. The vision is
that by 2030 Finland will have the most up-to-date museums and enthusiastic
visitors in Europe. The programme emphasises the role of museums as experts,
partners and enablers, and defines the value of museums as a foundation of

1. Total amount of funding for the Helsinki Model was 376 450 €/year (Kuusi, Räisänen & Tolvanen
2017).
336 Section III – Communities and Audiences

community, interactivity, reliability and continuity, polyphony and democracy,

as well as courage and open-mindedness. In addition, participation, community
and working together have been raised as developmental targets as part of the
Encounters and Partnerships development package (Mattila 2018, pp. 12–16;
see also Viita-Aho, this volume).

The release of The Museum Policy Programme by The Ministry of Education and
Culture was preceded by the Exposure to Customers pamphlet, published by
the National Board of Antiquities (now known as the Finnish Heritage Agency)
in 2013 (Teräs & Teräsvirta 2013). The Museum Management and Operational
Models in Change publication, is, according to its subtitle, the first in Finland
to open up museums to audience-oriented thinking (Teräs & Teräsvirta 2013,
p. 7). The Puhuttelevat museopalvelut (the Talking Museum Services) section
of this document highlights museums as service providers and asks who the
museum serves in the current situation. At the same time, it reminds us that the
“one-size-fits-all” approach no longer works, and that relevance and accessibility
are the key factors (Teräs & Teräsvirta 2013, p. 22).

Presenting the Vuosaari – In Other Words Project

The Vuosaari suburb is about a half-hour metro ride from the cultural centre
the Cable Factory in Ruoholahti, where The Finnish Museum of Photography is
located. Vuosaari is Helsinki’s largest, fastest-growing suburb, with about 40,000
inhabitants, located in eastern Helsinki. It consists of nine areas with different
identities: Middle-Vuosaari, Kallahti, Meri-Rastila, Rastila, Aurinkolahti, Uutela,
Niinisaari, Nordsjö Manor and Mustavuori. In 2017, when Vuosaari was voted
City District of the Year, Pertti Tossavainen, Principal of the Vuoniitty School,
described Vuosaari so: “There is not one Vuosaari. There are four or five very
different areas. There are many languages and cultures. You could say that
Vuosaari is now what the rest of Finland will be in 10–15 years.” (Räty 2017, p.
36. Translated by the author.)

For the Finnish Museum of Photography, Vuosaari – In other words is the first
long-term, publicly-funded project where the museum also had an opportunity
from the funder’s side to experiment with different participatory practices. The
project team is comprised of the Head of Learning and Public Programmes Erja
Salo, a part-time producer Ulla Viskari-Perttu and photographers/visual arts
educators Tuukka Kangas, Kastehelmi Korpijaakko, Hanna Parviainen, Liisa
Söderlund and Noora Sandgren. Viskari-Perttu and the art educators also partly
had the role of community managers.2 The artists and visual arts educators
working on the project also work in actual museums as art educators. When
building the project team, this link was seen as the most important decision when
building a bridge between museums’ core functions and services in the Cable

2. Art educator Laura Porola worked as a part-time producer 2016–2017. Korpijaakko, Sandgren
and Söderlund are still working for the project in its second phase, 2019–2021.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  337

Factory venue. All in all, the goal was to gain new knowledge and engagement
skills during the project.

Guidelines to Participation
The Finnish Museum of Photography had many goals of its own, but fewer
ready models of engagement based on its own experience. The museum’s own
goals included awareness and visibility – to attract new visitors to museum ex-
hibitions, workshops, courses and events, and in general, to convey its contents
to potential new audiences/visitors. We also wanted to develop new forms of
audience work, partners and networks. The museum’s own special museum-re-
lated content, photography and photographic culture, was also in focus. The
aim was to support, inspire and enable photography and photography-related
activities, especially for children and young people, and to offer different ways
and opportunities in which to participate. But how can this be achieved, and
what is the best approach? What is the role of the resident or community and
the museum staff?

In her book The Participatory Museum, Nina Simon (2010) introduces The
Museum Participation Chart, which is strongly practice-based. Simon’s chart
helps to identify methods of participation and to identify the different levels
and forms of participation. The model also helps look at the museum’s own
commitment and the kind of involvement the museum wants to promote, as
well as where non-participation comes from. Simon’s model is based on the idea
that there are many ways to implement inclusion, and that different models
are suitable for different institutions and projects. The level of participation
and the roles in the model will vary, depending on how the role and amount of
ownership, control of the process and creative output are defined between the
museum and the participants. Neither model is better than another, nor can they
be seen as a step towards maximum participation (Simon 2010, pp. 183–189).
In her spreadsheet model, Simon divides participation in museums into four
categories: contributory, collaborative, co-creative and hosted. The categories
are bracketed by seven questions designed to help to examine the level of en-
gagement and the museum’s commitment to the given activity.

• What kind of commitment does your institution have to community en-

gagement?
• How much control do you want over the participatory process and prod-
uct?
• How do you see the institution’s relationship with participants during
the process?
• Who do you want to participate in and what kind of commitment will
you seek from participants?
• How much staff time will you commit to managing the project and work-
ing with participants?
• What kind of skills do you want participants to gain from their activities
during the project?
338 Section III – Communities and Audiences

• What goals do you have for how non-participating visitors will perceive
the project? (Simon 2010, pp. 190–191).

Figure 1. The Museum Participation Charts (Simon 2010, pp. 190−191).3

In the next section I present two cases that both provided various opportunities
for participation, which incorporate elements of each of Simon’s categories. When
these projects were initiated, we did not follow Simon’s chart, but experimented
with different approaches where the responsiveness to participants’ actions and
involvement played the biggest role. Now, as a means of evaluation, I run them
through Simon’s chart and its seven questions.

3. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 1 February 2020]

Section III – Communities and Audiences  339

Participation in Practice
Case Study 1.

The Paths Project – Young people as event organisers

and exhibition makers
Polkuja (the Paths) was a project lasting the whole first funding period of 2016–
2018. It is an example of where the museum is committed to supporting the
needs of a local community, and seeks co-creational elements in engaging it.
The co-creation was justified and meaningful, not only because of the common
values, but also because the museum’s own goal in the project was to involve
children and young people, and to work with local communities and groups
that are interested in photographic methods in their operations. The Paths is an
example of a project that has features of collaboration, co-creation and hosting,
according to Simon’s model.

The Paths’ activities were developed by a visual artist, art educator Noora Sand-
gren, working in co-operation with Volunteer Coordinator Tuula Ylänne and
the Director of Girl Work, Tanja Rajala, both working for Debora/YWCA4 in
Meri-Rastila, in Vuosaari.

The Debora Project has a living-room type of place called SOma-SOppi, which
specialises in working with young girls, strengthening friendship, social skills
and a sense of self-reliance. It is dedicated to girls of 13–15 years in the Meri
Rastila neighbourhood of Vuosaari.

Rajala and Ylänne selected a group of nine sixth-grade girls for the Paths activ-
ity. In addition to the girls, the Paths also indirectly targeted the leaders of the
Debora Project and the girls’ close adults and family from the museum’s side.
The internal goal was to support the transition of girls to high school, and to
promote interaction skills – friendships and a sense of belonging. One of the main
goals of the project from Debora’s side was to support girls’ self-esteem, agency
and peer relationships. Other important objectives included the participation
and responsibility of girls, support for girls with an immigrant background and
support for intergenerational co-operation. Sandgren had the role of co-creating
and supporting the content creation with the tools provided by the museum,
i.e., contemporary photography.

In the Paths Project, the Finnish Museum of Photography provided materials,

information and guidance, but the girls participated in the design of the con-
tent, in collaboration with the museum and the guiding artist Sandgren, but
sometimes entirely by themselves. The Paths Project was structured around
weekly meetings in SOma SOppi, as well as excursions to local nature and to

4. Debora is a company that provides cultural, social and health services for cities. The City of Hel-
sinki buys services from them, for example, for senior citizens, families, children and young people.
340 Section III – Communities and Audiences

the Finnish Museum of Photography. As an outcome for non-participants, there

was the Restaurant Day event and two exhibitions.5

Learning creative skills and engaging non-participants

Paths included two exhibitions, Kuljen, katson, kohtaan, 2016 (I walk, I see,
I meet) at the Vuotalo Cultural Centre and Itseni hyvä ystävä 2017 (I am My
Own Good Friend) at the Meri-Rastila Library. Kuljen, katson, kohtaan was an
exhibition where another joint project with an artist/art educator, Kastehelmi
Korpijaakko, and a group of young people was presented together. Korpijaakko’s
practice had more of a collaborative approach since two institutions, the mu-
seum and the Vuotalo Cultural Centre, had developed the concept and the plan
(one-week, free summer courses for young people) for how participants were
able to work. In both cases, participants followed the whole creative process of
producing art work and presenting it.

For the Restaurant Day Flashmob (2016), where girls had a Spring-flowery res-
taurant, the menu constituted of Somalian Sambusas, Asian crab chips, Rocky
Road sweets and surprise drinks. As an exchange of tasting experience, the
restaurant guests were asked to share with the girls three things that really
gave them joy and happiness in life. The thoughts were written or drawn in a
special guestbook, with any voluntary donations used for field trips involving
the Paths Project.

All the outcomes and exhibitions, as well as the Restaurant Day event, brought
out the perspective of young people as event organisers and influencers in their
own neighbourhood. It connected the young people of Vuosaari, regardless of
background and place of residence, and allowed young people to use public
spaces and other facilities (the Sjökulla Manor) in a new way. As one young
participant said: “I went and visited places I would not otherwise visit”. Via
exhibitions and their visibility, both institutions – the museum and the Vuotalo
Cultural Centre – got new audiences that were connected to the participants
of the project, and brought together people and groups from very different so-
cio-economic areas in Vuosaari.

Figure 2. The portraits were completed with the courses Smiley Eye, Mutrusuu and Face to Face.
During the week-long Face to Face course, participants were looking for different ways to approach

5. Developed in Helsinki and first held in May 2011, Restaurant Day allows anyone to set up their
own café, restaurant or bar for one day.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  341

a portrait. What kind of picture is it telling me about myself? What does a portrait reveal and what
does it hide? Photo: Kastehelmi Korpijaakko/The Finnish Museum of Photography.

Case Study 2.
Using participation to create public art
The goal of the project was to create a permanent photo installation in a public
space, in collaboration with various local communities in Vuosaari. Photogra-
phers and art educators Tuukka Kangas, Hanna Parviainen, Noora Sandgren
and Liisa Söderlund conducted several photo walks in Meri-Rastila, for all age
groups. Photography and the Community Photo Walk were used as tools to
address issues and topics that were important to different age groups living in
Meri-Rastila.

The project also had consultative features of collaboration, since it involved

outside experts. The project was commissioned by Lähiöprojekti (The Suburban
Project)6 and it was produced by the RaivioBuman-Collective, which is a public
art and urban design studio and consultancy, specialised in community driven
projects, installations and site-specific art.7

Figure 3. A permanent 6 x 2.5 m photo of residents’ photos was made on the wall of the HOAS (Student
Housing in the Helsinki Region) condominium yard in Meri-Rastila. Photographers: Miska Elo, Katja
Kanerva, Viktoriia Kotova, Anni Malmberg, Heikki Parviainen, Valtteri Vickholm, Niina Vickholm.
Lay out: Artist-designer Päivi Raivio. Photo: Daniel Bumann/RaivioBumann.

In this case, our museum and the Lähiöprojekti had a very similar commitment
to community engagement, i.e., to deepen understanding of artistic and cultural
content and to give residents the possibility to participate in the artistic process
(making and exhibiting), together with professionals in the field.

6. Lähiöprojekti (the Suburban Project) was completed in its present form at the end of 2017. The
Helsinki City Government established the Suburban Project at the beginning of 1996 to define the
general development directions of suburbs and to organise regional development activities. The
suburban project had an annual budget available to carry out these activities. The objectives of the
period were regional activities and the prevention of exclusion. In general, residents were offered low-
threshold participation opportunities. In 2017 the Helsinki City Government decided to allocate the
operating funds of the Suburban Project to financing the implementation of the participatory model.
7. [Link]
342 Section III – Communities and Audiences

The photographs were also shown before the final installation as a screening at
the KulttuuriX (CultureX) outdoor festival, where they engaged a lot more viewers
and potential participants. As one participant put it later on social media: “So
touching was Meri-Rastila Saturday that tears fell on the floor of the croft and on
the forest path. Thanks, everybody! It was an experience that this Meri-Rastila
resident will never forget.” (Facebook group: Ohjaajat Vuosaaritoisinsanoen.
Translated by the author)

Conclusion – Still wondering and asking questions

This chapter has described via two case studies how the Finnish Museum of
Photography has worked towards participation in Vuosaari during the years
2016–2018. At the time of writing we are more than half-way through the second
funding period (2019–2021) and the funding has shifted somewhat. The museum
is now working in Vuosaari under the name Vuosaari 21 in partnership with two
theatre groups, under Helsinki Model funding (KOM Theatre and Klockricket-
eatern), sharing mutual goals.8 Since spring 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has
created unexpected challenges and changes, and new outcomes have emerged,
such as Virtual Family Albums and the New Ordinary exhibition. Virtual Family
Albums is an online project involving elderly people of Vuosaari, and was a con-
tinuation of home visits done earlier the same year. With Covid-19 came a new
assignment – to document together in a performative way the effect Covid-19
measures had on the lives of the participants in Vuosaari. Online workshops
also grew as a way to explore the virtual possibilities of community art and
creative engagement. The Covid-19 pandemic also affected the Dokumentteja
Vuosaaresta (Documents from Vuosaari, tanslation by the author) project, which
started in summer 2018. The purpose of the project was to collect old and new
photographs of Vuosaari from the locals and, through them, reveal the changes
in the urban landscape and the environment. The project was launched with a
group of local seniors whose approach was based on documentary photogra-
phy and the tradition of community art. Then all meetings and events had to
be canceled because of the pandemic. The big questions were as follows: How
can the emotional intimacy between people be strengthened with art in these
extraordinary conditions? How can community art tied to a particular place
be created when we are forced to be apart? These questions led to new ways
of interacting with one another. We went from emails to sharing photos on
Google Drive, and from these photos to chatting on Zoom. Digital technology
and unfamiliar applications posed a challenge, and tackling it with the elderly
required creativity and solidary. These extraordinary times forced us to consider

8. In her unpublished dissertation, photographer, researcher and art educator Liisa Söderlund,
who has worked on the project since 2015, the Vuosaari 21 project is one example of participatory
photography, where a team of artists works with different audiences, working together and developing
new approaches to the field of community art.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  343

the meaning of community and participation in virtual encounters, to figure

out ways to make art together and to redefine the role of a community artist.9

The New Ordinary exhibition (5.12.–30.12.2020) explores the topic: What is a

good life when something new and unknown changes the familiar into some-
thing else? The residents of Vuosaari bravely started recording changes and the
emotions evoked by Covid-19, with texts and photographs in Vuosaari 21 project
workshops. With the Columbus shopping centre as venue, the photographs dis-
play Vuosaari’s walking routes – places that are important to the photographers
as well as small, everyday moments.10

The continuing challenge since the beginning has been how to be visible and
reachable, when the museum has no permanent place in Vuosaari that could serve
as a site and resource to engage with and meet people in everyday encounters.
It has actually turned out to be a positive challenge that has encouraged and
motivated us to be present in surprising, easy-to-access places: parks, streets,
cafes, beaches, sports fields and shopping malls. And it has worked well – in-
formal chats have produced successful encounters – such as the group of girls
for the Photography and Movement course, who became enthusiastic when
they by chance heard about the course in a café and as a consequence then saw
themselves as potential participants in the course.

The strength of the Helsinki Model is in its accessibility – all activities are free.
But are they relevant, and to whom? Why would anybody participate if it did
not have any meaning for them? That brings us to the biggest challenge and also
the most time consuming – building relationships with people and supporting
them. It is often as simple as spending time, talking, eating and having coffee
together. Through such activities an idea for a programme, activity or other
collaboration could start to emerge.

Community educators Mari Laakso and Pekka Turunen consider the outcome
of Helsinki Model in their research to be successful, especially among children,
youth and other participants who were already active in the area, as well as in-
habitants with cultural interests. Laakso and Turunen state that the attitude of
the art institutions influenced the success of the activities. They also pay attention
to the power structure and the roles in participatory projects and mention: “A
genuine encounter requires that art institutions and residents are equal, so that
the activities are not aimed from top to bottom, putting art against participation”
(Laakso and Turunen 2019. Translated by the author).

That all brings us back to the museum’s own priorities and institutional values.
How does inclusive thinking take root in our museum, and how is it embedded

9. Images from this project and working process available at: [Link]
fi/fi/hankkeet/vuosaari-21/dokumentteja-vuosaaresta [Last accessed 27 August 2021]
10. More about Virtual Family albums can be found at: [Link]
projects/vuosaari-21/virtual-family-albums and New Ordinary [Link]
fi/en/projects/vuosaari-21/vuosaari-21-new-ordinary [Last accessed 1 February 2020]
344 Section III – Communities and Audiences

in the work of the museum as a whole? Is it something that we prioritise, or is

it something that we do only when we have extra funding? The City of Helsinki
has made accessibility and inclusion a criterion for participation in cultural
grants. Via the Helsinki Model, the City’s purpose is to permanently renew
the entire project-funding application process, so that work with the audience
will be done more outside of the walls of the artistic facilities, especially in the
suburbs. How strongly will the City of Helsinki strategy govern museums and
their work in the future?

A lot of resources have been invested in the work in Vuosaari, as well as in

the Helsinki Model. It has been running for several years and employs a good
number of staff, but has it been of any relevance to the residents? And how can
it be managed and sustained in the future? I honestly cannot answer that yet!

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lähiöissä vuosina 2016–2018 Helsingin osallistavassa kulttuurityön
mallissa. Helsinki: Helsingin kulttuurikeskus.

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M. Koneen Säätiön Jakautuuko Suomi -hankkeen julkaisu, ryhmä
Vuosaari. Helsinki: Koneen Säätiö.

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346 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Accessibility Means More than

Ramps – A critical approach to
the (in-)accessibility of museums,
galleries and cultural institutions
Dorothea Breier

Abstract
This chapter challenges the image of museums and galleries as accessible plac-
es. For this, I draw on my research on a group of young adults in Helsinki, to
illustrate with this case study how certain groups of people experience said
institutions as unwelcoming and particularly inaccessible. As my interviewees
put it, “accessibility means more than ramps”, but is as much connected to the
principles of social accessibility.

In this chapter I present the group’s detailed critique of cultural institutions,

before discussing their suggestions and actual strategies on how to increase
accessibility to the arts and culture. With these insights into the perspective of
people who do not feel welcome at museums and other cultural institutions,
this chapter seeks to provide input and inspiration regarding participatory prac-
tices and grassroot approaches when trying to transform museums into more
inclusive places.

Keywords: social accessibility, inclusivity, participatory practice, do-it-yourself

(DIY), safer space

Introduction
In past decades, the question of accessibility of museums and cultural institu-
tions has been widely discussed. This resulted in multiple publications by and
for those institutions, such as the Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhi-
bition Design (2010) or ICOM’s Committee for Education and Cultural Action
conference proceedings named Museum Education & Accessibility: Bridging the
Gaps. A great number of guidelines and other field-specific literature focus on the
physical accessibility of museums (Lisney et al. 2013; Murphey 2015; Cock 2018).
However, accessibility is about more than just physical access to the space and
its content; it also entails a social dimension. Some publications pay attention to
this, discussing, for instance, the complexities and issues faced when aiming for
more inclusive cultural institutions (Sandell & Nightingale 2013; Papadimitriou
et al. 2017; Newman et al. 2005), or emphasising the benefits of participatory
practices when trying to open up museums (Simon 2010). Considerations on
Section III – Communities and Audiences  347

the social accessibility of cultural institutions can also be found in the Ethical
guidelines 4 – Access of the Museums Association or, in a Finnish context, the
recommendations and services of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture
on how to enhance the accessibility and diversity of culture.1

However, even in publications that discuss social aspects of accessibility, the

focus seems to rest on selected groups of people, often linguistic and ethnic
minorities, and on how to include them in the operations of art and cultural
institutions. Still, it seems that a particular, yet crucial aspect of inclusivity and
accessibility has been only marginally addressed, namely how to include seem-
ingly unreachable groups of people, people who might not even be on the radar
of art and cultural institutions, and who perceive such institutions as exclusive
and unwelcoming, but who would still benefit from participating in them.

In this chapter, I draw on novel ethnographic research done on and with a group
of young adults in Helsinki that work in an open and inclusive (sub)cultural
centre called Loukko.2 As shown in my research, the group has highly elaborate
idea(l)s, and solid critiques about the exclusivity of society in general, and cul-
tural institutions in particular. Their activities can be seen as a direct response
to perceived failures and shortcomings of cultural institutions.

I use Loukko’s viewpoints to shed light on the limitations regarding social ac-
cessibility, of which museums and similar institutions might not even be fully
aware. Furthermore, I discuss one of Loukko’s strategies to increase accessibility
to the arts and culture, namely a programme called Museokerho (Museum Club).
Within the framework of Museokerho, Loukko organises visits to museums and
galleries for their target group, i.e., people at risk of being marginalised due to
their social or educational background, gender identity, mental health issues
or social abilities. I present the voices of organisers at Loukko, participants of
Museokerho and a collaborating institution, to illustrate how such participa-
tory practices have the potential to turn museums and cultural institutions into
places for everyone.

Methodology and Material

I gathered the material for this chapter as part of my postdoctoral research on
grassroot initiatives and urban activism, working for a more socially sustainable
city. I discovered Loukko right at the beginning of my project. After the first
interview with Vilja, one of the founding members, I decided to focus on them
for the time being. Already in this first interview, it became clear that Loukko’s
attempt to create a subcultural centre rests on highly elaborate idea(l)s, linked
to a solid critique of society. Their main driving force is a perception of society as

1. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 12 June

2019]
2. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 12 June 2019]
348 Section III – Communities and Audiences

one that is exclusive, one that leaves behind different groups of people without
even realising it.

This perception stems from personal experiences of Loukko’s members, a group

of young adults in their twenties to mid-thirties, and from what they witness
regarding people in their immediate surroundings. This forms the background
of their activities and motivates them to create a space that is inclusive and ac-
cessible, both physically and socially, for people who feel discriminated against
because of their social or educational background, affiliation to subcultures,
sexual or gender identities or (mental) health issues. Here, I present and discuss
one specific strategy with which Loukko tries to make the arts and culture more
accessible by organising museum and gallery visits in a do-it-yourself (DIY)
manner. I refer to the framework of DIY as something that describes “anti-pro-
fessional activities” (Deslandes 2013, p. 218) in which “ordinary people (…) rely
on themselves in order to fill a need, fix a problem, or pursue a goal” (Relles &
Clemens 2018, p. 313). As Griffin put it, “a DIY ethic encourages people to think
about their position and place in the world, and how their actions or (in-actions),
are connected to others, to wider society” (Griffins 2015, p. 25), which shows
clearly in Loukko’s agenda.

My research material consists primarily of five qualitative interviews with some

of Loukko’s core members, each lasting between one and two hours. Most of the
interviews took place in summer 2018 and deal with the basic ideas and strategies
of Loukko on a more general level. Loukko launched their Museokerho only in
spring 2019, which in turn inspired me to write my contribution to this volume.

To gain more specific data on Museokerho, I participated in two of its events at

different venues in Helsinki: The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma3, and
the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM)4. These gave me an idea of how Museokerho
works in situ and prepared me for follow-up interviews with two of Loukko’s
members, as well as one with the Head of Public Programmes at Kiasma. All
interviewees decided not to remain anonymous, therefore I refer to them by name.

In addition to the interviews, I conducted a questionnaire survey with partici-

pants of Loukko’s Museokerho to learn about their experiences at museums in
general, and in Museokerho in particular. Since it was not obligatory to register
for most Museokerhos, I asked Loukko to distribute the link to the survey via
their Facebook page as their main medium for informing about events and
sharing other updates. The survey covered three areas: some basic background
information on the participant (age, gender, education, occupation, etc.), some
questions on their relationship to museums and museum visits in the past and
present and their experiences with and thoughts on Museokerho. Some of the
questions had a simple multiple-choice format; others required the respondent
to write their own text.

3. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 12 June 2019]

4. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 12 June 2019]
Section III – Communities and Audiences  349

Due to the small scale of Museokerho, participation in this questionnaire was

small as well. In total, four people responded, three males and one female, with
three people aged between 18 and 33, and one aged 50+. In retrospect, I think
that it would have been more fruitful if I had done short, qualitative interviews
with participants. Unfortunately, the answers to the questionnaire turned out
to be a bit short and superficial, while in face-to-face interviews, I could have
followed up more specifically on aspects relevant for this article. Thus, I draw
on the results of the questionnaire to support my arguments, but they should
not be seen as a primary source.

Besides my own research data, I took different surveys and a social media cam-
paign into consideration that Loukko had implemented themselves. Firstly, there
are surveys and a social media campaign named Mikä estää (What stops you?)
done soon after Loukko was founded in early spring 2018. In those, Loukko
asked people what challenges they faced when wanting to go to (semi-)public
places. Secondly, there is a questionnaire that one of Loukko’s core members,
Vilja, did in early autumn 2018 for her master’s thesis (Joensuu 2018). With
this questionnaire, Vilja tried to find out more about different aspects of acces-
sibility to be taken into account when planning “low-threshold arts or cultural
activities” (Vilja). Each of those questionnaires had around 20 responses. For
this chapter, I refer to a listing of the results of the first survey that was shared
with me, as well as an interview with Vilja, in which we discussed the findings
of the questionnaires. For ethical reasons, I did not have those findings directly
at my disposal.

With this multidimensional approach, I try to look at the issue from different
angles; from both outside and inside arts and cultural institutions. As a trained
ethnologist, I put a lot of emphasis on presenting the (transcribed) voices of
my interviewees, to allow them to make their points clear in their own words,
rather than summarising them myself. Additionally, I refer to guidelines and
literature on museum practices to complement the discussion of my findings.
However, my main intention is to present an example of innovative and mean-
ingful participatory practices as a source of inspiration for future development
at museums, galleries and other cultural institutions.

Case Study and Discussion

A perceived inaccessibility of museums, galleries and cultural
institutions

One of the more encompassing approaches towards accessibility can be found

in the Equality Planning Guide (2010) of the Finnish organisation Kulttuuria
kaikille (Culture for All) that was launched in 2003 and is supported by the
Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.5 Unlike other guidelines that either
focus solely or primarily on physical accessibility, this one not only provides

5. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 18 June 2019]

350 Section III – Communities and Audiences

additional information on how to include different age groups, linguistic, eth-

nic or religious minorities, but also sexual and gender minorities. In another
guideline, the Guide to Equality in Youth and Sports Organisations (2014),
Kulttuuria kaikille differentiates between physical and social accessibility and
provides a definition of the latter: “Social accessibility is a question of climate. In
a socially accessible organisation, everyone can safely be who they are, without
fear of discrimination.” (ETNO et al. 2014, p. 19).

Though rather vague, this definition points towards aspects that are crucial
when discussing Loukko’s stance, its criticism of a perceived exclusivity of cul-
tural institutions and its response to it. Loukko’s members understood that the
cultural and art scene does not feel particularly welcoming to certain people for
reasons that lie beyond the physical accessibility of those places. As Mirjami,
one of Loukko’s core members, put it:

Mirjami: There [are] different things that stop you from going to places.
It’s not just about --- are the doors wide enough and stuff like that. It’s also,
a big deal of it is social and psychological, and I have noticed, many times
when I have wanted to go somewhere, and then I feel like people are just
staring at me and wondering if I’m gonna steal something from there…
There are different kind of things that stop you from going to places.
And for people that have different kinds of problems with discrimination
regarding their sexual orientation or gender identity and different kinds
of mental sickness and anxiety and so on, it’s --- it’s harder to go to some,
like, cultural event at Korjaamo where there are all these beautiful people
sipping on their Aperol Spritz and watching some short films that their
friends directed on his year in India. It’s a lot harder than going to some
crumbly building in Suvilahti, where we have been saying on the internet
that “You don’t need any money, you don’t need fancy clothes, you can
just come here and we’re a bunch of, like, (laughs) crappy older Punks
(…) that don’t even own a pair of, like, pantyhose that aren’t broken...”

For people who experience(d) discrimination due to their background, the thresh-
old of going to a public place, particularly one which signals a considerable degree
and even expectation of sophistication, is high. What Mirjami described also
shows in the results of Loukko’s own surveys. As Vilja explained to me, two of
the surveys asked if the respondents “‘feel like there is enough arts and cultural
services available that are (…) accessible for [them]’”. Of all participants, 50
and 60 percent, respectively, answered in the negative. The reason most often
provided (66/85 percent), was “I can’t afford to participate”, followed by “I don’t
feel welcome” and “I don’t feel safe” (more than 30 percent). When asked in one
of the surveys if those reasons had prevented the respondents from attending
events, 54 percent responded “Yes, sometimes” and almost 40 percent said “Yes,
many times”. Some of the respondents explained as part of the open questions
in more detail what obstacles caused them to feel unwelcome or unsafe. As
Vilja elaborated, one big issue addressed was the gender-normative space and
appearance of many institutions, in addition to the insecurity that some people
Section III – Communities and Audiences  351

feel in an unknown environment, not knowing “whether a place or an event is

(…) really open, or is it still kind of a clique-thing”.

These findings gain deeper meaning when one knows about the background of the
respondents. An average of one third indicated a non-binary gender (alongside
the majority of participants who identified as women, and a minority as men).
Furthermore, about 50 percent said they were in school or working. However,
some of those also said they were on sick-leave or rehabilitation to get (back)
into work life, which means that at least half of the respondents were de facto
outside of work and school.

As Mirjami pointed out above, there are many reasons why certain people feel
unwelcome at cultural institutions, from the fear of not knowing enough to being
eligible to enter such spaces, over not having enough, or the right, social and
cultural capital, to having already experienced discrimination due to their gender
identity, sexual preferences or other characteristics. Considering the vulnerable
status of many of Loukko’s participants, it therefore becomes clearer why they
might feel excluded from the arts and cultural events, but also why it would be
all the more important to include them. Studies illustrate the positive impact of
artistic and creative activities, particularly for people’s mental wellbeing (Secker
et al. 2018; Wilson et al. 2015; Margrove 2015), a concept to be understood as
something that is worth aspiring to “regardless of the presence or absence of
symptoms” (Secker et al. 2018, p. 80). I am not implying that all of Loukko’s
participants suffer from mental health issues, but certainly many of them are at
risk of being marginalised from mainstream society for one or another reason,
which is why participating in the arts and culture would be beneficial for their
overall wellbeing.

Despite this, Vilja criticises in one of our interviews the fact that even though
museums, galleries and similar institutions might have charitable offers, such
as free entry or workshops, these usually target specific groups such as children
and teenagers. According to her, some people might not be part of, e.g., mental
health groups (which are also considered a target group for some charitable
activities at institutions), but still, and maybe particularly because of this, those
people would be in urgent need of such supportive offers. Thus, Vilja concludes,
“the group that would benefit the most, is the group that is excluded the most”.

This forms one of the main pillars in Loukko’s work, namely, to make access
to arts and culture as low-threshold as possible. For this, Loukko organises
activities of different kinds and contents, including political cross-stitching,
creating poetic collages, acrylic painting and pottery workshops. The difference
from similar activities offered by, e.g., adult education centres and such is that
Loukko’s workshops are not only offered free of charge, with no prior skills
needed, but most significantly, they are held in a non-institutional environment.
It is precisely this environment and atmosphere of a place that have a crucial,
yet mostly unrecognised impact on the social accessibility found there.
352 Section III – Communities and Audiences

In line with this, Loukko tries to create a safer space for those groups of mar-
ginalised people they want to reach, a space where, as Mirjami pointed out, they
can be who they are, without having the feeling of not being [insert an adjective]
enough, or the fear of being discriminated against for their personal background.
In all their activities, Loukko thus follows clear safer space principles (figure 1),
which are stated on their website, in each event description, and, most impor-
tantly, which are implemented consequently in situ.

Figure 1. Loukko’s safer space principles, screenshot from their website.

Surely, most cultural institutions would generally agree on principles such as

having non-discriminatory policies. Furthermore, guidelines like the one of
Kulttuuria kaikille reflect on the importance of not just having policies for in-
creasing inclusivity, but of actually implementing those policies at all levels of
the organisation:

The implementation of social accessibility is the responsibility of all ac-

tors at all levels of the organisation. The attitudes of the organisation’s
members, volunteers and staff have a major impact on how social acces-
sibility is realised in the everyday activity of the organisation. (ETNO et
al. 2014, p. 19)

However, more factors play into the creation of a safer space that is needed for
including marginalised groups, factors that cultural institutions may find hard
to accomplish by themselves. For Vilja, it is obvious that certain spaces for cer-
tain people cannot be created artificially, but that they have to grow organically
from within the group. In our interview, we discussed how diversity cannot be
achieved from above, by pro forma, including minority quotas. As Vilja put it:
“You can’t fake diversity, if you would want to have more minorities in, (…) you
can’t really do that unless you reach out in a way that would include them in
the operations in a way.”

Taking the example of municipal youth centres, Vilja does acknowledge the work
that is being done by social workers there, yet she criticises the fact that they are
curated and coordinated in a top-down manner. For her, one way of solving this
is to rely on self-governed spaces and activities organised by the users themselves.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  353

According to Vilja, this is what Loukko managed to do: “I feel that the group
working with Loukko is also the people we are doing it for (…) It comes from
us, because we are part of the people we would want to reach out to anyway.”

By making it easy for everyone “to bring own needs and interests into the opera-
tion”, Vilja said that Loukko strove to have no clear division between organisers
and participants. As Vilja put it at another moment of the interview, most of
Loukko’s members have a punk background, which made “doing things in a
do-it-yourself-manner (…) close and familiar’ to them as they had “so much
experience in doing things on a grassroot level”. According to Vilja, following a
bottom-up, DIY-strategy worked against the limitations of cultural institutions
and allowed people instead to create spaces that are more inclusive and acces-
sible to marginalised groups.

As an intermediate conclusion, I therefore want to emphasise the necessity for

museums and cultural institutions to acknowledge their limitations in reaching
out to certain groups because of their inherent institutional nature. However,
since such groups would benefit from participating in the arts and culture, other
strategies are needed to make cultural institutions more accessible to them. As one
possible solution, I now present and discuss Loukko’s Museokerho programme.

Bottom-up Museum Tours for Increased Inclusivity?

– Loukko’s Museokerho
The organiser’s perspective

The idea for Museokerho was created because Vilja realised how much she herself
benefits from art and creative activities, and thought that if she found it helpful,
others might feel the same. When working on her MA thesis on the accessibility
and benefits of the arts and culture, she felt further supported in her idea to
set up events that would lower the threshold of this field and related activities.

To complement their art and handicraft workshops, Loukko introduced Mu-

seokerho, planned as a series of organised visits to museums and galleries. For
this, Vilja started to contact numerous institutions to ask for collaboration.
However, she was turned down by most of them on the grounds of “lack of re-
sources”. She expressed incomprehension about this, as, according to her, “[t]
he way it’s been planned or presented to museums is that it wouldn’t take any
of their resources”. At a later point of the interview, she added, “the only thing
that we wanted to have is free entry, for ten people, few times a year – that’s
not much for a big museum”.

The background for this is the strategy of lowering the threshold to arts and
cultures by creating the approach in a DIY, bottom-up way. In the case of Louk-
ko’s Museokerho, this DIY-approach means that instead of booking an official
exhibition guide, some of Loukko’s members familiarise themselves with the
exhibition they want to visit beforehand in order to provide some background
information for the participants in situ.
354 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Figure 2. Museokerho’s logo, made by Vilja Joensuu. Photo: Mika Paananen.

As Nova, another member of Loukko who is helping with Museokerho, indicated,

the exclusivity of galleries and museums is not just about the participants, but
also about “who is presented and given space in the art scene and who is not”.
Raising awareness of this problem is something Vilja envisions for Museokerho:

I would like to include in the Museokerho more of this kind of critical

thinking about arts, like, what the background and the --- what you [Nova]
said about representing, who is being represented and everything, but
then again, to not make it too theoretical, to make it easily accessible,
even for a first contact to looking at art in a museum, and then finding
the balance of having this analytical ideas about art and power and stuff
– it’s difficult thing to kind of balance.

However, despite the struggle of finding a balance between providing enough

information, prompting a critical discussion and yet making sure that it does not
drift into theoretical and potentially exclusive realms, Nova and Vilja considered
the above-mentioned bottom-up approach as a way to solve this. One reason
for this is that non-professionals are more capable of creating an atmosphere
in which participants do not feel inferior, or as Vilja put it:

Yeah, but that’s really important part about accessibility to arts, that you
have to --- that it’s not something that everyone just has to understand
without knowing anything, like, that you have to be a philosopher or
ehm, a historian or something, or super intelligent and artistic to enjoy
art, but that it’s something that can be talked about.

This is especially true if participants cannot connect with a piece of art, as be-
comes clear in a memory Nova shared with me about an experience he had at
one Museokerho:
Section III – Communities and Audiences  355

I had a really nice discussion in the museum the last time we went there,
because, [one participant] were annoyed about a piece of art that they
thought was, eh, at the same time they felt like ‘I’m feeling stupid and
maybe this is too difficult for me, but I’m also angry, because this feels
insignificant, like, this doesn’t say anything to me’.

As Nova explained, he also could not explain the piece of art, even though he
found it interesting as such, but then he and the participant discussed discussed
“how not every art piece is meant, like, you don’t have to understand everything
(…) it is okay if it doesn’t speak to you”. Nova concluded: “I think it was also a
point for me to learn, to not try to explain something, but to be like, ‘Yeah, that’s
totally valid that you think like that (…)”

Just as Vilja described it to be the case for Loukko on a general level, Museok-
erho’s strengths also stem from the fact that it is created by people for people,
i.e., from within a group of potentially marginalised and vulnerable people for
people like them. As I elaborated above, this has the potential to create an open
atmosphere in which people can get involved with art regardless of their social
and educational background, in which they feel safe enough to admit the fact
that something does not speak to them.

Another pillar of Museokerho, which sets it apart from institutional guided

tours, is that it is supposed to follow the same safer space principles as other
Loukko activities. In practise, this means, for example, that Loukko’s members
are aware of sensitive topics that could come up during a discussion. However,
as Nova and Vilja discussed, the implementation of a safer space might become
challenging when keeping events open to everyone. As Nova explained:

Because there is a lot of people who are not very familiar with queerstuff
or safer spaces policies or stuff like that, and still kinda are in our target
group, like they don’t go to museums and maybe they would like to, but
they still can share different morals or something like that.

Having constellations of participants with differing opinions, experiences or just

levels of awareness of certain issues could cause conflicts or unpleasant situa-
tions, both at Loukko in general and Museokerho in particular. Nova ponders:

Yeah, I guess it’s about, the tricky thing for me maybe is the balance,
like, how to give a chance for people to, like, who wouldn’t know about
that stuff, to get to know about it, but at the same time, people who are
very familiar with all the stuff that is being discussed and maybe it’s very
personal to them, to talk about queer things for example, eh, so that they
feel safe at the same time, without feeling, like --- “Now we have to teach
these people about this thing that I have to face all the time in my every-
day life”, and, well, that’s very difficult, how to balance that. Most of the
times I don’t think anything really bad happens, but of course, especially
when we are looking at art, there can be themes that bring something up
that somebody says something, and then it’s like, OK, now we have to
356 Section III – Communities and Audiences

--- (Vilja: Yep, yep.) we can’t let this just pass, we have to do something
about this, what was just said.

As Museokerho was such a new programme at the time of the interviews, Vilja
and Nova were still working on the challenges they addressed. However, I see
the potential of solving them once more by having a bottom-up strategy. As
Museokerho is organised from within the group, Loukko’s members are closer
to the participants than employees of art and culture institutions would nor-
mally be. They are aware of potential group-specific issues that could arise, are
more sensitised to them and thus likely to be more capable of reacting to them
accordingly.

The Institutional Perspective

The potential of Museokerho was also recognised by Minna, head of the public
programmes at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, which is part of the
Finnish National Gallery. She was one of the few who reacted to Vilja’s e-mail
request positively and granted free admission to the Museokerho groups. One
of her reasons had to do with her understanding of the limitations of big insti-
tutions such as Kiasma:

We have this burden of being a big institution, we are too big and too scary
for some groups; even if we want to be inclusive in very many different
ways, we cannot reach these groups who might be very, ehm, excluded
from the community, so then this National Gallery is not the first thing
they approach.

According to her, it therefore was “built into the Kiasma concepts since the
beginning” to put a lot of emphasis on collaborating with outside groups. As an
example, she told me that Kiasma worked with the Finnish Red Cross and their
volunteer friend visitors throughout 2019. This programme aimed at connecting
volunteers with people “looking for human contact”.6 Minna described Kiasma’s
contribution:

(…) The only thing we did was that we educated these friends for muse-
um-visits, how to, eh, visit a museum, and gave them some ideas how
to approach art and what kind of things is possible to talk about in art.
And then they come together with their friends, this volunteer friends
and their friends, and it can be --- people who are lonely, or people who
are, maybe have some mental disorders, or many many many different
backgrounds. So, this is one way for an institution to make it very personal,
but we have to – because we are an institution, we have to take a step
back, and let these people who have this trust relation to these people to
come together, and then we step back and in a way we lose the control,
but we trust them.

6. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 2 July 2019]

Section III – Communities and Audiences  357

According to Minna, the strategy that Kiasma applies to Loukko is “exactly the
same as [they] use for example together with the Red Cross”, though on a smaller
scale. A few days before I met Minna, she and Loukko had a meeting to discuss
their experiences with Museokerho. As Minna told me, she decided to continue
their collaboration for another half a year. She even extended the agreement
so that Loukko’s members could join info events held for teachers to introduce
them to the new exhibitions. According to her, Kiasma receives hundreds of
requests for collaboration, but as she had heard of Loukko from somewhere in
social media before, and was impressed by their ideas and professional attitude,
she decided to help them. She explained:

So for Kiasma, it’s like a very easy and small way to help, but for partic-
ipants it can be --- huge. (…) I have this principle, if I can help someone
in fifteen minutes, I do it. If it’s possible to help, so... I also saw that this
is very easy way to help them on their way to something good.

Throughout our interview, Minna expressed awareness of both the limitations

of big institutions like Kiasma, and in turn the potential of small organisations
such as Loukko. Therefore, she explained, when she told Loukko’s members
that from now on they could join info events on new exhibitions, she reminded
them to stay independent:

Yes, and they were so active and interested and motivated so that is why
I invited them to be part of our system, but we laughed and said that they
cannot be too close to the institution, because they don’t --- I warned
them, “Don’t be the institution, because that is why you are a treasure,
because you are not the institution!” That is why --- “Don’t marry us, but
use us!” (Interviewer laughs) “Because if you are too close, you are not
Loukko anymore!”

(…) I want them to be on the side of the institution, but not part of the
institution, because we need the city and these --- because we have the
same goals with these groups. So, I’m not jealous, I don’t need to do that
myself as a representant (sic) of an institution (…). It’s very OK for me
if they are the persons who lower the threshold. For me, the main idea
is that they get in contact with art. And if they don’t need me more than
this, it’s fine.

In the interview, it became clear that Minna was aware of the different dimensions
of accessibility and challenges connected to it. She pointed towards Kiasma’s
Equality Plan (2018), which aims to make the gallery and its services “socially,
physically, culturally and economically” accessible, “taking the diversification
of society into account”, and emphasises a “zero tolerance for bullying, har-
assment and discrimination”. Despite this, Minna and the above-mentioned
Equality Plan acknowledge the lack of diversity in Kiasma’s staff as a factor that
poses a challenge to their aims. Therefore, collaborating with outside groups not
only helps Kiasma in reaching otherwise unreachable visitor groups, but also in
adding more heterogeneous perspectives, experiences and values to its agenda.
358 Section III – Communities and Audiences

The Participant’s Perspective

As stated above, I consider Loukko and its Museokerho to be able to reach people
that institutions would not be able to reach because of their very institution-
al, high-threshold nature. I argued that the strength of Museokerho lies in its
bottom-up approach, which is why it is perceived to be different from similar,
institutional offers. As Vilja put it: “(…) if it was someone from the institution
providing a service of the institution to a group that is visiting, is very different
than, like, an independent group going in and operating [there].”

This becomes apparent in the responses to my questionnaire, in which I asked

about the participants’ experiences with and at museums and galleries, Mu-
seokerho in particular.

To begin with, four out of four respondents indicated that they would like to
go more often to museums and galleries. Among the top things that prevented
them from doing so was that they did not know what was going on, but also that
they lacked company to go with and that it was hard to motivate themselves to
go. Those reasons were each chosen by two out of four respondents, followed
by a lack of money and the feeling of not being welcome, indicated by one re-
spondent each.

It is all the more encouraging to see that half of the respondents did in fact
come alone to Museokerho, and also in the open answers several respondents
acknowledged that Museokerho motivates them to go to museums,7 even if
they go alone.8 One participant gave a possible reason for this and described
Museokerho as something that “easily takes you in”, something that is easy to
join and become a part of, where you can “just be yourself”.9 When asked where
they see the main difference between Museokerho and similar offers of art and
cultural institutions, one respondent characterised Museokerho as “more so-
cial and more relaxed”, and as a place where it is easy to get to know the other
participants.10 The fact that social aspect of Museokerho played a prominent
role in the responses also supports Minna’s understanding of Museokerho as “a
platform for meeting, (…) a safe platform in a museum and art environment”.

Besides this social aspect of Museokerho, participants appreciated the way it was
organised by Loukko. As said twice in the responses, Loukko’s members were
praised for being “inspiring and top-notch congenial leaders”11 and “wonderful
guides who provide interesting points as a background”.12 Another respondent

7. Idea on ihana, ja museokerho motivoi lähtemään museoon. (Response to survey)

8. Luulen, että kyseinen toiminta helpottaa lähtemistä käymään museoissa ja gallerioissa. Jos ei
ole esim ystäviä tai perhettä, jotka olisivat kiinnostuneita lähtemään kanssasi ja itse et haluaisi
yksinään lähteä. (Response to survey)
9. Helposti mukaansa ottava ryhmä, jossa saa olla aivan kuten on. (Response to survey)
10. Sosiaalisempi ja rennompi tapahtuma, Museokerhossa tutustuu helposti myös toisiin kerho-
laisiin. (Response to survey)
11. Innostavat ja huippu sympaattiset vetäjät (Response to survey)
12. … loistavat vetäjät ja mielenkiintoiset kohteet, joista vetäjillä hyvät taustatiedot. (Response
Section III – Communities and Audiences  359

explained that they enjoyed that at Museokerho, “things are gone through mainly
from the viewer’s angle and the discussion is created organically, while including
different viewpoints”. They added that while “more formal open doors are, of
course, a fantastic opportunity to visit the galleries, they lack that special feeling”.13

Figure 3. Photo at exhibition ‘Pawel Althamer – I Am’ at Helsinki Art Museum. Photo: Mika Paananen.

Above, I already touched upon the differences between Museokerho and similar
institutional offers, primarily regarding their ability to reach different audiences.
In my survey, I asked if the respondents had participated in similar open events
or guided tours that were organised by museums and galleries themselves, which
three out of four had not. When asked what had been the reasons that stopped
them from participating, the answers reflected various aspects. One of them
answered that they had not come across similar offers,14 another that they pre-
fer going at their own pace at museums,15 and the third that they had not been
involved because there are often too many people attending.16

Going back to Loukko’s own surveys, one of the big issues mentioned there,
that of seeing gender-normative, binary spaces as an obstacle, did not show
in my results. On the other hand, aspects such as not having money to go or
finding it difficult due to a person’s social capabilities, were addressed in both
Loukko’s and my surveys. However, given the small scale of my own survey, it
is hard to draw broader conclusions. Especially regarding such sensitive topics,
it would have most likely brought more valid results if I had done qualitative
interviews with Museokerho’s participants. In such personal interviews, I could

to survey)
13. Loukon museokerhossa käydään läpi asioita lähinnä katsojan kuvakulmasta ja keskustelua
syntyy suhteellisen helposti näkemyksistä. Ns. “virallisemmat” avoimet ovet ovat toki upea mahdol-
lisuus käydä katsomassa gallerioita, mutta siitä uupuu se jokin fiilis. (Response to survey)
14. Ei ole tullut vastaan samanlaista mahdollisuutta. (Response to survey)
15. Kuljen mieluummin omaa tahtiani museoissa. (Response to survey)
16. En ole osallistunut, koska sellaisissa on usein turhan paljon ihmisiä. (Response to survey)
360 Section III – Communities and Audiences

have followed up on issues that are mentioned only briefly and superficially
in the survey, to get a deeper understanding of the participant’s thoughts on
cultural institutions and Museokerho. Despite this, I find the insights gained
through my case study to be thought-provoking as such, and hope that they stir
or contribute to further discussion on the (in-)accessibility of museums, galleries
and other cultural institutions.

Museokerho in a Larger Context – Discussion

By presenting the results from my research in the group Loukko, I illustrated how
museums, galleries and other cultural institutions are perceived as unwelcoming
and excluding to certain groups of people, for instance people who feel discrim-
inated against because of their look, their social or educational background or
their sexual and gender identification.

Going through different guidelines of museums and related organisations that

discuss aspects related to their accessibility, it becomes clear that accessibility
is most commonly discussed in physical terms, which may be explained by it
being more tangible than the social dimension of accessibility. As Wilson et al.
put it, “[a]dapting and designing the built environment to be more inclusive
for disabled people is well advanced”, while “[u]nderstanding how the social
and occupational environment can be adapted is more subtle and is often de-
veloped through education to raise awareness of diverse needs”. As Wilson and
his colleagues conclude, this task may be challenging, but “is best facilitated by
the active involvement” of the people aimed for (Wilson et al. 2015, p. 203).

This relates to participatory practices at museums and similar institutions, for

instance when curating exhibitions, a practice that, as Sarraf and Bruno de-
scribe, “arose from the need to connect with various audiences” (Sarraf & Bruno
2015, p. 239). In another paper, the same authors explained that by involving
underrepresented publics in participatory curatorship projects, museums may
learn to “understand their wants and needs” and consequently, be transformed
into “more accessible spaces for all visitors” (Sarraf & Bruno 2013, p. 104). The
value of co-creation as part of museum work is also discussed in this volume,
by pointing out how such practice may benefit neighbourhoods and groups “left
behind in cultural services” (see Salo, this volume), but also how it may transform
museums into visitor-friendly spaces that acknowledge visitors to be more than
passive knowledge receivers, but rather active participants and co-creators of
knowledge (see Viita-aho, this volume).

Even if it is not about involving outside groups in the actual curation of exhi-
bitions, it should be in the very interest of a museum or gallery to reach the
widest possible range of audiences. As Kaitavuori (this volume) pointed out,
the question of which audience to aim for may become a delicate one, once
different stakeholders, such as external funding bodies, are involved. However,
it still remains one of the main purposes of a museum to “communicate[s] and
exhibit[s] the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment
Section III – Communities and Audiences  361

for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment”, as defined in the ICOM
Statutes of 2007.17

There are various ways of implementing this goal of addressing a broad audience,
for instance by inclusive educational programmes such as the one described by
Chiovatto and Aidar for the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil. One part of their
strategy is a Sociocultural Inclusion Programme that aims for different “groups
in situations of social vulnerability”, for instance by organising “ongoing educa-
tional visits and partnerships” with those groups, or by offering training courses
and educational publications for social workers (Chiovatto & Aidar 2015, p. 79).

To some extent, Loukko’s Museokerho could be seen in line with this. Howev-
er, the significant difference lies in Loukko’s bottom-up approach, relying on
themselves instead of asking for an expert from the museum to guide visitors
through the exhibitions. As I pointed out when presenting my empirical data,
this strategy has to do with the inhibition some people feel towards institutions.
Implementing museum visits in a decidedly grassroot, DIY manner serves as a
way to acknowledge the need of certain people for a specifically non-institutional
approach, even though the activities might take place inside an institutional set-
ting. While the Ethical Guidelines of the UK’s Museums Association see a possible
response to people who “do not feel that museum visiting is for them” lying in
“services such as outreach, the internet or publishing” (Museums Association,
p. 4), I suggest that institutions and experts stepping back and handing over
some of the control to users could be another way to go. Strategies like the one
suggested here, form another possibility of museums lowering their institutional
voice and sharing their power (see Viita-aho, this volume).

One prerequisite for this is the step of accepting one’s own inability to reach
certain groups as an institution and acknowledging the ability of others to do
so. The next step is to be available to enable and help those others in their work,
to become “platforms for practices” (see also Viita-aho, this volume), as a result
of understanding and appreciating the deeper meaning and value behind bot-
tom-up, DIY museum work.

As I showed with my research on Loukko and their Museokerho, there indeed is

a demand for such bottom-up approaches. There are groups of people who do
not feel welcome at cultural institutions, but who would still want to go there
and who would certainly benefit from it.

Loukko’s surveys indicated that many of the people who come to Loukko’s events
already are, or are at risk of becoming, marginalised from society due to various
reasons, as described earlier. Being in such a marginalised position poses a
considerable risk to people’s mental well-being.

17. Available at [Link] [Last

accessed 11 July 2019]
362 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Simultaneously, several studies like those by Secker et al. (2018), Hacking et

al. (2008) or Thrash et al. (2010) discuss how participating in activities related
to art contributes to people’s well-being, particularly their mental well-being.
Furthermore, as Secker et al. describe, “learning has in itself been demonstrated
to be associated with well-being”, with lifelong learning being recommended “as
a means of boosting self-confidence, building a sense of purpose and optimism
and strengthening relationships with others, thus promoting mental well-be-
ing” (Secker et al. 2018, p. 82; Thomson et al. 2014). Meanwhile, the majority
of studies related to art and well-being seem to focus on “art used as a medium
of expression” within the framework of therapy, “rather than art that has been
viewed from gallery collections” (Roberts et al. 2011, p. 146). In their article,
Roberts et al. present different effects that viewing art can have on people, such
as “mentalising”, which they describe as empathising with others, or finding
“coping strategies, such as going to a place of beauty for emotional respite”
(Roberts et al. 2011, p. 152).

In my research material, I did not find immediate evidence that would support
such claims regarding the mental well-being of Museokerho’s participants. Some
reasons for this might be that the scale of my study was rather small, and as I
mentioned earlier, additional research methods could likely have brought more
detailed insights into the experiences of participants of Loukko’s Museokerho.

However, I did show that there are a considerable number of people who would
benefit from going to museums and galleries, but who experience barriers of
different kinds, which often prevent this. Members of Loukko understood this
perceived inaccessibility of cultural institutions, as many of them share those
experiences and feelings with their participants. With their project, Loukko in
general and Museokerho in particular, they try to lower the threshold to arts and
culture. The central driver is Loukko’s grassroot nature, by organising everything
in a bottom-up, DIY way. They do not become part of the institutions, but use
them, as one representative of a collaborating art gallery even recommended
them to do. This is what sets them aside from institutional participatory prac-
tices, and this is also what makes them valuable, both to their users and to the
museums themselves.

The Museums Association asks museums to not just speak to users, but also
to listen and learn from them (Museums Association s.a., p. 2). However, how
can a museum listen to and learn from people who are not among their existing
audience? People for whom going to museums holds a high threshold need
people who are closer to them, who help them to overcome any personal bar-
riers. As the above-mentioned representative of an art gallery acknowledged,
institutions can learn a lot from collaborating with outside groups, as this adds
to institutions’ inner diversity. This is an inner diversity whose importance was
also acknowledged implicitly by Pettersson (this volume), when she reflected
on recruitment practices in museum circles. It is thus in the interest of institu-
tions to involve outside groups, even if those groups require a certain degree of
independence and freedom from the given institution. As the example from my
Section III – Communities and Audiences  363

study showed, museums can still contribute by supporting those people who
serve as facilitators between marginalised groups and the museum, for instance
by granting free admission to those groups, as something to start with, or even
by providing insights into the exhibitions for those facilitators such as Loukko.

Contributions to this volume show how museums have changed; they have come
a long way from being a “collections-based and object-centred organisation to
visitor-oriented museums” (Kaitavuori, this volume), from having the focus on
the “exhibition object to [the] visitor experience” and thus to an “experience
production” (Myllykoski, this volume). A lot has been achieved and though
acknowledging and approving those changes, my article attempts to point out
a possible blind spot in museum work. I wish to support Pettersson’s plea for
museums “to be ready to change their practises and ways of communicating and
[to] show economic, social, cultural and political awareness” also by respecting,
and I may add, by reacting to, the individual needs of people who are the ones
making the museum (Pettersson, this volume).

Conclusion
In this chapter, I first illustrated how inaccessible the arts and cultural institu-
tions may feel to certain groups of people, and then discussed one example of
a strategy to overcome this issue.

I relied on different sources. First, I used the official guidelines of museums and
related organisations to shed light on the limited perspective on accessibility
that appears to still be the predominant one. Second, I drew on novel, empirical
data of my own research on a group of activists in Helsinki, named Loukko,
that tries to lower the threshold of the arts and culture by offering workshops
and visits to museums and galleries that are organised in a DIY, grassroot way.
Supported by material gathered through different surveys and a social media
campaign, I showed how such bottom-up strategy has the potential to reach
groups that cultural institutions cannot easily reach, and facilitate access to the
arts and culture for such groups.

One aspect that plays a crucial role in this is the principle of safer spaces, which
may allow people who have encountered discrimination due to their background
to feel safe as who they are. I claimed that such safer spaces cannot be created
artificially but have to grow from within the group. This forms the strength of
Loukko’s operations, as was also acknowledged by one institution that collabo-
rates with it. As my case-study showed, such bottom-up approaches to museums
and galleries does not need to take much of institutions’ resources but can still
be highly meaningful on a personal level for people at risk of being marginalised
from society. From an institutional perspective, such collaborations offer the
possibility to reach out to otherwise hard-to-reach groups and add a degree of
diversity and unfamiliar perspectives to the museum scene.

However, for making such projects possible, institutions need to become aware
of the limitations of their own abilities to reach out to people who feel intim-
364 Section III – Communities and Audiences

idated by and excluded from them. I argue that arts and cultural institutions
should not be afraid to hand over control to outside groups. They should grant
open access to their spaces and otherwise step back to let groups create their
own usage of and meanings for museum spaces. As my case-study showed, this
strategy appears to benefit everyone involved, by increasing the accessibility of
the arts and culture.

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Section III – Communities and Audiences  367

What Finland Taught Me about

Doing History in Public
Benjamin Filene

Abstract
For five months, I, an American museum professional, explored Finland, seek-
ing new understandings of what the public in public history could mean. In
my time there, I drew connections between key qualities I observed in Finnish
museums and the rituals and routines of the public life I saw unfolding around
me. I found underlying differences between US and Finnish society, but also
identified transferable insights about what constitutes a public. Even as a sense
of public is characterised by a shared place, collective experiences and common
values, I concluded that, fundamentally, it is grounded in trust – a willingness
by individuals and institutions to admit uncertainty, share expertise and invite
open-ended exploration, together.

Keywords: public history, civic engagement, collective identity, comparative

museology

Searching for Public Culture

In many ways, Finland could not feel more remote from my home in North
Carolina. Through a Fulbright fellowship, I arrived in Helsinki in January 2019
and faced bracing cold and enveloping darkness, the language seemed hopelessly
spikey and impenetrable and the grocery store felt like a culinary roll of the dice.
Professionally, too, I was in unfamiliar territory. The public funding model for
museums, the curricular training standards for aspiring professionals, even the
school-fieldtrip routines challenged my assumptions.

I spent five months in Finland, working with the Helsinki City Museum (HCM)
and the University of Helsinki’s Museum Studies programme. If I arrived onto
unfamiliar terrain, I left with a feeling of common ground, of shared questions
and concerns. I carried away a fresh sense of possibility for my work, an enriched
understanding of the core elements that grounded it and new tools for culti-
vating change. Now back home, I am overlaying my Finnish visions on familiar
American landscapes and seeing what patterns take shape. This essay itself is
part of that process. Appropriate to the Fulbright program’s ethos of collegial
exchange, open exploration and personal growth, I focus here on positive lessons.
I came to Helsinki not to mount a scholarly critique of Finnish museums, but
to gain fresh perspectives on American culture and to reinvigorate my museum
practice. This essay, then, is not a studied assessment of the state of the museum
field in Finland. Rather, it is a personal reflection in which I strive to identify
368 Section III – Communities and Audiences

core principles and an animating sense of purpose for my public work. These
lessons emerged from my time in Finland but, I feel, could be useful to the work
of any museum professional.

I arrived in Finland carrying two broad challenges from home. One was a prob-
lem that hits at the core of the public historical profession: many Americans,
scarred by tedious experiences in classroom and museums, see history as remote
and distant, unrelated to their lives. A second challenge was more diffuse but
no less impactful: in America, our sense of ourselves as a collective body with
shared interests, as a public, has become fractured. I came to Finland hoping to
learn how history can undergird a sense of public and how museums can help.

Attuned to these issues, I felt public-ness everywhere I turned in Finland: an

embrace of shared experience, an acceptance of collective investment and a
sense of connectedness to a whole. Whether walking the streets, working in or
visiting museums or talking to students and faculty, I tried to account for what
I was sensing. If Finland somehow has brewed up a healthy public life, I asked
myself, what are the ingredients? I’ve built this essay around my answers, in
each case citing examples from Finnish culture beyond the galleries and then
from within the museum world. I draw mostly on Finnish museums, but also
incorporate some examples from other European countries I visited during
my fellowship stay. While I certainly don’t pretend to understand Finland as
an insider, perhaps these conclusions can help Finnish professionals see their
day-to-day work in a broader context and can prompt non-Finns to consider
what makes public life thrive or fracture in their home countries.

So, what makes a public? First, most simply, public is a place. Of course, online
publics exist as well, but in Finland I was most struck by and interested in Finns’
embrace of open, designed spaces for people to gather. I arrived in the country
shortly after the opening of the new public library in Helsinki, the Oodi. More
than the books, magazines or music collections the library offers, the building
itself was a cause for national celebration, a place where people sit, wander,
drink coffee, eat, sew, do 3D printing, hear concerts, read some and most of all,
observe each other doing all of the above.

Finnish museums, too, have begun to embrace the idea of being places for
open-ended gathering. To take a simple example, I noted with admiration that
seemingly every museum of any size has a substantial café, usually with real (not
paper) plates and cups and delicious pulla. Patrons are invited not just to learn
but to linger together. Building on that gathering-place impulse, the Helsinki
City Museum, the country’s most visited museum in 2018, has embraced the
idea that its lobby is for people to hang out and do whatever. With no admission
fee, it offers funky chairs, an in-house coffee shop, jigsaw puzzles and, again,
people-watching. Former director of HCM, Tiina Merisalo told me that in design-
ing the museum’s new building (which opened in 2016), the project team saw
serving pass-through visitors as central to its public-service role; the museum
didn’t need to have an explicit didactic purpose for this space.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  369

But if we see museums as settings for public gathering, spaces where people
can see themselves together, there is still the question: How do we activate a
place, make it more than just a container of people? For as much as it depends
on place, public is an experience, something we do together in shared space.
I saw so many memorable public happenings in Helsinki. I was enthralled by
Lux Helsinki, when thousands braved the January cold to see colourful out-
door light installations across the city. To celebrate the last day of high school
classes, hundreds of students don furry costumes and circle the city park in the
cargo beds of bright orange trucks, tossing candy to the thousands who cheer
them on. For Vappu, a May Day carnival that marks university graduation,
seemingly the whole city gathers to watch students, lowered by crane, place a
graduation cap on the statue Havis Amanda. After a night of revelry, the next
morning everyone reconvenes for a mass picnic at Kaivopuisto park (figure 1).
Even the national embrace of the sauna illustrates the point: Finns gather not
just to sweat, not just to sit side by side in towels (or not in towels) but to follow
a series of ritualised steps, spoken and unspoken, together in a shared space.

Figure 1. Public celebrations invite shared experience. Helsinki residents gather for a picnic at Kaiv-
opuisto after Vappu, 2019. Photo by the author.

Museums, too, have begun to build experiences, discovery and exploration, into
their plans. When I arrived in Helsinki, lines to enter the Amos Rex museum
spilled out the door and around the block. The attraction? The museum had in-
stalled Graffiti Nature, an animated swirl of colour from floor to ceiling created
by the Tokyo-based artists teamLab. Touching the walls reshaped the swirls and
launched flowers and colourful waves. In a side room, meanwhile, visitors of all
ages calmly coloured on old-fashioned paper. A staff person then scanned their
pictures and soon their coloured creations joined the scene, animated, literally
moving across the room.
370 Section III – Communities and Audiences

Figure 2. Exhibitions can become participatory experiences. In teamLab’s Graffiti Nature at Amos
Rex in Helsinki, touching the walls shaped swirls of colour. Photo by the author.

Such experiences are designed to produce a sense of wonder. Part of the at-
traction, too, is that visitors can participate in the wonderful. I saw multiple
instances where museums invited visitors to insert themselves into the story.
The National Museum, for instance, features a very staid-looking photo gallery of
Finland’s presidents. In a twist, though, visitors can snap a selfie in an adjacent
photo booth, and then their image soon fills the open frame: the next president!
More simply, the Design Museum allows visitors to fill a wall with a projection
of the Marimekko backdrop of their choice and then, of course, pose in front
of it. Not all such immersion opportunities are high-tech. At the HCM, visitors
can stand behind cut-outs to see how they would look in 1930s-era swimwear.

Such participatory experiences invite engagement but also raise a question: Is

coming together enough? How do we interact with each other in such settings
and turn an adjacent experience into a collective one? In this sense, I feel that
public is a value, an outlook that shapes how we see our fellow citizens, not just
the ones we already know and love, but the ones we don’t know or even directly
see. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of building public culture, to
shift from tolerating each other to caring about each other.

My sense is that public-ness in Finland is sustained by a set of deeply held

cultural values. While teaching a graduate class on museum management at
the University of Helsinki, I got a glimpse of a more collectivist value system at
work. I had assigned Jim Collins’s book Good to Great and the Social Sectors
(2005), which challenges the notion of applying business practices bluntly to
non-profit (social sector) work. Non-profits, Collins says, carry different value
systems and different definitions of success than do for-profit corporations. At
the same time, Collins urges the social sectors to take to heart some lessons from
their business brethren: discover your distinctive niche in society, be the very
best at what you do and push people off the bus who don’t share your passion
for where you are taking your institution.

I have taught using Collins’s book many times in the US, and have had good
discussions with students about how passionate, mission-driven work can enable
Section III – Communities and Audiences  371

museums to become standout institutions in their communities. My Finnish

students, though, pushed back against the very notion of standing out: “Why
does every institution need to be great anyway?” one asked. Echoed another, “If
everyone is trying to be great, they might tear each other down.” “What about
the common good?” added a third. The group was also uncomfortable with
Collins’s cut-throat approach to staff-building: “What happens to the people
who get pushed off the bus?”

For me, the students’ discomfort was a great instance of cross-cultural dialogue
yielding new perspectives. The experience raised questions that resist easy an-
swers. For starters, the dialogue made me wonder about my home country. If it is
true, as this conversation suggested, that Finns have a more collectivist mindset
than Americans, will other aspects of Finland’s approach to public history fail
to take root in a more individualistic country like the United States? Or might
Finnish techniques apply in America, but yield different results? Is it necessary
(or even possible) for public history professionals to nudge Americans toward
more collective ways of thinking?

At the same time, my exchanges with students, and follow-up conversations I

had afterwards with Finnish professionals, left me with questions about Finland.
How does a country that embraces the common good allow room for difference?
How does it balance equality with innovation? Can a strong collective identity
accommodate diversity and dissent? I heard these questions of individualism vs.
conformity discussed among Finns whom I met, but I did not see them addressed
in museums. The exhibitions I visited tended instead to focus on emblems and
stories of shared identity among Finns. Could such displays also explore the limits
and potential drawbacks of shared culture? Doing so could point the way forward
to a more fluid collective identity that allows room for cultural differences.

Personally, I don’t believe that a collective mindset inherently breeds uniformity.

To guard against the pressures of homogeneity, though, I think it is helpful to
recognize that, at a basic level, public is a question, an ongoing, shared process of
inquiry. I was struck by how even within (or because of?) Finland’s comfort with
shared identity, the culture has elements that invite and nurture open questioning.
For instance, my favourite Finnish phrase is “Put the cat on the table”, i.e., move
the lurking issue front and centre. For all the messiness of the contemporary po-
litical situation in Finland, I found a general acceptance that hard conversations
will lead to acceptable resolutions, even if the underlying issues will, of course,
not be resolved once and for all.

Finnish museums, too, seem to be embracing the need to ask difficult questions
for which there is no one answer. The HCM, for instance, did an exhibition called
Fear that asked people to confront the lurking anxieties that they carry and how
fear can potentially turn into hate. In its public programming, the Espoo Museum
of Modern Art (EMMA) tackles another intractable issue: loneliness. After dis-
cussing an artwork in which the artist cries out for human connection, children
write Postcards to a Lonely Stranger, which the staff then delivers. More than
in America, I saw a frankness in how Finnish museums approach their visitors.
372 Section III – Communities and Audiences

The Helsinki Art Museum made an exhibition called Old Age that directly ad-
dressed how aging changes one’s body and creates physical limits. In Tallinn,
Estonia, I saw Sex and the Sea (an exhibition that had previously appeared at
the Maritime Museum of Finland), which featured video interviews in which
sailors matter-of-factly discussed prostitution and homosexuality on ships. Few
institutions in America would dare tackle these subjects head-on.

Other difficult topics, though, struck me as getting relatively short shrift in the
Finnish museums I visited. In American museums today, the most urgent creative
energy is devoted to delving into the histories and legacies of racial exploitation
and privilege. In Finland, I did not see a similar emphasis on understanding the
legacies of prejudice against the Sámi or the challenges facing recent immigrants
to the country. I was moved by an exhibition featuring Sámi oral histories at
the Arktikum in Rovaniemi and by an extensive display about Sámi history at
the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. (I failed to make it to Inari to visit the Sámi
Museum and Nature Centre there.) But I felt that the central history museums
in the country tended to treat the Sámi as somehow separate from the core story
of Finland. My sense is that there are issues of identity and intersection that
would merit further exploration.

Overall, though, Finnish museums do seem to be asking hard questions in public.

But if you ask difficult questions, how do you convey an openness to hearing the
answers? Here one realizes that, at its heart, public is an invitation. This attitude
seems to imbue official culture in Finland. Whereas the institutional voice in Amer-
ica defaults to the instructional or the scolding (Stay in line!, Don’t touch!), the
official Finnish voice often strikes an explicitly inclusive tone. For instance, while
most American libraries list rules about food, drink, and silence, the Oodi posts a
sign titled “This is how we do it here”. It pledges non-discrimination, respect and
comfort. “Oodi is our common living room,” it asserts. “Tell us if you are worried
about something.” The renovated Helsinki City Hall (opened in 2019) likewise
is conceived as a gathering place where everyone has a voice. A large magnetic
board in the lobby asks, “How does Helsinki feel today?” and invites visitors to
place magnets along a mood continuum, ranging from “wonderful” to “ghastly.”

Museums, too, are increasingly allowing room for different voices to have their say.
At Aboa Vetus, in Turku, schoolchildren wrote the exhibit labels for the paintings.
Refreshingly, the students openly wrestled with how to make sense of abstract art:
“This is great because I just don’t get it.” The Finnish Labour Museum in Tampere
is built around a series of questions: “Should working hours be cut instead of
raising salaries?” “Should armed resistance be used against dictators?” Via touch-
screens, visitors vote and then see how their answers compare to those who came
before. Through such activities, museums invite visitors to join in as interpreters of
history. These participatory interactives de-centre the museum’s expert voice and
encourage visitors to consider the validity of their own experiences and viewpoints.

Along those lines, many Finnish museums have become quite purposeful in inviting
visitors to explore personal memories. Instead of disparaging remembrances as
subjective and ahistorical, museums seek to encourage visitors’ recollections and
Section III – Communities and Audiences  373

to validate the results. The installations in the HCM’s new building, for instance,
are designed to prompt intergenerational memory-sharing. The Children’s Town
exhibition features Grandma’s Living Room, a fully furnished, 1970s-era apart-
ment. Visitors can walk in, sit down, and explore, but they don’t meet Grandma.
Instead, the space triggers conversations about their grandparents and the orange
couches and canned soup in their apartments.

The HCM’s core historical exhibition, Helsinki Bites, also aims to tap into mem-
ories. The gallery features settings of community gathering across time, from a
1930s picnic area to a 1970s bar to a 2000-era skateboard park. These settings will
not likely mean much to tourists and newcomers, but they resonate immediately
with the museum’s target audience, whom the staff describes as “Helsinki-lovers”.
Resisting the temptation to have an expert curatorial voice explain the historical
details, these installations invite cross-generational sharing about lived experience
and how it has changed over time.

A similar emphasis on memory drives HCM’s public programming. The museum

hosts monthly events in which people gather to sing songs from their youth (in
Children’s Town’s reconstructed schoolroom). The Tram Museum, an HCM satellite
site, hosts tours for people struggling with memory loss, recognizing that the old
trams carry deeply embedded associations. Finally, the HCM staff has assembled
a set of Memory Suitcases that volunteers carry to retirement communities. The
suitcases are packed with items that prompt discussion and shared recollection,
from old photos to kitchen tools to distinctive scents. Such invitations to person-
alize the past tell visitors that their opinion matters.

Figure 3. Museums can be places to share memories. The Helsinki City Museum hosts monthly sing-
alongs of traditional songs in its galleries. Photo by the author.

But if museums invite responses to big, open-ended questions, what if people

answer differently than we’d like them to? Here, it becomes clear that public is
about trust. Trust in the public, and trust in each other, is a value that seems to
374 Section III – Communities and Audiences

run deeply through Finnish society. It’s what enables the Kallio Public Library
in Helsinki to let patrons check out a banjo. It’s what allows Oulu Airport to
set out coloured pencils to entertain children waiting for a flight and what
enables the HCM to place a 1000-piece puzzle in its lobby for visitors to work
on a bit at a time. To extend the point, trust is what allows Finnish teachers
to teach without direct oversight and students to learn without endless home-
work and testing.

At its core, trust depends on a willingness to accept a degree of uncertainty

and vulnerability, to recognize that few things are absolutely indestructible,
few spaces absolutely safe, few measurements absolutely precise and few as-
sertions absolutely without exception. Instead of pretending certainty, we are
better served by sharing openly and trusting that our efforts will be met with
reciprocal respect.

In museums, trust manifests in how institutions project their authority. More

than in America, Nordic museums seem willing to hold their authority loosely,
to be up-front about the fact that we professionals don’t have all the answers.
I saw several exhibitions that strived to “pull back the curtain” and reveal how
knowledge-formation works, including the fact that the museum itself has an
incomplete and contingent understanding of the world. The Design Museum in
Helsinki features an exhibition that questions how its own institutional history
has skewed the gender balance in its collection and how that unevenness shapes
the stories the museum can tell. The Finnish Museum of Natural History fea-
tures life-sized profiles of the researchers who gathered the information in the
exhibition. Knowledge, it shows, is made by people. In Stockholm, the Swedish
History Museum’s exhibition History Unfolds introduces the museum itself as
a Reality Machine, one that creates history and reflects contemporary values
and assumptions. It then offers visitors tools and case studies for thinking about
how that process works. For instance, it traces how the popular image of Vikings
says more about 19th-century nationalism than about the period when they were
sailing the seas 1200 years ago. History becomes an act of interpretation.

Also in Stockholm, the Vasa museum, built around a seventeenth-century ship-

wreck, features a new exhibition that begins with a self-aware question about
historical omission: “Where are the Women?” Vasa’s Women goes on to explain
that by asking new historical questions, using different research tools and al-
lowing itself more freedom to speculate about individual lives, the museum was
able to bring women’s experience out of the shadows. The exhibition concludes
with a pledge to apply these new skills in the future, even in exhibitions that are
not focused on women.

Showing that professionals are piecing together the past may feel like a sign of
institutional vulnerability, but these institutions seem to recognize that they
can build trust by being transparent about what history-making involves. These
museums become less all-knowing but more human and, perhaps, more essential
to their constituencies.
Section III – Communities and Audiences  375

Trust can be scary at times, but there is no question here, except how to en-
gender it. I recognize that the idea of public in Finland is not simple and that
it faces challenges today, both financial and cultural. Nonetheless, my Finnish
explorations convinced me that if we can create institutions with a strong sense
of place where people can gather for rich experiences, institutions that value
togetherness and ask big questions, institutions that invite diverse responses
and trust people to receive them in good faith, then we may build a strong yet
fluid sense of us – a recognition that we matter to each other and belong to-
gether, as a public.

References
Collins, J 2005 Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business
Thinking Is Not the Answer – A Monograph to Accompany Good to
Great. New York: HarperCollins.
376
 377

Section IV

Exhibitions
as
Transmitters
of Changing
Museum
Identities
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities
378 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

This section concentrates on recent developments in exhibition production and

attitudes towards the exhibition-making process in Finland. Transmitting a
museum’s identity and the knowledge contained in its collections into stories
has been fundamental since the cabinets of curiosities, either for the purposes of
amazement or education. Collecting and presenting have long been considered
the main tasks of the museum institution (Pearce 1994). Already by the end of
the 19th and the early 20th centuries, this operational pair underwent changes
and the concept of museums being civil engines broadened (Pettersson 2020).
As stated in section III, exhibitions and audience engagement are intertwined
operations of museums. Clearly, exhibitions are often the main reason for audi-
ences to visit a museum, but maybe one should examine the politics behind the
scenes as well. Exhibition productions have been the visual form of a museum’s
identity, but the potential politics behind them have not often been discussed
publicly. The question of selection needs addressing. One needs to bear in mind
the role of power, and where it sits, when selecting themes and choosing objects
to be presented in exhibitions. It is through such work that museums are able to
show their stand in contemporary society. Addressing such issues as the history
of colonialization, climate change or social equality are, in a more profound
manner, entering the international museum field, and it is up to current and
future museum professionals to create a welcoming atmosphere for all visitors.
This task requires wisdom and sensitivity in an institution, whose core existence
originates from an entirely different world. Exhibitions are one sector of museum
work where this wisdom becomes tangible.

Recent decades have shown that museums are often faced with contemporary
pressures in delivering a wow-factor through their exhibitions (Carlsson 2020).
The combination of the latest technologies and the task of museums to produce
true, often multivocal stories has resulted in an ever-growing industry of large-
scale exhibition productions. There is a wide spectrum of means and various
outcomes, depending on the particular characteristics of any given museum,
but even smaller museums are expected to conform to the latest trends. This
in turn may cause various practical stress factors in terms of production scales
and budget planning.

The chapters in this section show practical examples of current exhibition plan-
ning and creation in Finland. Henna Paunu writes about the changing role of a
curator, with her own personal reflection and long-term experience giving her
a good perspective on the changing identity of a curator. Hanna Forssell takes
the alteration of the permanent exhibition in the National Museum of Finland
as her point of departure. What kind of challenges are there in attracting new
audiences, when the starting point is permanence? Mikko Myllykoski’s chapter
describes the role and identity of science centres in the world of museums, how
these centres attract visitors and work in the forefront of making science ap-
proachable to wider audiences. The expert role of the curator has been contested,
and content planners are facing new challenges, whether they work in smaller or
larger institutions. Sanna-Mari Niemi’s chapter takes this line of thinking a bit
further, with her point of departure being the possibilities of fictional storytelling
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  379

entering the realm of traditional, research-based content planning in museums.

In addition, the latest developments in exhibition production, as well as the
background work and politics behind the scenes required for any international
co-operation to take place, are among the themes discussed, as becomes evi-
dent in Minna Tuominen’s chapter. She focuses on how transhistorical content
planning is helping to bridge art-historical eras. Furthermore, chapters in this
section focus on the aspect of co-creation and how museum visitors are already
becoming potential content makers.

Henna Paunu
Sharing Creative Efforts – Working as a curator in an art museum

Hanna Forssell
Looking for a New National

Mikko Myllykoski
From Object to Subject – Creating relevant and engaging experiences

Sanna-Mari Niemi
Entering the Mystery – Helsinki Noir, a fictional detective story created in a
museum space

Minna Tuominen
About Transhistoricity – The Old Masters exhibited with contemporary art

References
Carlsson, R 2020 Go big or go home: how blockbuster exhibitions are
saving museums. Available at [Link]
article/go-big-or-go-home-how-blockbuster-exhibitions-are-saving-
museums/ [Last accessed 22 November 2020]

Pearce, S (ed.) 1994 Interpreting Objects and Collections. London:

Routledge.

Pettersson, S (ed.) 2020 Inspiraatio – Nykytaide & klassikot. Ateneum

Publications Vol. 130. Helsinki: Ateneum Publications.
380 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Sharing Creative Efforts –

Working as a curator in an art
museum
Henna Paunu

Abstract
The museum world has undergone radical changes in recent decades. The role
of museums and the importance of curated contents has changed. Previously,
the curator was more engaged in traditional museum practice such as acquir-
ing, conserving and researching. Today, exhibition and audience engagement
aspects are more emphasised.

Curatorial theories and practices encompass and are intertwined with social,
cultural and ecological conditions. Single narratives in modern and contemporary
art have come under question. Boundaries and hierarchies between different
art forms have diminished. Issues of identity and representation have come to
the fore, and renewed attention is paid to museums’ responsibilities to their
communities. Different political, economic and ecological pressures, such as
awareness of climate change, have forced museums to shift their focus from
traditional museological standard-based thinking towards interaction with au-
diences that have different realities and topical issues. The identity of curators
has shifted from being only legislators or connoisseurs to mediators, interpreters
and influencers. Could we in the future see curators working in the capacity of
activists, or together with social workers?

The chapter explores the aspects of curating in a museum context through case
studies from the Rauma Art Museum and EMMA – the Espoo Museum of Modern
Art. What is the curator’s role in exhibition profiling? What kinds of motives
or competencies do we need in curating, and what kind of social effectiveness
are we looking for? How do we rethink the role of the curator around material
objects in relation to art practices and audiences? How do curators engage
audiences and what sort of critical and transformative potentials can be traced
to curatorial work? How do we listen to feedback from museum visitors?

Key words: art curator, curatorial practices, audience engaged curating, ethical
curating, social museology, inclusive museum practises, multifaceted curatorial
practise, mediator between art and audience

Introduction
The subjects of this chapter are the motifs of curating and the individual curator,
along with the topical curatorial practises of an art museum context in Finland. I
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  381

discuss my work with exhibitions of contemporary art and modernist collections

from the perspective of an in-house curator in two different art institutions. A
discussion of other curatorial roles is beyond the scope of this text.1 After a short
introduction to the history of curating, I present three case studies, discussing
both subjective viewpoints and more general issues relating to the curating of
art exhibitions.

The first two cases involve a small, local museum, the Rauma Art Museum,
where between 2001 and 2014 I co-curated a series of exhibitions for the Rau-
ma Biennale Balticum, in addition to contemporary art exhibitions for children
and young people, applying an exhibition concept developed for that specific
purpose. The third example involves an art and design collection at EMMA, the
Espoo Museum of Modern Art, where I took part in a multi-disciplinary collab-
oration that developed a new concept for the museum’s collection. The concept
is a spatial hybrid that, along with a collection storage facility, also includes a
presentation of the work of museum professionals to museum audiences. The
new space was opened in early 2017.

I discuss the case studies on the level of different motifs, concepts and principles,
to illustrate the strategic and content-related components of which a curator’s
work could consist. In the conclusion, I link my role as curator to the wider
museum field framework.

What Meanings Have There Been in Working as a

Curator?
Many professionals working in museums and tasked with a variety of duties
have the word curator in their job title.2 Deriving from the Latin verb curare, the
English term evolved to refer to a guardian or overseer. In the 14th century, the
term curator was actually applied to people responsible for the care of minors
and lunatics. By the 17th century, it had come to denote someone in charge of
collections and displays in a museum, library or zoo.3

From the 18th and 19th centuries onwards, the usage of curator took hold as de-
noting professionals working with museum collections and in charge of nearly
all processes, from the selection of acquisitions to cataloguing, research and
exhibition planning, often even covering conservation. The notion of curators
as guardians of visual culture and taste emerged in the late 19th century and
became established by the mid-20th century. At that time the museum came
also to be seen as a place of engagement and learning, where artists and cura-

1. For a broader account of curating through Finnish examples, see for example, Elfving, T & Han-
nula, M (eds.) 2017 Kuratointi – Yhdeksän nykytaiteen kuratoinnin käytäntöä. Tallinn: Kustannus
Oy Taide.
2. Curator in the Finnish art museum context denotes a person who has the artistic responsibility
for exhibitions, being in charge of content, concept and artist selection.
3. Definitions here are based on the On-line Etymology Dictionary available at [Link].
com [Last accessed 8 February 2021]
382 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

tors could together prepare experimental presentations. The role of a curator

was also seen as an author, who started to play a vital and essential part in our
understanding of art (George 2015, pp. 4–5). Curators established diverging
practices as a result of close affiliation with contemporary artistic movements.
They upheld different kinds of ideologies and strengthened the status of artists,
museums and exhibitions, but also generated new audiences. These roles also
had an educational dimension: visitors were taught curated content and curated
ways of seeing, as well as learning how to behave in a museum (Morgan 2013,
p. 23). Later, the pedagogical aspect of the curator’s work decreased and new
museum professionals working with education and audiences took responsi-
bility of that area. It has sometimes been asked, whether these two professions
– curators and educators – have drifted too far from each other in the course
of their professionalisation (Kaitavuori 2013, pp. x–xiv).

Exhibition as a Medium
Former museum director and museology scholar, Marja-Liisa Rönkkö, defines
an exhibition as follows: “A work produced by a museum is an exhibition, a
three-dimensional installation consisting of the building, exhibition space and
technology, as well as the materials displayed therein, and wherein visitors move
at will” (Rönkkö 2010, p. 236, translation Tomi Snellman).

The process whereby art exhibitions have become a medium is associated with
early 20th century modernism, when avant-garde artists created installations
for the display of their works, reinventing the presentational conventions of
art. Opposing institutional and bourgeois aspects of art, they made art more a
part of everyday life and emphasised the viewer’s role. From the 1960s onwards,
art museums began to take a proactive role, serving as curatorial promoters of
contemporary art and new forms of display. In the 1970s, inspired by new mu-
seology, the focus shifted in general from exhibition making more to engaging
audiences and giving an active role to visitors (see also Kaitavuori, this volume).
Since the 1980s, the curator’s work has increasingly been associated with an
idea of the exhibition itself as a medium. The breakthrough in curating occurred
in the 1990s, with the boom of thematic and conceptual group exhibitions. Art-
works are frequently selected and commissioned to suit the specific exhibition
and venue, and often the curator and the artist work concurrently. Since art
has become increasingly conceptual, the curator has come to play an important
role as a creator and mediator of ideas. The first curator training programmes
emerged globally in the late 1980s, a time when the theory of curating and the
curator’s professional identity were both established. Curating can today be
linked with many kinds of responsibilities, roles and characteristics, meanings
and metaphors. The concepts involved are continually developing and evolving
(O’Neill 2012).
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  383

Curating and the Curatorial

Curating art is not just a matter of making choices: the curator provides a vision
for the exhibition; the whole is always more than the sum of its parts. The starting
point in curating is principally in the art and the artist’s practice. The curator
constructs a dynamic among the works of art, the drama that emerges from this
and the discourse that surrounds the works. An exhibition of contemporary art
can also undermine conventional thinking. Instead of producing knowledge, it
can “provoke feelings of irreverence or doubt, or an experience that is at once
emotional, sensual, political and intellectual” (Filipovic 2013, p. 75, p. 78).

Curating has become increasingly international since the 1990s, with the as-
cendancy of massive global exhibitions. The curators of these shows have had
a great impact, particularly by highlighting postcolonialism, as well as other
topical issues and new ways of interpreting modernism or contemporary art.
Their choices also indirectly affect the exhibition programmes of art museums
across the world. Increasing internationalisation has also provided local cura-
tors with new ways to promote and earn recognition for regional art (Morgan
2013, pp. 24–25).

Maria Lind has defined curating and the curatorial in her work as follows: “Today,
I imagine curating as a way of thinking in terms of interconnections: linking
objects, images processes, people, locations, histories and discourses in phys-
ical space, like an active catalyst, generating twists, turns and tensions. This is
a curatorial approach that owes much to site-specific practice” (Lind 2009, pp.
63–66). Curating is the inherently physical process of exhibition management,
whereas the realm of the curatorial includes site- and context-specific practices
and creative institutional criticisms aiming at alternative practices. In Lind’s
view, the curatorial seeks to strengthen meanings and relations, as well as to
support new ideas (Lind 2009, pp. 63–64). The curatorial is a methodological
approach that takes art as its starting point and places it into a larger specific
context. According to Irit Rogoff, the curatorial consists of critical thinking that
poses questions, challenges protocols and formats, has the potential to make
a contribution rather than a representation, understands contemporaneity by
engagement and makes these issues our own (Rogoff 2015, pp. 45–46).

Attribution is a standard practice to credit all relevant players. The responsi-

bility for curating can also be shared, and major shows often involve a group of
curators assisting the main curator. From an institutional perspective, a clear
attribution of agency can be used to justify new kinds of contextualisation of art
and experimental exhibitions. The curator’s authorship is sometimes compared
with that of the artist (Morgan 2013, pp. 27–28). Boris Groys has described this
situation and the difference between the artist’s and curator’s roles in the fol-
lowing way: “The curator may exhibit, but he doesn’t have the magical ability to
transform the non-art into art through the act of display. That power, according
to current cultural conventions belongs to the artist alone” (Groys 2010, p. 46).
384 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Case 1: Rauma Biennale Balticum

The concept of curatorship emerged in the 1990s, and many art museums invited
outside experts to curate art exhibitions. The use of curators also became increas-
ingly common in Finland, especially in connection with extensive international
and group exhibitions. One relevant example is the Rauma Biennale Balticum
exhibitions at the Rauma Art Museum. Mounted by a small, predominantly
local art museum, the biennales were a major undertaking, which highlights the
museum’s profile in the Finnish context. At that time, the museum entrusted the
curating of biennale exhibitions to outside curators, who represented different
contemporary art institutions from the Baltic Sea area, with powerful networks
and strong expertise.

In 2001, we in the Rauma Art Museum decided to start curating exhibitions

in-house. Curating was still based on existing networks, but we intended to do
more background study and research on the Baltic Sea area ourselves. This had
the effect of strengthening the museum’s role as a content producer and expert,
with exhibitions increasingly following the museum’s strategies and taking local
audiences into account. With in-house curating, the museum was no longer
limited to managing only practical affairs, but began to cover active content
production, making selections and speaking with its own voice.

The shift to in-house curating drew upon existing practices. Whereas the au-
thorship of exhibitions had previously been attributed to outside curators, this
practice could now be handled within the museum. It was important to be able
to develop our skills and have a say in the most interesting aspect of making art
exhibitions, i.e., content selection.

The change in curating included an institutional reassessment of the museum

and its purpose, but also a stronger focus on both internationalism and local
conditions. One important question was how the museum, with its minimal re-
sources and operating in a highly specialised environment, the UNESCO World
Heritage site of Old Rauma, might be able to exploit its distinctive position by
using novel forms of display locally or by increasing its collaboration with local
communities. The museum’s traditional buildings and yard, as well as nearby
areas, were used as much as possible for site-specific and context-sensitive art-
works. Commissioned artworks in particular were adapted to local conditions.
This model of in-house curating was used to mount seven biennales on themes
revolving very much around sustainable development, climate change, ecological
and universal human issues. Each biennale was accompanied by a publication
showcasing the themes, artists and works in the show.

I was a recent graduate in art history when I was appointed to co-curate the
Rauma Biennale Balticum exhibition series. I did not have any training in cu-
rating.4 Although I had a minor in museology, at that time the studies did not

4. University studies at that time did not include a period of internship in a museum, so there was
no opportunity to gain first-hand experience of museum processes.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  385

address curating at all. In fact, according to one professor, only finished processes
could be studied in art history.5 There were all sorts of ideas about curating and
the curatorial in evidence at the time. Even seasoned specialists might not have
identified themselves as curators, even if they had extensive experience in the
field and had for decades managed artistic strategy, the selection of artists and
artworks and interaction with artists. You could say that curatorial work was
being carried out but not recognised as such. Even when one had the requisite
expertise and competence, one did not wear the curatorial hat. There may have
been many reasons for this, such as the notion of museums as anonymous pro-
ducers of institutional knowledge, as well as a lack of both developed profes-
sionalisation and curator training in the field.

Figure 1. Antti Laitinen’s performance in the Rauma Channel as part of the Rauma Biennale Balti-
cum – What’s up Sea exhibition. Photo: Jari Sorjonen/Rauma Art Museum.

Case 2: Contemporary art exhibitions for children

Alongside the biennales, I curated Rauma Art Museum exhibitions for children
from 2002 to 2014. Children have been identified as a strategic target group of
museum already since the 1970s, and the museum mounted annual exhibitions
designed specifically for them. Wanting to focus on contemporary art here as
well, I developed a new format for children’s exhibitions.6 The children’s exhibi-
tion series enabled us to more efficiently display contemporary art in our small
town, to secure new audiences for contemporary art and to promote a positive
change in the attitudes of future art museum audiences. Each show featured
10–20 artists. The concept and curatorial thinking in the exhibitions revolved
around topical themes, ecologically, socially or humanly important issues and

5. Specialised further education in contemporary art curating is currently available at Aalto Univer-
sity and the Academy of Fine Arts. Articles relating to curating and curatorial thinking are published
within Aalto University’s CuMMa programme and are available online at [Link]
[Link]/cumma-papers/ [Last accessed 8 February 2021]
6. The selection of works was based on my extensive and regular visits to a great number of contem-
porary art exhibitions with my three daughters, which allowed me to observe how they viewed the
artworks and how one might best discuss art with young people.
386 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

narrativity. There was an aim to create a powerful experiential dimension that

employed interactivity and installations, and of course a clear dialogue with the
audience. One important aspect of these exhibitions was to make innovative
use of the facilities of the museum building itself. The first five exhibitions were
about the senses,7 while the next seven shows were built around themes that were
universally human, touching people of all ages. These exhibitions examined a
great variety of human topics, from cleaning and baking to profound questions
of life, from environmental issues to death. Although a few subjects, such as
sexuality, violence or overpowering angst, were left outside of the series, that did
not mean that the darker side of humanity was not featured at all in the shows.
I have also considered this kind of content to be pedagogically interesting in
my later curating at EMMA (see also Filene, this volume). The exhibitions were
also designed to allow any serious questions to be raised on the guided tours.

Crucial for the development of the concept was that the museum already had
a regular exhibition programme for children. The foundation of the exhibition
series was therefore based on the art museum’s operative strategy and objec-
tives. Another crucial factor was the question of how to spark an interest in
contemporary art among the inhabitants of a small town and to encourage them
to visit a museum.

Each exhibition consisted of a narrative route that could be easily verbalised

for visitors of all ages. As Boris Groys has said, every exhibition tells a story, by
directing the viewer through it in a particular order (Groys 2010, p. 47). No pub-
lications were produced for the shows, but each show was guided for all groups.
A clear and understandable narrative was important to the visitors, but also to
the guides. As the museum did not have the means to hire guides with experi-
ence or training in art, the guides were young interns or unemployed volunteers.
The content of the exhibition had to be easily assimilated for them to be able to
pass it on in a narrative story-like format. All works needed to include aspects
that would resonate with different age groups. It was paramount for visitors to
be able to talk about and discuss the art, even in simple terms. The goal was to
provoke dialogue and wonder (see also Niemi, this volume). All shows were built
around works that could awaken the viewers’ interest, either because of their
functionality, techniques and materials, or due to spatial or experiential aspects.
The exhibitions did not include commissions, but were instead based on existing
artworks or concepts. That was a conscious choice, since commissioned artworks
often have an exaggerated status in curating, but they are not always necessary
for either curating or curatorial thinking. Artworks withstand the passage of
time well, but often get too little exposure. It is important to present them in
new contexts and venues, in order to acquire new layers of meaning when they

7. The senses, as well as a more holistic experience associated with them, have been a common theme
in recent contemporary art. I got the idea for the exhibitions when I was visiting Göteborg Konsthall,
in Sweden, with my children in 2000 and saw the work Bill by Scottish artist Clara Ursitti. The work
is based on the artificially produced scent of semen and the scandalous relationship between former
United States President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  387

are displayed as part of a thematic whole or in a different space. Many of the

shows also included works by less famous local artists. Although the decision
introduced a certain heterogeneity to the exhibitions, it was important for pro-
moting local arts and interaction among artists. That was also a good choice,
both ecologically and economically, since transportation was shorter as a result.

Children who had visited a show with a group would later visit the same show
with family or friends and act as guides, based on what they had learned during
their original visit. The museum received requests for reruns, and children vis-
ited shows several times. Years later, some visitors still recall individual works,
saying that they visited all shows in the series with their day-care centre or
school. The key aim was to present contemporary art to new audiences, to lower
the threshold to the museum, to provide easily-accessible shows with a strong
experiential dimension and to examine current, relevant topics. This can be
seen as a part of a broader phenomenon involving how museums in Finland
have begun to embrace the idea of being places for open-ended gatherings. The
exhibitions were really popular, and I think there could not have been a better
target group. The project enabled me to implement curatorial ideas and visions
without compromises.

Figure 2. Children exploring Outi Pieski’s work in the contemporary art exhibition In the Middle of
Nowhere. Photo: Jari Sorjonen/Rauma Art Museum.

Case 3: Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage

The most recent example involves the collection display called Aukio at EMMA
– the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, a new concept created in multidisciplinary
collaboration among a large team. The project took its cue from the collection,
as well as the results of a competition for the presentation concept organised
by the Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation. The key designers of the space
were the Wanderlust architects, selected based on the competition, in close
388 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

collaboration with experts from the museum. I served both as the owner of the
project and designated curator. 8

The purpose of Aukio is to provide maximum visibility to this unique archive,

art and design collection, deposited in EMMA by the Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk
Foundation, which also openly illustrates various aspects of museum work.
Aukio’s concept and curatorial idea is based on different onion-like spatial lay-
ers. The outermost area is visible storage, where the Bryk & Wirkkala materials
are displayed, and a space where visitors can observe museum processes, such
as photographers and conservators at work. That area is a non-curated, stor-
age-like space where the display of a huge number of objects would be determined
by author and chronology instead of a curatorial idea or script. The display is
dense and rich, as is usually the case in storage spaces. In the middle there is a
semi-curatorial area working wall used to showcase small-scale research and
pedagogical pick-ups. In the centre of it all, bordered by the transparent per-
forated metal wall, is a white cube, a space for curated temporary exhibitions
that is in dialog with the collection surrounding it.

In the Aukio display it is possible to experience all the different stages of curat-
ing. The creation of an entirely new museum concept also related to the role of
the curator required reassessing the curator’s role and looking at issues from
a much broader perspective, rather than just a thematic selection of artworks.

My main task as a curator was to mediate between different interests, ideas and
potential implementations, to sift, formulate and search for solutions from among
numerous possibilities. I searched for references and precursors, listened to
different players, tried to determine the essential factors, provided stimulating
ideas, engaged with many players simultaneously and polished and distilled the
collective, multidisciplinary outcome. Looking back, I feel that my work was
seamlessly integrated into the vast apparatus of professionals, de-emphasising
my own contribution as curator. I nevertheless assumed responsibility for the
overall vision, even if the planning was carried out collaboratively.

One integral architectural feature of the visible storage facility was its perforated
metal walls. The metal sheets introduced an element of transparency in the space
layers, while also serving as a wall for mounting temporary exhibitions on its
reverse side. The sheets also protected the shelving in the storage facility that
alternated with glass display cases. The idea was for the displays on the other
side to be viewable in silhouette, lending a kind of tranquillity to the rich displays
in the cases. This concept was novel. Although we sought to explain the idea to
visitors, feedback consistently indicated that the objects could not be seen well
enough from the other side of the perforated wall. Visitors found it vexing that
the objects were on display, and yet they were prevented from viewing them in
detail. These reactions prompted us to search for a new solution. One alterna-
tive was to replace the metal partitions with glass display cases; another was

8. In EMMA’s project model the owner of the project is above the project leader and has the highest
interest and responsibility for managing it in the best possible way.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  389

to rethink the display of items behind the sheet. We chose the latter. The space
retained its overall appearance, but now only storage boxes were placed on the
other side of the partitions – viewers were no longer irritated by seeing the boxes
in silhouette. Audience comments were the final and necessary contribution in
creating a totally new spatial concept.

Figure 3. EMMA’s visible storage is based on curatorial layers and showing the museal work processes.
Photo: Ari Karttunen/EMMA.

Summing up the Work as a Curator

Based on these three case studies and my different roles as a curator, I will try
to sum up here the most essential part of a curator’s work in an art museum
context. Based on my experience, a curator refines the vision of an exhibition,
after which decisions or acceptance proceed. The curator oversees the production
of exhibition content, bears the main responsibility for the ideas and solutions in
exhibition planning and is the one who verbalises them. A curator must also be
able to formulate and express her expertise, areas of interest and vision. This work
includes ideation, conception, research, scripting and participation in practical
planning, as well as handling tasks relating to the artist and artwork selection.
The curator envisions the whole, different alternatives or possible changes of
plan and works with artists, project management, technical staff, conservators
and the exhibition architect. The main focus in curating is on the management
of artistic content, usually meaning close co-operation with the artist. However,
the curator also engages in dialogue and serves as mediator for the museum’s
staff and the audience. The importance of working in close collaboration with
artists, new curatorial approaches and engaging new audiences is crucial in the
art museum context (see also Tuominen, in this volume). The curator’s vision
can also provide the foundation for events and ancillary programmes associated
with the exhibition.
390 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Curating can be part of a museum’s content specialist’s professional identity, but

it is also a role that one assumes in certain situations, carried out independently
or collaboratively. Although the position of a curator involves a certain, mostly
externally ascribed role, the curator’s own vision and choices are crucial. A
curator’s work is usually international in character, is based on networks and
requires the curator to maintain her expertise and interest in new phenomena
and viewpoints in art.

Museum practices differ regarding a curator’s tasks. In addition to content-related

work, curators assume managerial or organisational duties, although being in
charge of practical arrangements is not necessarily always ideal for curating.
The range of duties of a content specialist working, for example, in a small
art museum can be sometimes quite huge. At the Rauma Art Museum, I was
in charge of the museum’s collections, archives, public art, research, funding
and partnerships, as well as organisational tasks and audience engagement. On
top of all this, one still has to somehow find time for curating. However, when
working with content that engages our interest, we are more motivated and
better at prioritising.

The curator’s duties should in any case be defined on a case-by-case basis, ac-
cording to need. When the museum decides to bring in an outside independent
curator, the curator’s role needs to be defined with particular care. There is no
single way of doing this, but rather a great number of varying models.

The curator’s authorship can be individual or shared, as in a co-curating situ-

ation. Curating is nevertheless invariably collaborative: it involves mediation,
serving as a bridge between different authors, agencies and players. Authorship
in curating cannot exist without collaboration. In this sense, a curator’s work
may differ from that of an artist, which traditionally revolves around the artist’s
own creativity. A curator’s authorship can also be subsumed into the collective
responsibility. Curating can be delegated more widely and can even be based
on a collective or inclusive approach, as in the case of collective curating. Curat-
ing and its associated authorship are usually communicated to the audience in
the credits, either at the exhibition venue or in the exhibition publication. The
highlighting of different authorships, including curators, promotes the visibil-
ity and understanding of work undertaken in museums, especially as regards
decision making, which often takes place in the background. It promotes the
transparency of using power.

The Framework of Curating

In the role of curator, I’ve based my work on certain exhibition and displaying
concepts, reviewing them as necessary or creating new ones. The process begins
with the formulation of a frame and its adaptation to the needs of the particular
institution and audience. Once that is in place, thematic thinking, more de-
tailed and smaller decisions almost automatically fall into line with the wider
framework. Defining a concept leads to the construction of a specific curatorial
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  391

approach, which in turn steers the design of the whole. The common view of
curators is as experts who work professionally and exclusively with art, but the
audience and the community are equally important aspects of this.

The exhibitions I curated at the Rauma Art Museum focused on the unique
location, local audiences and exposition of contemporary art. With sufficient
sensitivity towards site-specificity and a clear vision of target groups, curating
can have a real social impact. For example, one could engage youth by developing
services and maintaining close and sustained collaboration with schools and
day-care centres. Doing so provided the museum with open-minded, curious and
interested audiences, which we could affect far into the future. In contemporary
art exhibitions for young people, the primary goal was to make the museum
accessible. One can see a role of a museum to function as a community centre
or a public space, as Kaija Kaitavuori has stated (Kaitavuori 2013, p. x). I also
wanted to emphasise the uniqueness and experiential aspect of art, as well as to
facilitate discussion. Nora Sternfeld has pointed out the importance of calling
for participation: “If we understand art institutions as public spaces that are not
only open to everyone, but also strive to be sites that belong to everyone, then we
are dealing with the question of the possibility of change” (Sternfeld 2013, p. 4).

It can be problematic if exhibitions are curated separately from those responsible

for audience engagement, which is traditionally the domain of educators. This
polarised division of duties is by and large a thing of the past; close co-operation
has become more prevalent. Yet, I felt that curating exhibitions for children
was not entirely unproblematic, as some might view it as less significant, even
marginal. This is perhaps an aspect of a broader phenomenon, wherein curating
and audience engagement are seen as separate disciplines with different status-
es, curating being more intellectual and audience engagement being a kind of
service (Kaitavuori 2013, p. xiv). My own observation is that this division has
come under critical scrutiny and that an audience-centric approach has become
more common. I’ve hopefully been part of this broader trend.

In my work as a curator, I have not avoided a subjective approach. Intuition

plays a role, as solutions can emerge subconsciously, through a combination
of experience and vision. It has been said that curating is an exercise in visual
rhetoric. The curator achieves the same effect as a writer with a text, by putting
together an exhibition (Carrier 2010, p. 82). The goal has always also been to
achieve the best possible result that is in keeping with my vision – to be able to
stand by my work with satisfaction. The idea of creating for and from oneself is
part of a natural aspect of any authorship. In spite of all the visualisations and
demonstrations that are part of the planning of an exhibition, it’s the vision
behind the show that is most intimately a creation of the curator’s mind. A col-
league once said, “None of us are curating stuff for ourselves here”. However, to
some extent I disagree: the curator’s work must also satisfy, perhaps primarily,
her own personal criteria. Jean-Paul Martinon has likened the curatorial to a
gift the curator gives primarily to herself, and which only then becomes a gift
to others (Martinon 2015, pp. 25–31).
392 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Maria Lind distils her own view of curating as follows: “I tend to focus more on
the effects of curating. What is a curator’s task is less interesting to me” (Lind
2009, pp. 63–66). Because of pragmatic orientation, consideration of the recip-
ient and identification with the viewers, together with the rhetoric, drama and
narration of exhibition, have also been far more necessary to me than deeper
theoretical research or exploration of the content. My goal has been to curate the
best possible, yet also accessible, exhibitions of art through choices, for which,
the primary purpose is to serve the art, the audience, and my vision as author.
The most important elements have been enthusiasm and interest in topical
issues, along with the need to learn and take on new challenges.

It is not at all unusual that the curator’s work is learned hands on, through
practice. Curating is always sharing the different kinds of creative efforts, views
and ideas. The process always involves an infinite number of possibilities, and
someone must provide the vision that informs an exhibition’s planning, choices
and demarcation. That is, I feel, the keystone of the curator’s work. An exhibition
can be many things, but it never curates itself.

References
Carrier, D 2010 Why Curators Matter. In Rand, S & Kouris H (eds.)
Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating. New York: Apexart.

Elfving, T & Hannula, M (eds.) 2017 Kuratointi – Yhdeksän näkökulmaa

kuratointiin. Tallinn: Kustannus Oy Taide.

Filipovic, E 2013 What is an exhibition?. In Hoffman, J (ed) Ten

Fundamental Questions in Curating. Brescia: Mousse Publishing. pp.
73–81.

George, A 2015 The Curator’s Handbook. New York: Thames & Hudson.

Groys, B 2010 The Curator as Iconoclast. In Rand, S & Kouris H (eds.)

Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating. New York: Apexart. pp. 46–55.

Kaitavuori, K 2013 Introduction. In Kaitavuori, K, Kokkonen, L &

Sternfeld, N (eds.) It’s All Mediating – Outlining and Incorporating
the Roles of Curating and Education in the Exhibition Context.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. x–xxi.

Kaverina K 2016 Operating as a Curator, An Interview with Maria Lind.

In Sternfeld N (ed) CuMMA Papers #21, Helsinki, Department of Art
Aalto University. Available at [Link]
com/2016/12/maria_lind.pdf [Last accessed 8 February 2021]

Lind, M 2009 The Curatorial. In Wood, B K (ed) Selected Maria Lind

Writing. New York: Sternberg Press. pp. 63–66.
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Martinon, J-P 2015 Theses in the Philosophy of Curating. In Martinon, J-P

(ed) The Curatorial. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 25–33.

Morgan, J 2013 What is a Curator?. In Hoffman, J (ed) Ten Fundamental

Questions in Curating. Brescia: Mousse Publishing. pp. 21–29.

O’Neill, P 2012 The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rogoff, I 2015 The Expanding Field. In Martinon, J-P (ed) The Curatorial.
London: Bloomsbury. pp. 45–46.

Rönkkö, M-L 2010 Museorakennukset ja näyttämisen taide. In Pettersson,

S and Kinanen, P (eds.) Suomen museohistoria. Helsinki: Suomalaisen
Kirjallisuuden Seura. pp. 229–265.

Sternfeld, N 2013 That Certain Savoir/Pouvoir: Gallery Education as a Field

of Possibility. In Kaitavuori, K, Kokkonen, L & Sternfeld, N (eds.) It’s
All Mediating – Outlining and Incorporating the Roles of Curating
and Education in the Exhibition Context. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 1–5.
394 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Looking for a New National

Hanna Forssell

Abstract
This chapter discusses the National Museum of Finland’s main exhibition reform
process, which was carried out in 2015–2017. The text is based on performance
theory, in which the museum exhibition is seen as a holistic process. The setting
up process can be analysed as a performance as well, in which staff roles and
cultural dialogue are tied to a specific time and context. Exhibitions in histor-
ical museums are seen as institutional performances, in which the authors of
the exhibitions are usually in the background. The museum outlines the way
in which the work is done, and the goals that it hopes to reach. However, the
professional roles, areas of specialisation and personal interests of the working
group inevitably influence the content of the performance, making the concept
of a single, unified voice of an institution an illusion.

The strategic choice of the National Museum’s exhibition reform was multidis-
ciplinary expertise and customer orientation. The reform began with exhibitions
of prehistory and 20th-century history. The Prehistory of Finland exhibition
focuses on the questions of being human in the Nordic frame of reference, and
the Story of Finland exhibition addresses the origin of Finnish democracy and
the development of Finland as a Nordic welfare state in the 20th century. Both
exhibitions opened in 2017.

In this study, the permanent exhibition’s strategic objectives in 2015–2017 are

compared with the previous exhibition reform made in the 1990s. The material
used is primarily the National Museums’s archive materials, such as memos,
press releases and interviews made by the author in 2012–2014.

Keywords: concept, performance theory, exhibition, national, interpretation

Introduction
The National Museum of Finland in Helsinki was opened to the public in 1916,
and is the central museum regarding the country’s cultural history. It illustrates
Finland’s past, from prehistoric times to the present. The organisation is part of
the Finnish Heritage Agency. Historical collections describe the material culture
of Finns and Finnish history from the Middle Ages to the present day, and the
ethnological collections provide an all-around illustration of the life, trades and
traditions of the Finnish people. The coin chamber collection consists of coins,
notes, tokens, medals and decorations. Archaeological collections (in the Finn-
ish Heritage Agency) contain objects from the whole of the current territory of
Finland, as well as from the so-called ceded areas.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  395

This chapter is about the exhibition renovation of the National Museum, which
took place between 2015 and 2017. During that time, the exhibition sections of
Finnish prehistory and the 20th century were renewed. I’ll go deeper into the
exhibition Story of Finland as part of the overall renewal, because I was involved
in it from the very beginning. I worked as a project manager, and therefore the
following analysis is entirely based on my own experience. I think of it as a
performance, where each author has a role to play in relation to each other, the
audience and the museum in which they work. This is based on performance
theory, where all cultural phenomena can be seen as performances: it is not just
about the final result, the exhibition that a person experiences, but is also about
the structure that gives birth to it. It can be about what a person (the exhibition
maker in this case) does and how they behave in relation to others. It can also
be for the purpose of entertaining, making something that is beautiful, marking
or changing identity, making a foster community, healing, teaching, persuading,
convincing or dealing with the sacred and/or the demonic (Schechner 2006,
p. 46).

I compare the changes that have been made regarding the process of making
the previous main exhibition, which opened in 2000. I discuss this exhibition
project and its goals in the text. I use written sources and interviews as my
material. Written sources mainly include design plans, meeting memos, press
releases, item lists and exhibition texts. This archive is unlisted. I have started
a dissertation of the National Museum exhibition history and did interviews
related to this in 2011–2013. I interviewed five people who had worked at the
National Museum for a long time, all of whom had worked during her/his career
on several exhibitions. The interviews were anonymous and were conducted
as thematic interviews. In addition, I have some personal memories from that
time, as it was when I started to work at the museum as a trainee.

Renewal 1997–2000
The National Museum’s previous main exhibition reform was made in 1993–
2000. It consisted of a prehistory exhibition, the Coin Chamber (money, silver,
jewellery and weapons), the Realm exhibition (Finland from the Middle Ages
to the 19th century), the Land and Its People exhibition (on ethnology) and the
Past Century exhibition (on the 20th Century). Only the 20th century exhibition
was rebuilt in 2012 (Suomi Finland 1900), but it had already been dismantled,
and space was reserved for temporary exhibitions from 2015. The hands-on
exhibition Attic, for children and families, was opened on the top floor of the
museum in 2006. It is still open to the public and has done surprisingly well. It is
a favourite of families with children and does not contain any digital technology.

At the same time, the entire building was renovated and the museum was closed
for three years (Talvio 2016, pp. 306–309). The project proceeded in stages, with
an idea phase in 1993–1996, when partial plans were made. The framework plan
was completed in 1996, when progress had been made on object photography
and conservation research. In 1997, the overall design was completed and a
396 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

more detailed design of the different components (including display and light-
ing) was underway. In 1998, detailed plans were made, including manuscripts
for guidebooks, multimedia programmes and educational packages. Exhibition
architecture, furniture and lighting design, furniture and equipment orders were
all in progress. The intention was for the exhibitions to open in December 1999.
During the year, the furnishing, bringing in of objects, construction and exhi-
bitions’ completion continued. Eventually the project was slightly delayed and
the museum opened in the summer of 2000. In 1996, the National Museum
was visited by 90 633 people, and the aim of the reform was to attract 200 000
visitors to the museum each year (Educational plan 7.1.1998). This goal was not
met during the time this exhibition was open.

The design papers for the reform were surprisingly modern in their aims and
visions. Behind them was the top management of the museum, in particular
Dr. Ritva Wäre, director general of the National Museum. It was decided that
computer equipment should be present in most of the rooms, texts should be
clear and limited in quantity – exhibitions “should not have standing books
to read”, daring to try new ways to produce an exhibition, making modifiable
spaces to keep exhibitions from becoming out of date too soon, reflecting on
the message of the exhibition. Collection boundaries had to be crossed in the
display, the audience had to be offered a memorable experience, cultural-his-
torical styles could not define the exhibition and furniture dominance had to
be abandoned (Wäre 1995). The same things could be found in a different form
20 years later in the 2016 plans. Alongside visionary design, however, there are
details that strongly point to concrete and iconic objects: “essentials include a
shingle holder, spinning wheel, churn, birch bark container, scythe, sickle and
sleigh” (Plan for the new main exhibition 1997).

The theme throughout the main exhibition was time, a recurring theme in var-
ious items, such as clocks and calendars. The exhibition did not deal with the
interdimensional processing of time. The development of style periods, typology
and chronology were part of the exhibition design, though they did not neces-
sarily appear to the visitor as an obvious way to embrace history, but rather as
a way to make history understandable to all visitors. Throughout the exhibition,
object-related information was presented mainly in short texts. Multimedia
applications were implemented in co-operation with students in four rooms.
The original plan was to do more of them. Audio guides were also designed, but
never implemented (Perusnäyttelyiden yleisjäsentely, 1997).

Concerning the Middle Ages, it was stated that the exhibition architecture does
not seek a sacred atmosphere, but that the space is presented as an exhibition
room, which was described as the most comprehensive exhibition of medieval
art in Finland. The medieval saint sculptures were viewable without display
cases (Wäre 1995). This same principle permeated the entire main exhibition,
and the exhibition space was not deliberately set up to create an adventurous
historical entity or atmosphere. An exception was the smoke cabin built in the
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  397

1830s, which was transferred to the museum at the beginning of the 20th century,
and the 1760s interior of the Jakkarila Manor.

The exhibition project had a five-person steering group and several implementing
bodies per unit. The group met once a month and reported on its work to the
Executive Director. The steering group consisted of representatives from all of
the museum’s various departments and sometimes external experts, mainly
architects, according to the theme. There were nine working groups, and their
responsibilities were divided into sections. This was about 50 persons in total,
which in practice constituted the majority of the museum’s staff. The disadvan-
tages of working, according to interviews, were delays in meetings and slowness
in decision-making. The projects were generally design-oriented, but it should be
pointed out that the work culture at the time did not include as many meetings
as it does today (interviews 2012–2014).

Every new exhibition project was a learning situation for its author and moti-
vated to acquire new knowledge. After each exhibition project, the author was
knowledgeable and more credible as an expert. In practice, this meant that
with each exhibition project, the museum collection or part of it became more
familiar (interviews 2012–2014). The exhibitors felt themselves to be mostly
researchers, whose primary goal in the process was communication and even-
tually making the collection more visible to various audiences, to show to the
audience “Here’s what we have”. The exhibitors were united by a certain degree
of practicality, ability to get along and get things done and the desire to make
something visible. The professional duty to look after the museum and to respect
the choices made there was also considered important (interviews 2012–2014).
“Exhibiting should not be built solely on factors that are expected to be of inter-
est to visitors, which are primarily aimed at increasing the number of visitors”
said a research staff representative in 1996 on the plans for the main exhibition
(letter from the staff representative to the museum management 13.9.1996,
translated by the author). It was clear that the change in customer orientation
did not always succeed throughout the organisation, and this influenced the
implementation of the renewals. Another museum researcher, protesting the
thematic presentation plans, wrote: “The museum tells through objects. As a
result, the museum cannot tell much that is not reflected in the objects – the
exhibition cannot be made from an idea” (letter from the staff representative
23.11.1996, translated by the author).

Expertise has been important to exhibitors, and it appears, for example, in in-
terviewees’ characterisation of National Museum exhibitions and their role as
makers. The exhibitions had to meet high standards, striving for flawlessness.
The selection of objects for the exhibition had to be justified and the text of the
objects as accurate as possible: “Well, of course it has always been important
that the information is correct, and every object must show why it was chosen”
(interviews 2012–2014).
398 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Renewal 2015–2017
Big changes in working life are often triggered by weak economic times, changes
in management or changes in the surrounding society and its needs. Institu-
tional change typically starts with some kind of shock (Simon 2013, p. xvi). This
was also the case at the National Museum: state budget cuts in 2014 forced
redundancies and reorganisation. The time for museums was financially weak,
as public funding for museums was declining dramatically and, for example,
the National Museum’s attendance had long been stagnant at around 120 000
visitors per year. Therefore, the engine of change was not just an internal desire
to do things in a new way, but rather a question of justifying one’s existence.
New members of the museum’s management were very central to the issue; the
driving force behind the new main exhibition was the new Director General,
Elina Anttila, who has had a strong vision for new ways of doing things and for
the museum to renew itself.

In many ways, the exhibitions had become more like interiors than interesting
exhibitions for the public and the staff; it had become a museum within the
museum. The presentations were outdated and the premises were worn out,
the collections had already been used and interpreted in many ways in the au-
dience work over the years and this did not inspire new projects. It was a fact
that in addition to exhibitions, the entire National Museum needed a face lift.
There was a lot happening at the museum field in Finland and abroad, and new,
attractive museums were planned and built. The Helsinki City Museum was
renovated, opened to the public in 2016 and awarded the Museum of the Year
by the Finnish Museums Association. The Amos Anderson museum launched
a new building under the name Amos Rex in downtown Helsinki.

The National Museum’s main exhibition reform, together with a programme of

temporary exhibitions, organisational reform, brand reform and public space
reform, were all part of the ongoing change within this broader context. These
events were raised as the focus of public work. The aim was to make the museum
more dynamic as an active cultural actor, and to reach out to new audiences and
people of different ages, providing them with meanings and inspiration. This
meant that the staff was part of an ongoing process of learning how to make
things more audience-friendly and, in practice, more flexible and faster. Large
organisations have their own work traditions and hierarchies, which are some-
times difficult to change. The fundamental point is that museums that remain
committed to the organisational traditions upon which they were originally
founded are increasingly unable to address the issues of content, community
and agendas of the greater society (Janes 2013, pp. 108–109).

The planning of the exhibition The Story of Finland began with workshop meet-
ings in 2016. As the staff of the museum sat down together and began to gather
things they wanted to tell about independent Finland, the list grew longer and
longer. The collections of the museum inspired the telling of a story, and many
times the vast phenomenon of history was opened up through a single object. For
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  399

example, the 1920s, the period between the wars, was seen as a cheerful decade.
Suggested themes were outdoor life and sports, and objects mentioned included
women’s swimwear, telephones, radios, bicycles and cars. Culture, architecture,
prohibition law and political movements were also on the list, and suggestions
for objects included such things as a wood stove, furniture, women’s and men’s
clothing, a student cap and a bottle of liquor, as well as political party flags and
manuals. The objects of the 1940s, on the other hand, focused on the wartime:
a soldier’s badge, a boy’s mourning outfit, a soldier’s death announcement, a
badge of honour, a name tag hung on the neck of a war child sent to Sweden,
etc. However, we wanted to expand the perspective beyond our own collections,
seeking phenomena and intricacies of history for which we did not have objects
of our own. Every collection has its gaps. Our collections alone could not explain
the whole story, as many intangible phenomena would have been left untold.
This meant that instead of being collection-oriented, new exhibitions were de-
cided to be theme-based.

The most significant and impressive single policy that the museum implemented
at this point was that we decided the core theme of the exhibition would be the
history of the state and society. It was a big change from the previous situation,
when the National Museum acted as a cultural history museum, representing
more or less the everyday life of Finnish people. The museum’s own cultural
historical and ethnological collections, including furniture, textiles, vessels and
church objects, among others things, had earlier formed the body of the main
exhibition. The state’s history at the heart of the story was a strategic choice
because other museums in Finland did not present it, and because there was a
social debate about whether a separate museum of the state’s history of Finland
was needed. The emphasis on cultural history in the previous main exhibition
had avoided the presentation of political history from the state’s point of view,
but politics is always involved in one way or another in the narrative of a national
institution. By conveying the values and practices of democracy, the National
Museum wanted to be more involved in the public debate, and help explain how
the Nordic welfare state was built.

The main exhibition is often called a permanent exhibition, due to its long-term
status. It could also be described as a staged exhibition, since the main exhibition
stops the presentation of museum collections and selected history at a certain
time. In the National Museum, the turnover time of main exhibitions before the
2000s was about 15-30 years. Creating a main exhibition differs from making a
temporary exhibition, due to their longer lifespan, scope and collection-based
nature. Content is usually planned with greater care and time than it is in tem-
porary exhibitions, because of their requirements for greater durability. The
museum staff are well aware that what is not ready when the exhibition opens is
rarely completed. The structures, walls, text panels and display cases are made
to last as long as possible. The main exhibition also requires constant museum
technical care, such as the monitoring of heat, humidity and lighting conditions,
correction of public-related variations, for example, in interactive equipment,
and thorough annual cleaning. Nothing makes the exhibition more outdated
400 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

than faulty digital devices, fingerprint-stained glass windows, displaced and

dusty museum objects or text panels that flutter around the corners.

Co-curational Start for the Project

Public discussions, shared learning projects and reference forums were key to the
preparation of the exhibition, with experts and influencers giving their views on
the role, content, presentation and narrative priorities of the National Museum’s
main exhibition in the most creative ways possible (Anttila 2016). The purpose
of the renovation was to redefine the National Museum. Therefore, the first thing
needed in 2015 was a vision of the National Museum’s future prospects; this
is why the project started by inviting around 300 influencers from science, the
arts and society to share their views about the museum. Of these, 50 eventually
participated in five debates. In discussions they talked about, among other things,
breaking the myths of Finnish history and the need for customisation, that is,
that the visitor must be able to make his or her own choices, use the exhibit and
find out more about what he or she is interested in. Digitalisation is important
in such customisation. In addition, the need for stories was obvious. Stories
about people behind historical events and objects humanize knowledge. The
National Museum was also recommended to use professionals from the creative
industries and storytelling (Raatikainen & Juti 2015).

These encounters were very revealing to the museum staff. For example, when
planning the exhibition on Finnish prehistory, a serious question emerged on
whether the National Museum really needs a prehistory exhibition at all, be-
cause who cares? (Raatikainen & Juti 2015). These types of abrupt comments
are very eye-opening and make museum professionals really wonder who mu-
seums are for. On the other hand, the opposite was the case shortly thereafter;
from a discussion with archaeologists, the expectations for the new exhibition
were immense. The presentation of a national institution is important, and the
research and scientific community in the field showed the greatest interest in its
content. The genuine sharing of information and collections with the public is a
way of making their discipline relevant. “Keeping that old object in your hand is
just a great thing and for us archaeologists, it is a privilege to get so close to the
object, but the average visitor has no chance, and it would be great if they could
actually do it”, said one of the participants in the open discussion in 2015. This
is also what happened, and many authentic objects can be touched by visitors
at the Prehistory exhibition (Open discussion for archaeologists 5.10.2015).

We also started working with immigrants in The Next Helsinki project with the
University of Helsinki in 2016. The starting point of the project was that Finland
has been international both before and now, and it should also be seen in the
National Museum that Finland is not separate from the rest of the world. When
Finland has been through difficult times, for example, thousands of people have
moved to Sweden and North America to seek a better life. A group of immigrants
from various countries gathered approximately ten times at the museum with
museum staff, discussing the ways in which the new exhibition would present
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  401

the history of Finland in an interesting and touching way, pointing out issues
to which they have some personal connection. The following issues emerged:
the equal status of women, the Nordic welfare state, nature education, safety
and some interesting and even funny topics such as heavy metal music, which
is popular in Finland. A young man from the Balkans said: “When you listen to
heavy music, everything else disappears”. (So, we put this into the exhibition
as well). However, intolerance and racism also emerged in the discussions. The
purpose of the project was also to bring to the exhibition the participants’ own
stories and memories from their home countries. The model for the project
came from the Tate Museum in London and it was suggested by Dr. Peggy
Levitt, whose book Artifacts and Alliances deals with the role of museums in a
changing world (Levitt 2015).

Students of political history at the University of Helsinki also made their own
suggestions for the content as part of their studies. They suggested the following
exhibition sections: Finland divided in the interwar period, the recession in the
1990s, the world’s largest coffee consumers, the Finnish school system, “Finland
mentioned in the world!”, Finnish export technology and equality. In co-oper-
ation with Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, the National Treasure
Hunt landed in four Finnish cities to look for ideas relevant to Finns in 2017.
People were also allowed to submit their proposals for national treasures and
there was a dedicated website. Students also produced short films of a topical
nature, which can be viewed on the National Museum website.

In addition, there was co-operation with the University of Helsinki and the Finn-
ish Broadcasting Company YLE in selecting the main themes of the exhibition.
All in all, experts from the economic, political, entertainment and media sectors
were asked for bold opinions on what kind of actions the National Museum
could see and influence. Based on these collaborative themes, the exhibition’s
production team created the exhibition, which combines a dramatic story and
emotions with a factual basis. In addition, customer feedback and developmen-
tal suggestions collected over the years were reviewed. Many of the museum’s
public and outreach museum staff also have a very strong idea of what worked
in existing exhibitions and what did not.

Eventually, the Story of Finland themes began to be narrowed down and the
exhibition was finally built upon 13 themes that consistently came up during
this co-creation process:

• The years 1900–1917, tools for state creation

• Universal and equal voting rights 1906
• The equal status of women
• Independence in 1917 and the Civil War in 1918
• Population demarcation from 1919 to 1939
• The Winter and Continuation Wars
• Welfare state creation and development since 1945
• Coffee, Finns’ favourite drink
• Presidents
402 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

• Migration from Finland to Sweden

• Minorities in Finland
• Economics and recession
• The sauna

Participation and co-curation continued on a smaller scale during the project;

when the sauna section was to be displayed, no objects could be found from our
own collections. We asked the audience to donate sauna buckets to us. Because
sauna buckets are usually made at a young age, for example at school in a craft
class, they have a lot of personal emotional value, and we did not get enough
of them. Fortunately, in the end, a youth workshop in Karkkila made the rest
of the necessary buckets. This kind of co-curation, co-creation, inclusion and
participation has been a welcome phenomenon in the 2010s and has been at
the forefront of audience work and museum education. Through audience-cen-
tred thinking and working methods, the services of museums have begun to be
designed to be genuinely accessible and to meet the expectations people have
(Simon 2010, pp. 34–41). These engaging methods can also be seen in the annual
awards given by the Finnish Association for the Museum Educators projects,
which have also gained international visibility (Johansson 2016).

Concepts and Project Management

The exhibition work was guided by concepts, and it was decided that they should
be clear and short, so that they would be easy to remember. It was considered
a principle of concept work that the message, focus groups and methods of
implementation of the exhibition would be carefully considered before a pro-
duction is released. However, that did not mean that there was a great deal of
time for designing and writing, quite the contrary. Doing, learning, being able
to make unpredictable solutions throughout the process and having transpar-
ency of choices were how we worked. The concepts were decided upon at the
museum’s senior management level on the basis of suggestions made by the
exhibition team. During the project, the implementation of the concept was
followed up through regular steering group meetings and meetings between
the project manager and the chair of the steering group.

The concept of the Prehistory exhibition was to bring up issues of being human
in the Northern frame of reference. The content of the exhibition consisted of
five themes: origin, movement, worldview, encounters and materiality. Selected
themes were approached from the perspective of being human, identifying and
alternative interpretations. The latest research data were presented, as well as
controversial or otherwise open questions. The iconic highlights of the collections
were also brought to the foreground, which were integrated into the exhibition,
either as part of the main storyline, thematic entity or individual objects. This
was complemented by hand-made materials, objects and fragments of objects.
The exhibition was designed by Tuomas Siitonen Architects and Fantomatico
Oy, who won the design competition in the spring of 2016 with their proposal
Survivors.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  403

The Story of Finland exhibition concept was as follows:

The Story of Finland exhibition focuses on the birth of Finnish democracy

and the development of the country into a Nordic welfare state. In the
exhibition, the common and shared meets the personal – and in its narra-
tive, Finland and the Finns, meets the global world. The exhibition looks
back from this time. The themes of the exhibition are equality, a strange
but happy people and turning points in Finnish history. The objects of
the exhibition are meaningful and iconic. It deals with a widely explored
era in a surprising and bold way, inspiring and touching large audiences,
commenting on and highlighting alternative interpretations. This involves
extensive collaboration with experts in various fields. (Forssell 2017)

The timetable for the renovation was tight and was largely determined by the
timetable for financing. The Story of Finland had a relatively good budget, as
Finland celebrated its 100th year of independence in 2017. This was also the
absolute limit to the completion of the exhibition. The Prehistory exhibition
opened in April of that year, so they were completed side by side, by different
working groups. On the other hand, the museum had no simultaneous renova-
tion needs related to the building itself. When the decision was made to keep
the museum open throughout the renovation, and even with normal entrance
fees, the importance and motivation of the staff in making the new exhibitions
was emphasised. In fact, the number of visitors to the international temporary
exhibitions was constantly increasing. The most popular exhibitions were Rooms
Hidden by the Water (2016), The Renaissance. Now! From Rafael to Tizian –
16th Century Paintings from Italy (2016), Come to Finland (2017) and Public
and Hidden Finland (2017).

In project-based work, the role of the team is emphasised, as members must have
the motivation, skills and time to complete the task. Because the team members
were from different units, the principles of project-based work also included
learning within the organisation, with the project manager being responsible
for the project’s progress and decisions. The project manager was supported
by a steering group. At the same time, there was a shift from design-oriented
work to an action-oriented work culture. In the history of the National Museum,
there were examples of exhibitions that were planned for a long time but were
never actually completed. In the 1970s, the design team for the History of the
Fatherland exhibition had ambitious plans to make a modern, main exhibition.
The project included visits to foreign museums, planning for the integration of
ethnographic and historical exhibitions into a single exhibit and the devising
of pedagogical solutions such a museum area for children. The project team,
who had been working together for about ten years, was unable to complete the
project as time passed, as the original plans had become outdated.

The dangers identified by risk mapping were that there was not enough budget,
the schedule might not be kept, there could be a dispute over who would make
the final decisions and that there would be no time to conserve the objects dis-
played. In the end, there were issues with the budget and construction costs,
404 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

which were unpredictable. New walls, solid showcase elements and floors were
built on the premises of the old building, and electrical installations had to be
made for the digital technology. The schedule was on time, but it meant that
the staff were doing some evening and weekend work, and this was particularly
stressful in the final stages. It also meant that as the project timetable stretched,
it delayed the subsequent subprojects and, as the opening day approached, things
were overlapping in the showroom, causing stress in terms of object safety. The
decision-making process was made clear at the beginning; in case of disputes the
project manager had authority and in case of controversy the museum director
had it. More money from the budget could be invested in conservation, which
was also outsourced.

The key to project work, however, was that the implementation team was small
and flexible. The project team was organic, and in addition to about five people,
it included a varied and at times very large number of professionals from both
inside and outside the house. In addition to its own staff, the Prehistory exhibition
featured an architect, a digital designer, a lighting designer, a sound designer, a
graphic artist and a large number of builders. Drama and storytelling were of great
importance in the Story of Finland exhibition, so the team was complemented
by a film director, playwright, stage director, special stage designer, light and
sound designers and a large number of screenwriters. Indeed, the central role
of the project manager was to keep the whole team under control while giving
all the actors the freedom to plan and brainstorm. At the same time, of course,
it was crucial to keep to the schedule and to implement the given plans.

Sharing the museum’s expertise was key to the project. This is not problem-free
in expert organisations, and it was revealed to be the case in this project as
well. For outside team members, things that are seen as essential to a museum
project may come as a surprise, such as lighting restrictions, the time allowed
for various conservation procedures, restrictions on an old cultural-historical
building and restrictions on the display of objects such as materials, as well as
group and guide behaviour and learning.

Museum staff are generally well aware of the behaviour of their audience and
can anticipate the pitfalls of exhibition design from this perspective. This caused
conflicts in the working groups. In terms of content and objects, the museum
staff were expected to have strong expertise, but the issue was tricky, as state
history was not among the expertise of the museum staff, as it was an entirely
new emphasis in the museum content. The storytelling professionals in the Story
of Finland exhibition were experts in the film industry and had never done a
museum exhibition before. For them, the experience was brand new. Making an
exhibition is different from theatre and movie production, as the critical factors
are collecting, preservation and research (Lord 2014, pp. 27–29). However,
because the goal was a new way of doing things and a new kind of end result,
this kind of conflict was valuable.

Those involved in the exhibition reform took the word forward regarding the
change in the museum. They also had a fresh and open-minded vision for making
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  405

a new exhibition, and definitely had expertise in storytelling and framing, as well
as visual and spatial design. The concerns of the designers in both exhibitions
were related to there being too many objects, too long of texts and consideration
of the audience. Because the goal was change, in conflict situations, project
choices in this project were ultimately based on the designers’ suggestions. This
was a learning process for the museum staff. In any case, in the future it is worth
paying more attention to communication among the team, so that everyone has
a clear, common goal.

Interpretation – Texts, storytelling, objects, design and

digital experiments
We know that people really trust information provided by museums. The His-
torical Awareness in Finland survey 2007–2010 mapped Finns’ ideas about
history: what Finns believe to have happened in the past, what meanings the
past has and how the past relates to the present and the future. Research has
shown that museums are considered to be the most reliable source of historical
information. The next most reliable sources were non-fiction books, school his-
tory teaching and university historical research. After these, the most reliable
sources were the stories of parents, relatives and family members, television
programmes and documentaries relating to history, genealogy and activities of
family associations. Movies, historical plays, historical novels and statements
about politicians’ history were the least trusted (Torsti 2012, p. 9, pp. 52–55).
Therefore, museum professionals often have a heavy burden when making a
new exhibition, since the text content should always be as correct as possible. It
means that museum projects are slow, when ensuring the right information is
used. And as we know, very often there is no definite information about historical
events. At the same time, the aim of the exhibition was to provide alternative
interpretations of history and to encourage the visitor to ask and seek more
information. It is therefore a good idea for the team to remind themselves from
time to time that exhibitions are always about interpretation. As Simon Knell
reminds us, museums are places where professional and public performances
are scripted and staged (Knell 2010, p. 43).

Both the Prehistory and the Story of Finland exhibition manuscripts were written
by academic researchers and writing professionals outside the museum. This
was to ensure that the information provided was correct and that it relied on
current research. Researchers in the field are able to crystallise the essential. A
closer connection with the scientific community was seen as important. Both
exhibition manuscripts were also published as an exhibition publication. Texts
were much longer than we had space for on our walls, showcases and digital
devices (Herva & Lahelma 2017; Häkkinen et al. 2018). During the project, our
perception of the exhibition script also changed. The texts were a matter-of-fact
basis for the exhibitors, which, however, were not even intended to be intro-
duced as such. Together with the visual and experiential design, they formed a
complete script for the exhibition.
406 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

The museum staff wrote the object texts. In the Prehistory exhibition, a Twitter
message (280 characters) was taken as the length and model of the text. This
was, of course, very difficult for museum professionals, but the fact that visitor
feedback highlights that text is usually too long motivated us try a new way.
The selection was based on the length of the text that visitors could read at the
exhibition. More detailed information was also available to those who were
interested in it; each text was followed by an artefact number, which provided
more information about the item in the national Finna digital collection service.

In some places the Story of Finland exhibition has longer texts, and in some
places the object text even introduces the whole theme. Our aim was to curate
individual and impressive objects for display with their own story to tell, rather
than illustrating the theme with a large group of objects. Objects have power, in
Donald Preziosi’s words, “The significance of any object can be made to appear
a uniquely powerful ‘witness’ to past or present events, and to the character,
mentality, or spirit of a person, people, place or time” (Preziosi 2010, p. 137).
Our goal was that each item selected for the exhibition was curated with the
idea that the items form individual and personal stories as part of a broader
common and national story. By doing so, a common story would help the visitor
get information on past individuals:

Almost 63,000 Ingrians of Finnish background were evacuated for use

in a labour force from the Karelian front in 1943–1944. Among them was
also Mari, who worked on a farm in Simo. The terms of the September
1944 Moscow Armistice decreed that the Ingrians must be returned to
the Soviet Union. Most of the Ingrians, about 56,000, returned to their
home country – some voluntarily, some because they had no choice.
Before she left, Mari gave her apron to the daughter of the house as a
memento. (Object text in the World War II section of Story of Finland)

In both projects, the script then passed into the hands of the exhibition team
and the designers, and the scriptwriters were no longer involved when the text
was transformed into a spatial experience. Extensive manuscripts changed their
form quite a lot when used mainly as a fact-based material for making the ex-
hibition. Texts were shortened and edited for the exhibition and used there as
object texts, room-specific general texts or part of digital narrative tools, such as
audio guides. We made this choice in order to make the best use of the expertise
of storytelling and exhibition design professionals, giving them an equal chance
to make their work, not just illustrate the text. Texts written by professionals
were seen more like a strong scientific basis for thinking and creating the ex-
hibition and its story.

The very first peer group discussions already highlighted stories, experiences
and holistic experiences, suggesting that the museum should benefit from art-
ists for renewal, to interpret history and to bring exhibitions to the senses of
the visitor. Writing and theatre or cinema professionals should also be asked
to create storytelling. This is why film director Juho Kuosmanen was asked to
help in creating the Story of Finland. A filmmaker can construct a story, make
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  407

the necessary choices and bring drama to the fore. This also affected the design
of the premises. We all are so used to cinematic storytelling, where the viewer
is dramatically transported through the story. Exhibitions can also be analysed
and seen like movies. As Mieke Bal says, “The key metaphor in my analysis was
narrative, conceived as a meaning-producing sequentiality, emerging from the
viewer’s walk through an exhibition. Putting one thing next to another, in other
words, produced a time-bound relationship between the two, one that moved
from the first to the second” (Bal 2007, pp. 74–93). The vision of scenographer
Kari Kankaanpää was that every room’s atmosphere is different and supports a
story. For example, the first exhibition room tells about the construction tools
of the Finnish state, the state flag, the first money and parliamentary elections.
The walls are therefore a concrete cul-de-sac and the roof has sturdy beams;
Finland is under construction. Thus, scenic interiors became an important form
of interpretation.

One of the lines of the exhibition reform was to place fewer but more reasonable
objects in a space. If previously there were several similar items on display, it
was now decided that one item was enough, but it was to be better displayed
and researched. Especially for the prehistory exhibition, this was a big change,
which was at first a concern for the museum’s own staff. The educational nature
of the prehistory exhibition (abundance of objects, chronology, distribution maps,
etc.) had followed it since its graduation from the 1920s, and schoolchildren
were particularly targeted. Despite this, it was difficult for younger learners to
find the essentials for learning about the exhibition’s mass of information, and
it always required an interpreter-like living museum guide. The importance of
the exhibition in university teaching was also considered, but to them, of course,
it worked well. The exhibition was praised by researchers and those with a deep
understanding of the subject.

In 2011, a study was conducted in the old prehistoric exhibition to determine

how people behaved in the space and what interested them there. The meth-
ods used were route tracking, timing and Think Aloud visits. It revealed that
visitors are most in need of clarity. Prehistory is a little-known era for many
museum visitors, and the rich masses of objects and text make it difficult for
many to understand (Ehrnsten 2012, pp. 64–68). The exhibition, which opened
in 2000, featured 3,668 objects. The Past Century exhibition had 1004 objects;
it was open 2001–2008. The exhibition was replaced by changing exhibitions
2008–2011. The Suomi Finland 1900 exhibition, which ran from 26.4.2012 to
1.3.2015, had 460 objects. The Story of Finland exhibition has 210 museum
objects. The reduction in objects is thus obvious.

On the other hand, the number of photos and additional information has in-
creased. Building a level of digital storytelling as part of the exhibition experience
was an important goal, designed to make the visitor experience more interactive.
Digitally it is also possible to create a whole world, for example around an ar-
tefact, in an entirely new way. Digital interactivity is one of the building blocks
of exhibition experience building (Roppola 2012, pp. 41–43).
408 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Conclusion
Revamping the National Museum was a complex process. National museums
easily turn into temples of history or museums within a museum because they
are so closely linked to the building of a state; architecture highlights the mag-
nificence of a national story and exhibited artefacts become iconic. The mission
of national museums is to be museums for the whole nation, and at the same
time to be a showcase for tourists. The performances it builds are also part of the
greater societal debate and structures of the nation, which is why its choices and
what is left out matter. A long history and a certain way of performing both invite
the new generation to renew itself and at the same time stay within a framework.

Nevertheless, doing a main exhibition is a motivating project for the museum

staff, every time, and the key element of motivation is the opportunity to create
something new. Both the 2000 and 2017 reforms aimed for a clear change,
and the idea papers are surprisingly similar. In any case, new kinds of pro-
fessional backgrounds and skills are a relatively new phenomenon in expert
and research-driven work. In the 2010s technology, marketing, sales and event
production tasks became an indispensable part of the museum industry. The
main trend in audience work was inclusion and participation. Through audi-
ence-centred thinking and working methods, the services of museums began to
be genuinely designed to be accessible and to meet the expectations people have.

Work processes were flexible in 2015–2017. Interpretations have changed from

knowledge-based to artistic or community-based entities. At the same time,
however, co-operation with the university has been further strengthened, and the
latest research information is also valued. The museum’s own research work has
decreased and expertise in the field of history has been outsourced. The customer
experience for the general public has been the starting point for concepts and
processes. The overall renewal of the National Museum has been successful in
terms of visitors. But it is not just because of the new main exhibition; it is also
due to a renewal of the whole, including interesting and frequently changing
short-term exhibitions and an attractive program of events together – places
to be and do.

Over the last twenty years, the tools of interpretation have become more diverse.
At the same time the number of objects has decreased. Materialistic history has
become more intangible and more interpretative. Opportunities for interpreta-
tion have been given to non-traditional museum professionals while exhibiting,
and the aim of the 2017 exhibition was also to give visitors the opportunity to
interpret the relation of history to modern times and to their own personal lives.
Elements of interactivity have included digitalisation and hands-on implemen-
tations. The concrete object preserved by museums is still something that other
memory organisations do not offer, and in an increasingly digitalized world,
an encounter with an authentic and physical artifact may be what the public is
interested in, and for which there is greater need.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  409

References
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Forssell, H 2012–2014 Interviews with museum staff 2012–2014. Personal

study archives.

Forssell, H 2017 Exhibition concept that guided the work. Digital folders of
the National Museum of Finland.

Letter from staff representative to museum management 13.9.1996.

Perusnäyttely 2000.

Letter from staff to representative museum management 23.11.1996.

Perusnäyttely 2000.

New main exhibition 2016. Power Point presentation of artefact ideas made
and presented by Collection unit. Digital folders of the National
Museum of Finland.

Open discussion for archaeologists 5.10.2015. Speakers Esa-Pekka Herva,

Petri Halinen, Anna Wessman and Kristiina Mannermaa. Transcribed
in digital folders of the National Museum of Finland.

Pedagoginen suunnitelma 7.1.1998. Perusnäyttely 2000.

Plan for the new main exhibition 1997. Puitesuunnitelma 31.1.1997. Ritva
Wäre (chair), Helena Edgren, Kirsti Melanko, Pekka Sarvas, Pirkko
Sihvo. Perusnäyttely 2000.

Raatikainen, O & Juti, M 2015 Renovation of the National Museum’s

main exhibition / Kansallismuseon perusnäyttelyn uudistaminen.
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Wäre, R 1995 Perusnäyttelyn uusiminen peruskorjauksen jälkeen.

Suunnitelma, 2.10.1995. Perusnäyttely 2000.

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Basu P (eds.). Hoboken: Wiley & Sons. pp. 71–93.

Ehrnsten, F 2012 Kirahvi, golfpallo ja stetoskooppi – löytöjä

Kansallismuseon esihistorian näyttelystä. Arvoisa yleisö –
verkkosivusto. Yleisösuhteen kehittämishanke. Helsinki: Valtion
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Häkkinen, H, Iitiä, I, & Onatsu, J (eds.) 2018 Essays on the Story of

Independent Finland. Helsinki: Finnish Heritage Agency.

Herva, V-P & Lahelma, A 2017 Prehistory is here. Helsinki: Finnish

Heritage Agency.

Janes, R R 2013 Museums and the Paradox of Change. London: Routledge.

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Education to Audience Engagement. Pedafooni Series 4. The Finnish
Association for Museum Education. Helsinki: Pedaali.

Knell, S, Aronsson, P & Bugge Amundsen, A (eds.) 2010 National

Museums: New Studies from Around the World. London: Routledge.

Levitt, P 2015 Artifacts and Allegiances. How Museums Put the Nation and
the World on Display. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lord, B 2014 The Purpose of Museum Exhibition. In Manual of Museum

Exhibitions. Lord B & Piacente M (eds.) Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefields Publishers.

Preziosi, D 2010 Sunt Lacrimae Rerum. In Knell, S, Aronsson, P & Bugge

Amundsen, A (eds.) National Museums: New Studies from Around
the World. London: Routledge.

Roppola, T 2012 Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience. London:

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Simon, N 2010 The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.

Simon, N 2013 Museums and the Paradox of Change. London: Routledge.

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Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  411

From Object to Subject –

Creating relevant and engaging
experiences
Mikko Myllykoski

Abstract
The global science centre movement and its learning-by-doing philosophy
reached Finland in the 1980s. In the beginning, Heureka, the Finnish science
centre (founded in 1989) was regarded as the odd man out in the museum com-
munity, but it was the change-agent in introducing audience orientation and
socio-constructivist pedagogy to the field. Finland’s 75th anniversary exhibition
(1992) was a forerunner in adapting interactive methods to historical narratives
in order to create connections and empathy with the people of the past and to
tell a human story about the modernisation of Finnish society.

Heureka has moved from production of interactive exhibitions towards deeper

engagement of the audiences through participatory methods and co-creation.
Heureka Goes Crazy (2013) is an example of a challenging controversial topic,
i.e., mental health, which was turned into an interactive exhibition with the help
of experience experts, i.e., people who live with mental illness. With this some-
what edgy topic the science centre had to challenge its own mission, “sharing
the joy of discovery”, in order to have a strong societal impact. The exhibition’s
adaptations for French, Portuguese and North American audiences showed the
sensitivity that is needed in discussing mental health with diverse audiences in
different cultural contexts.

The chapter is written from a practitioner’s point of view, and it aims to fill a gap
in Finnish museology about the role of science centres in audience-orientation
by sharing lessons learned and methods in the process of producing exhibitions
that would be relevant for their potential audiences.

Keywords: science centre, audience engagement, constructivism, experience

experts, mental health

Introduction
Museum, a Temple or the Forum?, was a relevant question fifty years ago, when
Duncan F. Cameron wrote his article in Curator – The Museum Journal (1971).
He stated that museums are in need of psychotherapy because of their identity
crisis (Cameron 1971, p. 11). Today, this question seems outdated: museums have
chosen to become fora, central public meeting places. Their exhibitions, events
and communication strategies have developed. They now keep the diversity of
412 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

audiences in mind and reach them effectively. At the end of the day, a museum
is all about people, as Pettersson discusses in this volume. I have worked in
science engagement through interactive exhibitions since 1990 at Heureka, the
Finnish science centre. In this chapter, I intend to explore some main steps on
how our institution has learned to work not only for, but also with audiences,
in order to have more societal relevance and impact. I have a practitioner’s
viewpoint and I wish to share what I have found helpful in shaping engagement
strategies at Heureka.

The focus of museums has moved from the object, the collection or the exhibi-
tion to the subject, the visitor. The visitor is the protagonist, and the owner of
the museum experience. Yet no visitor is an island; the audience should also
be seen and understood as part of a social group. To visit a museum is a social
experience. In our case, according to annual visitor surveys, more than 99% of
the audience visit Heureka, the Finnish science centre, as a member of a group.

The interactive exhibition production is nowadays logically called experience

production, because of the focal shift from exhibition object to visitor experience.
The experience production borrows methods and tools from theatre: scenography
and dramaturgy are key elements in creating concepts for fascinating learning
environments. This development has opened museums up, giving them a huge
potential to create a fluid mental state for their visitors (Csikszentmihalyi-Her-
manson 1995). Since there is no such thing as one audience, but a diversity of
visitors, museum professionals need tools to respond to the needs of different
types of learners. We need to understand why people visit museums, i.e., what
is their motivation?

Luckily, there is research and evidence relevant to this. Research can inform us
to create relevant experiences for our guests. We believe in free-choice learn-
ing, but this does not mean that we should leave visitors on their own, in total
freedom. On the contrary, we need to gently design environments that offer the
audience a sensible balance of comfort and appropriate challenge. Freedom of
choice does not mean endless freedom, but a feeling of control over their own
experience (Falk 2009, pp. 142–145, pp. 150–152). We need to build feedback
loops to increase our understanding of visitors: what are their attitudes and
expectations, what is their knowledge base, etc.? With this kind of insight, it is
possible to surprise the visitor and exceed their expectations.

After briefly explaining how the birth of the modern science centre movement
has impacted museums generally, I will take an early example of how in Finland
the interactive exhibition methodology was also used in the humanities, spe-
cifically in social and cultural history. My example is Finland’s 75th anniversary
exhibition (1992), when I started my museum career as exhibition coordinator,
creating the content and interaction for and with visitors. My other example is
a more recent one: Heureka Goes Crazy, an exhibition on mental health, which
Heureka produced in 2013 and has subsequently been on tour in Europe and
North America. This is an example of where Heureka worked with experience
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  413

experts and understood the need to be sensitive with audiences in diverse cul-
tural contexts, as the exhibition was a touring one.

Science Centres in the Museum Family

Public science demonstrations and exhibitions have a history that dates back to
the 19th and early 20th century, with institutions such as Urania in Berlin (1888),
Deutsches Museum in Munich (1903), the Science Museum in London (1909)
and Palais de la découverte in Paris (1937). However, the two institutions that
gave a critical boost to the global science centre movement were established
in 1969: The Ontario Science Centre (Toronto) and The Exploratorium (San
Francisco), with their variety of open-ended scientific experiments (Persson
et al. 1999, pp. 16–22). At that time, the American Association of Museums
(AAM) did not regard the newcomer seriously as a museum, since it did not
have collections. The founder of The Exploratorium, nuclear physicist Frank
Oppenheimer, is said to have answered: “I have a collection of the greatest ideas
that have affected mankind”. Already in 1982 AAM turned 180 degrees on the
topic and gave Oppenheimer the Distinguished Service for Museums award,
emphasising “the impact of [his] ideas and methods on museums and museum
education” (Hein 1990, p. 146; Cole 2009, p. 203).

Thinking in the museum world started changing. Already in 1974, the Tenth As-
sembly of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) defined the museum as:

A non-profit-making, permanent institution in the service of society and

of its development, and open to the public, which acquires, conserves,
researches, communicates, and exhibits, for purposes of study, education
and enjoyment, material evidence of man and his environment.
(Hudson 1977, p. 1)

For science centres, the important change was in the addendum of the defini-
tion. Conservation institutes, exhibition galleries of libraries and archives, as
well as zoos, aquaria, science centres, planetariums and natural, archaeological
and ethnographic monuments and sites, were also considered to comply with
this definition, in addition to museums designated as such (Hudson 1977, p. 1).
More than a generation later, in 2007, ICOM managed to incorporate the idea of
conceptual collections into the renewed museum definition: museums are about
both the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environments.
Thus, the intangible can refer, for example, to the scientific method, ideas and
scientific culture, among other traits of culture and heritage.

In Finland, the first science centres were founded towards the end of a long
economic growth period in the 1980s: Tietomaa (Knowledgeland in English)
in Oulu (1988) and Heureka, the Finnish science centre, in Vantaa (1989). The
naming reflects the goals of these two institutions: Tietomaa started as a com-
puter class with an entirely Finnish name, and was aimed at a regional audience.
Heureka, on the other hand, took the universally understood Greek word from
the famous quote of Archimedes, capturing the spirit of invention and joy of
414 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

discovery. Heureka was aimed from the start not only at national, but also at
international audiences and recognition.

Even though Heureka fitted the ICOM definition of museums, and became a
member, as well as a member of the national Finnish Museum Association
Museoliitto, the Finnish Heritage Agency (until 2018 The National Board of
Antiquities) does not regard Heureka as a museum, for example in its visitor
statistics. Suomen museohistoria, the history of Finnish museums, published
in 2010 (Pettersson & Kinanen 2010), also leaves science centres out of its
narrative. The only reference to science centres is in an article about Finnish
museum audiences, where distinguished museum educator Marjatta Levanto
observes that behaviouristic pedagogy, where information is delivered one-way,
top-down, from experts to the audience, has dominated in Finnish museums. She
notes that the discovery-based learning by doing philosophy was first adapted by
science centres, and then, little by little, has influenced the traditional museum
field, where the constructivist approach is now generally accepted (Levanto
2010, p. 105).

The notion that science centres are museums is still not common knowledge in
Finland. Looking, for example, at the Wikipedia pages on museums, you can see
a difference: the page in Finnish states that science centres are “not to be mixed
in with museums”; they are regarded as “something like museums”. The page
in English is true to the ICOM definition and also describes interactive science
centres without tangible collections as an integral part of the museum family.

Interestingly, the ongoing discussion about redefining ICOM’s museum defini-

tion has moved further and further in the direction of audience-orientation. The
proposal that was discussed, but not approved, at the General Assembly of ICOM
in Kyoto (2019) emphasises dialogue, democracy, polyphony and inclusion; it
embraces the future as well as the past, heritage and the diversity of memories.
Instead of addressing collections and their tangibility, the suggestion mentions
“understandings of the world” as the topic to be collected, preserved, researched,
interpreted, exhibited and enhanced by museums. This aligns with the socio-con-
structivist philosophy of science centres, with its emphasis on meaning-making.
Eero Ehanti describes the debate around the suggestion for a new definition in
his chapter about museum ethics in this volume.

The Finnish interpretation of a science centre idea differed from the pioneering
Exploratorium (San Francisco) or Ontario Science Centre (Toronto), which were
both established in 1969. Heureka did not limit itself to the natural sciences
exclusively, but included all academic subjects in its programme. Both national
languages supported this understanding: tiede in Finnish, and vetenskap in
Swedish refer to all knowledge, and they cover both the humanities and social
sciences, just as the German term Wissenschaft does. At Heureka, all academic
study was considered fit to be experienced first-hand by the public.

The road to the opening of Heureka included a series of pilot exhibitions to test
the interactive exhibition medium, audience interaction and learning. The first
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  415

one, titled Physics 82 (1982) can be regarded as an obvious choice. Many physical
phenomena and classical experiments are rather uncomplicated and practical to
repeat, observe and understand in real time. The second pilot exhibition Pulssi
(1985) dealt with medicine, but the third Vipunen (1987), took its topic from
the humanities and was about the origins of Finns and the Finnish language.
The emphasis of the exhibition was on linguistics. Visitors could compare sen-
tences in different Finno-Ugric languages, listen to a reconstructed proto-Uralic
language and gain understanding that Finnish also belongs to a large group of
languages with a similar grammar structure and vocabulary, where many words
related to the human body, fishing and hunting are similar.

But how can we make history interactive? You cannot test, repeat and verify
history the same way you can test, repeat and verify classical scientific experi-
ments in physics, for example, by dropping a ball and a feather and observing
their behaviour in open air on one hand, and in a vacuum on the other. The
French revolution does not fit into the test tube.

I joined Heureka to work on a team to create an interactive history exhibition.

The 75th anniversary of Finnish independence was approaching. Our task was to
tell the story of the modernisation of Finland, not just the 75 years of independent
Finland, but rather the 150-year process that led to the modern welfare state.
The focus was not on political development, but on social and cultural history,
as well as the everyday experience of common people.

In the Finnish museum scene, there were no examples to follow, and interna-
tionally the project team knew of only some museums, such as the Imperial War
Museum in London, which offered examples of the use of immersive spaces in
engaging audiences with history.

One important leading idea in the planning process was empathy. From the
classical constructivist hands-on, brains-on method of science centres, we should
move towards heart-on: the audience of the exhibition should feel connected with
the past and the people who inhabited it. On the other hand, there should also
be a differentiating element. Times were indeed different. “The Past is a foreign
country; they do things differently there”, as the famous line of poet L.P. Hartley
goes, from which David Lowenthal took the title for his groundbreaking book
dedicated to the uses of history. Lowenthal’s (1985) study was one influential
inspiration for the project team.

The title of the exhibition Jukola–Jakomäki–Brussels, Finland 75 Years, refers to

three steps in the modernisation of the country: Jukola represents the thoroughly
rural Finland, the vulnerable country of the times when Aleksis Kivi wrote the
first novel in Finnish, The Seven Brothers (1870), and at the time when Finland
suffered the last peace-time famine (1866–68) in Europe. Jakomäki, the next step
in the title, is a rapidly-built (1967–69), remote, and in its early days emblemat-
ically infamous suburb of Helsinki, which represents the rapid urbanisation and
suburbanisation of the country after the second world war. Finally, Brussels, the
de facto capital of Europe, refers to the future, the European integration process,
416 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

which reached Finland through a referendum in 1994, a bit more than two years
after the exhibition was opened, when Finns decided to join the European Union.

Figure 1. The poster for the Jukola–Jakomäki–Brussels, Finland 75 Years exhibition, the first in-
teractive exhibition about Finnish history (1992). Photo: Heureka.

What were the methods used in the exhibition to build empathy through in-
teraction and engagement? In 1992, the following examples were novel for a
history exhibition and part of the terminology (gamification, co-creation, etc.)
was not yet in use in the profession:

Gamification. The famine of 1866–68 was narrated through an interactive

computer game Rescue Your Family, where the player could use different
paths for their family, who had to leave home because of hunger. The
storylines were illustrated with historical photos of the tragedy, which was
the last peace-time famine in Europe, killing 10% of the population. All
options in the computer game led to at least some loss of lives – game over.

Immersive, full-body interface. Travel in late 19th-century Finland was

depicted in a story based on Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s travelogue Through
Finland in Carts (published in 1897). Visitors got on a vintage horse cart
and travelled through an audiovisual roundtrip in Finland by pulling the
reins, experiencing several types of transportation, from trains and carts
to bicycles, steam and tar boats.

Immersion. The exhibition had several hands-on immersive spaces, such

as a 1930’s train wagon, WWII style trenches and dugouts, a 1950’s class-
room and a 1970’s bar atmosphere with a 20-cent slot machine and a
jukebox, featuring singles from the Finnish-American Hiski Salomaa from
the 1930s to the punk band Ne Luumäet in 1992. The Finnish Bank was
decommissioning 20-cent coins at that time, but the bank gave Heureka
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  417

special permission to distribute them for the exhibition’s slot machine

experience.

Multisensory simulator. The home-front experience in an air-raid shelter

during the Winter War (1939–40) was built in the cellar of Heureka,
reached by a spiral staircase from the exhibition gallery. The soundscape
narrated approaching airplanes, sirens and bombardment getting closer,
finally hitting the target – the building right above the visitors. The effect
of the explosion was fortified by a pneumatically moving double floor
and theatre smoke that floated in through the ventilation. The simula-
tor elicited powerful emotional reactions in some of the visitors, as they
relived their childhood trauma. The exhibition gave many older people
the opportunity, and perhaps even permission, to share their wartime
experiences with their children and grandchildren.

Personalised experience. Alcohol, the multimedia game about the history

of alcohol consumption, offered the user the possibility to choose from
beer, wine, a gin long drink and spirits for a typical week in their life, and
then the program calculated their annual consumption. The program also
estimated how much weight the person would gain if they would otherwise
have just enough calory intake in their diet, with any drinking on top of
that. The program also asked the user if the given volumes of weekly
alcohol intake should be tripled, because research of drinking habits had
proved that people consume three times more than they indicate. The
visitor’s alcohol consumption was also compared historically with the
average Finn and citizens of some European countries representing beer
(Belgium and Czechoslovakia), wine (France and Italy) and hard-liquor
drinking (Poland and the Soviet Union) cultures.

Co-creation. Memories from the Drawer was a thematically organised

exhibition of photographs selected from what the audience had sent to
Heureka as memories that they felt were meaningful. The project was
carried out in collaboration with the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, and
thousands of photographs were also used to make the cover story of the
monthly supplement of the newspaper. This was the first time that this
magazine had contacted its readers directly. The themes that popped up
repeatedly from the photo collection included harvesting, coffee drink-
ing and the new cow, horse or car of the family. Another exhibit showed
visitors’ messages to decision makers.

All these engagement methods are still valid in the 2020s and have, as a matter of
fact, become mainstream in Finnish museum exhibitions, although it has taken
quite some time. As Hanna Forssell discusses in this volume, the plans that were
made in 1995 to renew the main exhibition of the Finnish National Museum
were still entirely object-focused: “Show what we have”. In these plans, modern
computer technology was also understood as an object for display rather than
an actual communication or engagement tool: “Computer equipment should be
present in most of the rooms”, was one of the aims of the renewal. Memorable
418 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

experiences and audience friendliness were mentioned in the process, but not
the methodology on how they could be achieved. The renewal that was executed
at the National Museum in 2000 was still based on behaviouristic pedagogy –
top-down, from the researcher and curator to the audience.

The evolution of technology has changed museum exhibitions, but this change
can remain technical and superficial if it does not deepen interaction or engage-
ment with the audience. In recent years, the most fundamental change has taken
place in the methodology to include communities around the museums and to
invite them to the planning-table, in order to produce more relevant content
for the audience (Simon 2016). Viita-aho discusses in this volume how partic-
ipatory methods can be used to the extent that they even question a museum’s
authority and power.

Heureka invited experience experts to its exhibitions for the first time in 1994
during the Crime and Fake exhibition. The police car exhibit was from time-to-
time attended by the police, and the audience could have direct interaction with
these professionals. Similar collaboration was organised during the Forest and
Me exhibition (1998), where crafts teachers assisted visitors in using a crafts
class and its equipment to make simple woodworks which could be taken home.

A deeper collaboration with experience experts was organised through the three
dialogue exhibitions, which by their nature totally relied on the presence of the
expert guide/inspirer. In this case we called them ambassadors too, because
they bridged the gap between them and us. The ambassadors were blind or vis-
ually impaired individuals in Dialogue in the Dark (2000–2001), sign language
speakers in Dialogue in Silence (2007–2008) and 70+ year olds in Dialogue
with Time (2016–2017). These exhibition concepts, which were developed by
social entrepreneurs Andreas Heinecke and Orna Cohen, were based on Martin
Buber’s philosophy that all learning happens in dialogue. These exhibitions
were built as platforms for encounters where the ambassadors, who represent
marginalised disabled groups, are portrayed through their strengths, skills and
experience, and the visitors, who mostly feel able-bodied are put in a position
where they lack skills and discover the experience and creativity of the differ-
ently-abled (Cohen and Heinecke 2016, pp. 55–58).

When Heureka decided to consider making an exhibition on mental illness and

mental well-being, there were many issues to consider.1 There was no doubt
about the importance of the topic. According to an international research group,
more than 20 percent of EU citizens receive help for mental health problems
in their lifetime. Similarly, in the United States, the health authorities estimate
that nearly 20 percent of the US population suffers from some type of mental
health disorder. The topic concerns us all, either personally or through someone
near to us.

1. I have treated this topic more in length in my article Myllykoski (2016), written in Finnish for the
publication initiated by the Finnish Association of Science Editors and Journalists.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  419

We were aware that discussing a taboo subject, such as mental health, would not
only be ground-breaking and fascinating, but also challenging. Science centres
are all about making science fun, and the audiences are usually children and
families. At Heureka, as in most science centres, one-third of our visitors are
primary-school age or younger. Would this exhibition have anything to offer
our youngest audiences, or should we accept it from the start that they and
their families, as well as youngest school groups, would stay away from the
exhibition? Should a science centre take a risk and potentially alienate its most
loyal visitor groups?

With the topic of mental health, Heureka would also intellectually be challenging
its own role and core ideology: sharing the joy of discovery. Could learning about
psychosis, anorexia or depression be a source of joy? We decided to accept the
challenge, thinking that in widening understanding and creating empathy, we
had a lot more to win than to lose. After all, mental health is no longer entirely
off limits, and it is widely discussed, for example, in the media. However, it is
also a topic that is easy to ignore or to avoid. It is not something you happily
chat about at a family dinner.

We expected that an exhibition on mental health would serve as a place where

audience members would have the chance and be allowed to talk about matters
that are otherwise difficult to broach. In reality, much of the audience visit sci-
ence centres out of general interest and curiosity, without necessarily knowing
which specific exhibitions are even going on. In that case, the exhibition could
stimulate potential interest in the general public, who would not be part of the
core target group because of their educational and professional background. This
could amplify the impact of the exhibition. Ultimately, an exhibition about mental
health is an exhibition about the human condition and its many dimensions. The
boundary between the physical and the mental has always fascinated humans.
Everyone experiences the mind and its wellbeing on a highly personal level.

We also took these initial considerations about the risks of a taboo topic to an
international level and suggested the exhibition theme for a European consor-
tium collaborative. Our partners were equally excited to take the risk, and this
exhibition was produced in collaboration with La Cité des sciences et de l’in-
dustrie, Paris, and Ciência Viva, Lisbon, with Heureka taking the project lead.

The planning of the exhibition began by contacting the Finnish Central Asso-
ciation for Mental Health, which promotes the cause of psychiatric patients
and rehabilitees, and the Finnish Mental Health Association, which supports
mental health through preventive action. We invited the two bodies, as well as
a number of psychiatrists, psychologists and other scientists, to join our exhi-
bition advisory board. The advisory committee urged us to focus on the various
aspects of mental well-being and how it can be maintained. It was decided that
the underlying tone of the exhibition should be optimistic.

The primary experts and advisors we consulted were, however, experts by ex-
perience. With the help of the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health,
420 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

we found ten people who suffered from mental health problems and who had
benefitted from the help they received. They had also been trained to talk about
their personal experiences to others. Among the experts by experience were
people who suffered from schizophrenia, depression, anorexia, hearing voices
(psychosis), bipolar disorder, a former addict who had attempted suicide and a
family member of a mental health patient. The experts by experience contributed
to the planning work throughout the project and also assisted with the exhibition
itself. In addition to one-on-one interviews, these experts met the whole plan-
ning team and participated in a brainstorming meeting with the Heureka staff.

Involving experts by experience to the planning of the exhibition was in line

with the motto of the disability movement, “Nothing about us without us”, and
also helped in concrete terms to create a more realistic, effective and humane
exhibition experience. The experts by experience helped us develop ideas, com-
mented on and debated them, tested the prototypes and made suggestions for
improvements. They were also occasionally available to the exhibition visitors
for a chat.

Initially it was thought that depression could be expressed through a grey room
with no windows, where the visitor could wear heavy boots and curl up under
a lead blanket. This would allow the audience to empathise with what it is like
for a depressed person to try to get up and go out. Even some of the scientific
advisors thought the idea was good, but the experts by experience saw their own
situation completely differently, i.e., when you are depressed, you feel nothing.
How can we simulate something than cannot be felt?

This comment changed the idea completely. We decided to look at depression

from three perspectives: the depressed person, their spouse and their child. The
exhibition experience was built within a living room, where the father, who is
depressed, sits in an armchair, the 10-year-old son is playing on the floor and
the mother is working in the kitchen behind a glass door. The viewer hears
each family member’s thoughts as a monologue, so that they can empathise
with each of their experiences. All mental disorders, not just depression, affect
the family and friends of the person living with the illness. Shedding light on
each of the different experiences, therefore, gives a more accurate picture of the
phenomenon and of human experience.

The planning process crystallised two central themes for the project: to help
reduce the stigmatisation of people with mental disorders and to encourage
visitors to look after their own mental health. We specifically wanted to avoid
giving the message that the exhibition was a place where one could come and
diagnose themselves or others.

The content of the exhibition was built around three themes. The first, The La-
belled, discussed how mental disorders have been viewed and treated in the past
and present. How have people defined normal at different times? The exhibition
begins with a boundary stone on the Borderlines of Insanity, with a constantly
moving borderline projected around it, which makes the visitors think about the
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  421

question of what we mean by madness. Some of the many dark chapters in the
history of mental health care are not that distant in history. For example, the
lobotomy was invented as late as the 1940s. Cutting off connections between the
frontal lobes and the rest of the brain will remove the symptoms of the mental
disorder, but also drastically alter the personality of a human being. Awarding
the Nobel Prize in 1949 to the Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, who
developed the lobotomy, is considered one of the most unfortunate decisions
made by the Nobel Foundation.

The second central theme of the exhibition, How Does it Feel?, aims to simu-
late what it feels like to live with a mental disorder. The audience of the science
centre knows to expect new and surprising – and often lifelike – multisensory
experiences relevant to the topic at hand. In addition to the depression scenario
described above, When Reality Distorts is an immersive representation of the
experiences that a psychotic might go through. In this experience, the visitor
sits down in a chair at a barbershop and starts hearing voices that are talking
about them. At the same time, some of the surfaces around the customer take a
surreal and scary appearance, created by means of projections.

One of the simulations is the Schizophone, an acoustic installation created by the

Parisian artist Pierre-Laurent Cassière. The installation is a simple headset with
two funnels that direct the hearing of the user to the sides so that they can hear
even quite distant sounds as long as they come directly from left or right, but
any sound made in front of them is practically inaudible. Wearing the headset
gives an experience of fragmented reality. The user might be hearing words or
conversation that their visual perception does not corroborate. According to one
of our experts based on experience, using the Schizophone felt very similar to
when he hears voices. Obviously, the Schizophone cannot simulate the entire
life experience of a person with schizophrenia, but it does offer the visitor a
glimpse into a situation where perceiving the reality around you makes no sense.

Figure 2. The Schizophone by Pierre-Laurent Cassière, a simulation of schizophrenia in Heureka Goes

Crazy (2013) exhibition, was exhibited in Ciência Viva as “Loucamente” (2014). Photo: Courtesy of
Ciência Viva, Lisbon, Portugal.
422 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

The exhibition experience also makes use of Edvard Munch’s expressionist

painting The Scream (1893), in which a figure, whilst holding his ears, seems
to be purging all his anxiety. The entire landscape seems to be screaming.
Munch himself wrote about the moment depicted in the painting: “I stood
there trembling with anxiety … and I sensed an infinite scream passing
through nature” (Stanska 2016). The painting is shown on a screen, framed
like a real painting. The frame hides a video camera that captures the face of
the visitor approaching the exhibit and replaces the face in the painting with
that of the visitor. The title of the installation is Is it Me? Within the context
of the exhibition, the video work is humorous, but with a serious edge that
elicits empathy. The visitor gives their face to the screamer; it could be me.

How Does it Feel? is the exhibition section that gives voice to experts based
on experience. Their stories told by themselves can be heard at the My Life
exhibit – what was the process like to fall ill, to seek treatment or get help
and get better. The people are shown as life-size video images. When watch-
ing the recording across a round table, the visitor encounters each expert
by experience face to face. The situation is non-hierarchical and respectful,
aiming to create a sense of trust and empathy.

The third theme of the exhibition is Service Station for the Mind. This sec-
tion encourages visitors to express and identify emotions, to process their
problems and promote mental wellbeing through social activities. It has
exhibits that are of most interest to the youngest audiences, such as the video
installation where eyes are gleaming in a dark forest at night. By waving a
hand in front of scary images, they turn into stardust and then into harmless
animals. Some of the eyes are too high for children to reach, so they need
the help of adults to face and dispel their fears.

The adult audiences will probably enjoy the Worry Shredder. Visitors can write
down their worries and feed it into the absurdist machine, which turns these
worries into a flow of shredded paper. In addition to being fun, the exhibit also
makes a serious and useful reference to a technique that a stressed-out person
can use to manage worries that might keep them up at night, i.e., write them on
a piece of paper for later reflection.

The Service Station for the Mind also provided an opportunity to participate in
an ongoing research project. Visitors could take an extensive series of cognitive
tests and, if they so wished, permit the use of the results and their personal
data by a research group studying schizophrenia at the University of Helsinki.
The long-term study aims to establish whether cognitive tests could indicate
susceptibility to schizophrenia.

The definition of a sound mind changes over time and varies among cultures.
During the planning stage, decisive differences between the European consor-
tium members came to the fore concerning the nature of mental health. The
understanding among Finnish experts is that mental health should be seen on
a spectrum; a person may be healthy at one point in their lives, and they may
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  423

become mentally ill at another point. It follows from this assumption that a
person who is healthy today may have mental health problems in the future
and, conversely, someone who is ill today, may be later free of the illness. The
French expert advisors found it impossible to accept this approach. They saw
mental health more as a dichotomy: a person is either well or ill, and it is not
even possible for everyone to become ill. Seeing mental health as a continuum,
for them, would deny people their differences and, ultimately, their illness.
However, we found a way of negotiating around this issue, because everyone
ultimately agreed that the primary goal of the exhibition was to coax the audiences
into thinking about mental health and those who live with mental disorders.
The focus of the exhibition was never to be on clinical diagnostics, but rather
on different personal experiences.

Patients from a psychiatric hospital in Lisbon who were interviewed as experts

by experience for the My Life videos appeared without their faces showing. The
hospital had decided to protect the anonymity, especially of the schizophrenic
patients, in case they might later regret their decision to participate in the exhibi-
tion. To treat all participants equally, the faces of all experts by experience were
eventually blurred. Here, the well-intended protective measure does, however,
turn against itself; it is as if a person recovering from mental illness is not a fully
capacitated citizen. Hiding the face also conveys the message that the speaker
has something to be ashamed of – they literally lose their face. This choice is
proof in itself that the goal of the exhibition, destigmatisation, is a rightful and
ambitious one. Suzie Thomas discusses in the ethics section of this volume the
museal silence and its eight ways, as suggested by Mason and Sayner (2019).
Here we see the museum’s collusion in society’s silence out of overprotection
and, I would say, misunderstood respect for privacy.

The most significant practical differences between Finland, France and Portugal
had to do with the naming of the exhibition, communication and marketing.
After long consideration, Heureka decided to name its exhibition Heureka Goes
Crazy. We consulted out stakeholders and experts by experience about the name,
especially the use of word crazy, which is a disrespectful word in Finnish, but can
figuratively have positive connotations. The mental health field had previously
criticised, for example, Stockmann, a Finnish department store, for using the
word crazy or mad in their marketing in a commercial context. However, the
exhibition title Heureka Goes Crazy was unanimously approved by all experts.
They felt it would attract attention and curiosity among those members of the
public who would not be interested in a more moderately and non-controver-
sially named exhibition. “An exhibition that takes such a respectful view of the
theme, with the aim of destigmatising mental health problems and supporting
people who are recovering from mental illnesses, deserves all the attention it
can get,” stated the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health (Myllykoski
2016, p. 189).

In Portugal, the exhibition was named Loucamente (Madly), an edgy expression,

which has a clinical meaning, but especially in the parlance of the young, is a
424 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

positive term, a similar notion to what the word can have in Finnish. Loucamente
means madness in the sense of testing your extreme boundaries, knowing your-
self. The name was chosen because Ciência Viva wanted to market the exhibition
from the perspective of mental health, not mental illness.

The French decided to go for a name which is based on the English term men-
tal disorder rendering it into French as MENTAL DESORDRE. The name was
disorderly on many levels. The proper term in French is something completely
different: troubles psychiques, mental disorders. In the poster, the letters were
laid out in a disorderly manner and in the title, the noun and the adjective had
changed places. According to French colleagues, MENTAL DESORDRE could
also be associated with a rock band, being modern, inviting and impressive. The
subtitle of the exhibition helped explain the unusual exhibition name: Change
your view on mental disorders (Changez de regard sur les troubles psychiques).

Figure 3. The poster for the French version of Heureka Goes Crazy. Photo: Courtesy of Universci-
ence, Paris, France.

Heureka Goes Crazy was the recipient of the 2014 Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge
Award for Visitor Experience, which was presented at the annual conference of
ASTC (Association of Science-Technology Centers) in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Following this recognition, many Northern American science centres showed
interest in the exhibition. We received the most enthusiastic feedback from Eric
Jolly, President of the Science Museum of Minnesota. Jolly said he had been
looking for his next socially meaningful exhibition project following the 2007
exhibition RACE – Are we so different?, which he curated in collaboration with
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  425

the American Anthropological Association and which was very controversial,

and even led to threats being made against him.

The Science Museum of Minnesota studied the exhibition thoroughly and de-
cided to bring it to North America and take responsibility for its tour there.
However, the title had to be changed; the use of the word crazy was totally out
of question. Another modification was that when the original text described
patients suffering from a mental illness, in the American version they were
more neutrally living with the illness. After long considerations the American
title of the exhibition became Mental Health: Mind Matters. A recent study
about controversy in science exhibitions takes Mental Health: Mind Matters
as an edgy and provocative example of how science museums can responsibly
deal with complex socio-scientific issues and not remain “temples of, and for,
scientific truth” (Pedretti & Navas Iannini 2020, p. 160).

Figure 4. Heureka Goes Crazy exhibition goes to America as Mental Health: Mind Matters. Photo:
Courtesy of Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA.

In the exhibition content one element was sorely missing, from the American
perspective: the exhibition does not discuss post-traumatic disorder, PTSD, at
all. According to estimates, 3.5 percent of the US population suffers from PTSD,
which was classified as a mental disorder in 1980 owing to a high number of
PTSD diagnoses made for veterans of the Vietnam War. In the rest of the world,
it is estimated that 0.5–1 percent of the population suffers from PTSD. Approx-
imately 9 percent of the US population suffers from PTSD during their lifetime.
Up to 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are estimated to suffer from
PTSD. The Ontario Science Centre in Toronto also showed interest in hosting
the exhibition and similarly pointed out that PTSD is also an essential theme for
Canadian war veterans. Moreover, PTSD is caused not only by war experiences,
426 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

but also by any violent incidents, traffic accidents, natural disasters and other
life-threatening situations.

Understanding the Audience and Inviting Them to the

Planning Table
Formal learning is measured by examinations, tests, grades and certificates,
but the museum cannot be passed or failed, and performance cannot be meas-
ured. “Nobody ever flunked a science museum,” Frank Oppenheimer famously
summarised. Here, Oppenheimer recognised an essential strength of museums;
they engage their audiences, without the pressure to perform and pass a test. An
interactive exhibition offers an opportunity to create dialogue with nature, its
phenomena and its diversity. Oppenheimer called Exploratorium “a museum of
science, art and human perception” and “a community museum for awareness”.

Museums are said to be informal learning environments for all ages. This is true,
but why be satisfied with a definition that is based on negation: informal? It is
typical for science centre visits to be fuelled by the visitor’s own choices and own
actions – learning by doing. For this reason, the form of learning can be more
accurately described as free-choice learning (Falk 2001, pp. 6–8).

When free-choice learning is taken seriously, we have to review some tradition-

al museum practices. The traditional term for a professional interpreting the
content of a museum is a guide. The term comes with a top-down connotation:
the guide takes the lead and the visitors follow. This does not invite visitors to
take an active role. There is a similar connotation with the other term in use,
facilitator. There is a difficult topic, and the facilitator makes it easier (Latin:
facilis = easy) to understand. Even the French term animateur leaves a visitor
in the passive role, when an animator makes a dead exhibition come alive. To
solve this problem and to address a more active and participatory role for the
visitor, Heureka introduced new terminology in 2008 and renamed its guides
inspirers, who are there to inspire the audience. The term assumes a positive
follow-up from the inspired audience.

Enough research has been conducted on learning at science centres that we

are already able to describe many aspects of their impact. A valuable insight
about the educational value of the constructivist museum, both in theory and
practice, was written by George E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (1998) and
a more recent volume by Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums: Visitor
Experiences and the Making of Meaning (updated edition 2018). Interactive
exhibitions produce several different types of learning results. For example,
interview-based research has examined the experience of the public immediately
after a visit, but has also surveyed what people remember months afterwards.
Learning results can roughly be divided into four types: knowledge and skills,
perspective and awareness (new angles on a familiar topic and understanding
the bigger picture), motivations and interests and last, but definitely not least,
social learning (Falk et al. 2004, pp. 180–181).
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  427

Typically, each visitor reports that they experienced several different types of
learning. Over time, knowledge and skills will fade from their mind, but in some
cases the memories might even grow stronger. One particularly fascinating type
of learning is the last one on the list, i.e., social learning. Science centres are
almost always visited by groups; less than one percent of Heureka’s visitors come
alone. Interactive exhibitions place each visiting group in a new situation. This
situation creates interaction in which the knowledge, skills, experiences, ideas
and questions of the group’s members emerge. The members of a group learn
from each other, but also about each other.

There are ways to invite and include potential visitors to the planning process of
an exhibition. One practical approach is the use of front-end studies, i.e., listening
to the potential audience at the preparatory phase of the planning process. Here
the voice of the visitor is heard before important decisions about the exhibition
planning are made. The front-end studies are meant to tap the project planning
group into the knowledge-base, attitudes and expectations of potential visitors.

A good front-end study employs open-ended questions; to hear the language

of a potential visitor is a valuable part of accumulated understanding. Even the
tone of voice is important and sometimes crucial to understanding different
registers of language and meaning. Therefore, it is best if the exhibition project
group executes any front-end interviews itself and does not outsource it to others.
Questioning Assumptions is a practical and valuable handbook about executing
front-end studies, co-authored by Lynn Dierking and Wendy Pollock (1998).

When science centre exhibitions are planned, a number of critical factors that
aid learning and memorability should be taken into account. For example, it is
important to give the public genuine opportunities to exercise choice, rather than
merely offering one-way content. This means that visitors to the exhibition are
in charge of their own visitor experience and that each experience is personal.
On one hand, a museum visit should be a comfortable, stress-free and pleasant.
On the other, it should also be appropriately challenging – intellectually, but why
not physically challenging as well? A multisensory phenomenon experienced
with the whole body is more memorable. In the best case, interaction is two-
way; the exhibition audience is allowed to comment or leave their mark on the
exhibition and its content by some other means.

In planning science centre exhibitions, a wide diversity of visitors should be

considered. Rather than just age, sex and educational level, attention should
be paid to the public’s expectations and motivation for their visit. For example,
Heureka has found it beneficial to understand the five different types of audiences
suggested by John H. Falk in his Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience
(2009). Falk’s classification identifies groups in the science centre’s, or any
museum’s, audience that attend for completely different reasons.

Explorers are usually curious and mainly interested in whatever is on offer

at the time. Facilitators are primarily satisfying someone else’s needs, e.g., of
their child, their partner, a friend or relative. Hobbyists and professionals visit
428 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

the museum because they have a clearly defined interest in a particular topic.
Experience seekers are looking for unique offerings in order to tick off their
experiences at the science centre’s most famous attractions. Rechargers want to
enjoy the atmosphere and ambience rather than find out about a particular topic.

The identities behind these visits are situation-specific; the same person can
visit the exhibition for different reasons on different days. They might bring
their child to the science centre today on the child’s terms, but decide to come
back another time and do the things in which they themselves are interested.

In surveys, we have detected that all these identity groups are present among
our audiences. Falk’s identity model has influenced our planning ever since
we created the Heureka Classics (2009) exhibition, which is still on display
(partly renewed) due to its successful design solutions that accommodate the
needs of various visitor identities. The exhibition design pays special attention
to the child-adult or explorer-facilitator collaboration, e.g., by offering table-top
exhibits at two different heights, depending on which side of the table you are
standing (Myllykoski 2010). The minimalistic design approach with few colours
and durable materials, such as massive birch, stainless steel and thick acrylic
plates, are also meant to please the eye of the recharger. In Heureka Classics we
introduced exhibition texts in digital format for the very first time, which enabled
us to add text and languages. In addition to Finnish, Swedish and English, we
added Estonian and Russian. This was done without occupying much space, for
those who wish to know more, i.e., professionals and hobbyists. The identity
model has also shaped the way we frame the questions in our standard visitor
surveys (ca. 1200 annually). Instead of asking about general visitor satisfaction,
we ask what the visitor’s main expectation for the visit, and then to what extent
this expectation was met by the actual visit. We have also carried out non-visitor
surveys to better understand reasons for not visiting. “It did not occur to me” is
a stronger reason than location or price, which has given an incentive to invest
in marketing and communications.

Conclusion
The idea of the constructivist museum, a museum that engages its audience
in active inquiry and free-choice learning, arrived in Finland with the birth of
Heureka, the Finnish science centre, which applied the interactive methods of
science centres to historical and societal exhibitions. The future of Heureka’s
engagement strategy is to further consider its impact on society. How could the joy
of discovery reach more people and thus become more meaningful and relevant?

A useful concept to frame this kind of societal impact is science capital (Archer
et al. 2015), which derives from Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural and social
capital and covers science-related forms of it. This refers to individual’s expo-
sure and knowledge of science from values and attitudes to knowing people in
science-related professions and having science as an everyday topic to discuss,
to name a few aspects of it. Looking at the spectrum of how science, or knowl-
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  429

edge, thinking now of the larger meaning of the Finnish word tiede, science,
can enrich human lives in diverse ways, museums can certainly identify new
ways to be relevant to their communities. The notion of science capital helps in
identifying the haves and have-nots, in detecting inequalities in participation
and, finally, in promoting social justice. As the debated suggestion for the new
museum definition states in its democratising spirit, “Museums aim to contribute
to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing”.

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Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  431

Entering the Mystery – Helsinki

Noir, a fictional detective story
created in a museum space
Sanna-Mari Niemi1
Abstract
Helsinki Noir – A Crime to Solve (17.9.2015–9.1.2017) at the Amos Anderson
Art Museum in Helsinki was an example of a contemporary museum exhibition
where fictional storytelling took a novel and emphasised approach. The exhibi-
tion, scripted by the curator, was built around a fictional murder mystery set in
1930s Helsinki. Coupled with lots of textual material and an open ending, the
story called upon reader-visitors to assume the role of detective. The nature of
the detective genre itself invited visitors to participate, fill in the gaps and thus
co-author the exhibition narrative. This chapter analyses how textual elements
and a multimodal museum exhibition design were used to provide visitors with
the sense of a sequential storyline that could be read as an embodied version
of detective fiction. This illuminates some of the special narrative features of
museum exhibitions: their storytelling potential combines multiple sensory and
semiotic channels, genuine artefacts, spatiality, temporality, full-bodied expe-
rience, interactivity and social experience.

Helsinki Noir included elements promoting immersion, interactivity and co-cre-

ation, one manifestation of this being a writing contest for upper-secondary
school students to produce optional endings, incorporating the winning text
into the exhibition booklet as an epilogue. I argue that Helsinki Noir aids our
understanding of how fictionality, open subjectivity and changing the narrative
role of the visitor can be used as a tool for audience engagement, and how cer-
tain textual strategies reflect contemporary ideology to discuss and share some
of museums’ institutional authority with their visitors.

Keywords: exhibition narrative, fiction, embodiment, spatial storytelling, au-

dience engagement

Introduction
As a storytelling environment, museum exhibitions differentiate themselves
from many other art forms, such as literature and cinema. Museums let their
visitors encounter authentic objects in a multi-sensory manner and in a physical
environment that is simultaneously intimate and social. The museum archi-
tecture and multimedia elements can be invested with meaning, and the whole
exhibition narrative typically unravels through the movements and actions of

1. This chapter has been peer reviewed.

432 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

visitors, appealing to their many senses (on multisensoriality, see Levent &
Pascual-Leone 2014). Museums have an institutional role in mediating accurate
and research-based information around their collections. Therefore, subjectivity
and fictionality might not strike us as typical expectations linked with museum
narratives. However, storytelling is seen as an increasingly important tool for
creating engaging and resonating museum experiences (Bedford 2014). What
happens when a fictional detective story becomes the main theme of an art
museum exhibition and visitors are invited to co-author the narrative? How
does crime fiction engage the reader-visitor?

In this chapter, I analyse the exhibition Helsinki Noir – A Crime to Solve of the
Amos Anderson Art Museum2 as a multimedia text and a spatialised application
of crime fiction. In addition to a theoretical background of museum studies
and detective fiction criticism, my analysis is supported by a theme interview
I conducted in 2018 with Susanna Luojus (interview 1), the museum curator
and creator of Helsinki Noir. In this semi-structured interview, my questions
concerned issues such as the exhibition process from the curator’s perspective,
and especially the ideas behind choosing the detective fiction genre as a mediat-
ing strategy for art. Through personal visiting and documentation, I have taken
into account the various elements of the exhibition, such as displayed artworks,
lighting, audio material, as well as architectural and spatial elements linked with
the narrative. I also apply an artefact review (Thomas & Koskinen-Koivisto 2016,
pp. 65–66), a combination of exhibition texts, leaflets, online information and
other associated material.3

My main objectives are twofold. Firstly, to explore the strategies by which fictional
storytelling contributes to the exhibition experience and audience engagement
in meaningful ways. Secondly, to show that spatial and embodied qualities of the
museum exhibition as a medium add layers to textual narrative as well. I find
that the physicality of reading museum narratives is particularly interesting in
the case of Helsinki Noir, a murder mystery, as detective fiction often emphasises
the corporeality of both its victims and detectives (Plain 2001, p. 9). On a textual
level, Helsinki Noir is a classic and arguably quite conservative example of a
detective story. Yet, I argue that by providing a fully embodied experience, and
thereby combining the elements and strengths of both the detective fiction genre
and the museum exhibition narrative as a medium, Helsinki Noir established
new kinds of relationships with its reader-visitors, inviting them to co-author
the mystery narrative.

2. Amos Anderson (1878–1961) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish businessperson, newspaper publi-

sher and patron of the arts. The Amos Anderson Art Museum functioned in Helsinki during the years
1965–2017. In 2018, the association founded by Anderson, Föreningen Konstsamfundet, opened a
new museum, Amos Rex, in Helsinki.
3. I am grateful to Susanna Luojus and the museum Amos Rex for allowing me to consult archival
material of this exhibition, including the curator’s documentation of the exhibition-making processes,
working stage exhibition texts and floor plans.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  433

Detective fiction is a genre known to address hermeneutic activity, narrativity

and intertextuality (Pyrhönen 1994, pp. 36–41). Typical of detective fiction,
the Helsinki Noir exhibition script is a clear example of Barthes’ hermeneutic
code, which consists of various terms suggesting an enigma and aiming to hold
reader-visitors in suspense throughout the narrative (Barthes 1990, pp. 18–20).
Part of the hermeneutic code, a desire to find out, has been suggested to create a
driving force for reading crime fiction. Therefore, I argue that Helsinki Noir gives
us an insight into the possibilities of using fictional storytelling in museums as a
method for audience engagement. To explore how a fictional detective story took
physical space in the exhibition, I look at how the plot was divided into chapters
along a circulation route, through textual elements and multimodal exhibition
design. To address the question of audience engagement, I look at how the
exhibition concept called for active visitor participation on several levels, both
textual and other. Here, I apply a view of interactivity as a dialogic and reflective
exchange between reader-visitors and exhibition elements, instead of physical
or mechanical interaction (Roppola 2012, pp. 44–45). Firstly, the application of
the crime fiction genre implies co-authoring from the reader’s part in following
the clues and solving the mystery. In Helsinki Noir, visitors were placed in the
role of detective and thus invited to make a co-authoring reading of the mu-
seum narrative. Secondly, as the enigma only had partial closure and was left
open-ended, visitors’ output and imagination were needed for full disclosure. By
organising a writing contest for young people and publishing the winning text
as an appendix to the exhibition booklet distributed to all visitors, the museum
showed an interest in and an appreciation of the visitor perspective. Thirdly, both
texts and other exhibition design elements were used to add immersion and ex-
citement throughout the circulation route. Furthermore, intertextuality, classical
detective story topoi and detailed Helsinki-centredness added possible points
of reference to make the exhibition experience more engaging and personal.

This chapter is part of an on-going discussion about new narratives and multiple
voices in museums. As someone with a background in comparative literature
and museum studies, I have taken an interest in fictionalisation and playfully
innovative museum narratives. Authors and artists from Henry James to Marcel
Duchamp, Thomas Bernhard and beyond have used the museum as a setting
or metaphor over the centuries. In recent decades, museums themselves have
become more active in experimenting with texts and the museum exhibition
medium, as my examples in this chapter illustrate (see also Roberts 1997, pp.
76–77). Often, this is done in co-operation with artist-curators or artists-in-res-
idence, but as Helsinki Noir showcases, curators themselves can lean towards a
more creative style as well. One of the interesting aspects about openly fictional
museum narratives is connected to the inherent discrepancy between fiction-
al storytelling and the institutional role of museums in promoting balanced
and research-based information about their collections. The Museums Act and
ICOM’s Code of Ethics for Museums highlight the mission of museums in con-
434 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

veying reliable, well-founded and accurate information in their exhibitions.4

It is relevant to ask how fiction fits with this mission. This is an on-going dis-
cussion, as many contemporary museums use fictional storytelling as part of
their exhibition approaches. There are even museums built around a fictional
concept. Well-known international cases include Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of
Innocence5 (Turkish Masumiyet Müzesi) in Istanbul, and Dennis Severs’ House6
in Spitalfields, London. Both Pamuk and Severs have created a physical mu-
seum and a relating book explaining the fictional contexts of their collections.
These places have become popular attractions that open up explorations to the
chiasmic relations between history, memory, imagination and personal and
collective experience.

Already in 1995, Blais (1995, p. 314) raised the question of the possible poetic
function of an exhibition text. Hourston Hanks (2012, p. 21) also asks what hap-
pens as a text goes beyond basic visitor information and collection interpretation
and becomes “the very content, method or meaning” of a museum exhibition.
Here, I ask a similar question around fictional museum texts. What is to be
expected or gained by adopting a popular fictional genre instead of a so-called
typical museum text? I maintain that introducing a high level of subjectivity
and fictionality into museum exhibition narratives is not just about enter- or
edutainment, but that it participates in a larger discussion about museums as
knowledge-producers and mediators of collections and research. It is part of a
trend that places visitors and personal experience in the focus of museum exhi-
bitions. Multiplicity of textual styles highlight the importance of narratives and
resonance in the context of both the museum experience and museum learning
(MacLeod, Hourston Hanks & Hale 2012; Falk & Dierking 2000, pp. 177–189).
This is a logical continuation for development in fields such as museum pedago-
gy, curation and the study of museum texts, as well as in redefining the mission
of museums. The study of narrative has been introduced to new disciplines,
such as architecture, cultural studies and museum studies, giving way to new
understandings of how museums function as narrative spaces. Before entering
the crime scene of Helsinki Noir, I look at some of these developments.

Theoretical Background Behind Creative Museum Texts

The museum environment is a powerful medium for storytelling purposes,
because it provides an embodied, multi-sensorial spatial experience among
authentic artworks and artefacts. MacLeod, Hourston Hanks and Hale (2012)
see narrative as a promising mediating strategy in museums, a way to create
museum environments that encourage engagement, memory and imagination.

4. ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums, available online at [Link]

uploads/2018/07/[Link] [Last accessed 4 March 2021]
5. Curiously enough, the Museum of Innocence received the European Museum of the Year award
in 2014. I find that this reflects the recognition of the power of storytelling in museums of today.
6. According to Dennis Severs’ House’s website, Severs (1948–1999) referred to the time capsule crea-
tion as a still-life drama: [Link] [Last accessed 4 March 2021]
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  435

They accurately point out that narratives enable us to bridge some of the many
gaps that museums deal with: temporal, geographical, cultural and physical
(MacLeod, Hourston Hanks & Hale 2012, p. xxiii). The example of Helsinki Noir
shows us that museum narratives do not have to be limited to bridging gaps in
information, but can also have goals such as promoting interactivity, the aes-
thetic pleasure of language or intermedial relations between text and artworks.
Especially with new digital technology, there can be many types of stories for
various audiences in an exhibition space, and some of these can be fictional,
be it a dramatized interpretation or re-enactment of history, an artistic inter-
vention or a piece of literature. Hein (2002, pp. 168–169) suggests that drama
and theatrical techniques can provide a way of engaging visitors emotionally,
intellectually and sometimes even physically, thus bringing them closer to the
contents of museums. I argue that the same applies to creative museum texts.

Especially since the 1980s, several significant shifts have affected our understand-
ing of museum narratives. Both theoretical and practical, they have influenced,
for instance, museum architecture, exhibition design and the study of museum
texts. The so-called narrative and spatial turns have brought novel theoretical
and interdisciplinary approaches to museum exhibitions and how artefacts and
space interact, in fields such as architecture, art history and comparative litera-
ture (Ryan, Foote & Azaryahu 2016). In approaching museum communication
and reading the museum exhibition as a text, I continue the discussion of, e.g.,
cultural theorist and critic Mieke Bal (1996) and linguist Louise Ravelli (2006).
Another important approach is to look at the museum exhibition as narrative
space. Researchers such as Tzortzi (2015), Roppola (2012), Ryan, Foote and
Azaryahu (2016) and Bünz (2015) have all explored how museum architecture
and spatial design can support, add and convey museum meanings in exhibi-
tions. They have shown that through mindful planning, visual axes, corridors
and transitions can become meaningful and affect the pace of a walking tour.
It is also interesting to see how circulation routes and bodily movement are
connected to plot development. There is a lot to discover from the viewpoint of
literature as well. By looking at museum narratives, we gain new perspectives
on story-space-relations and interactive storytelling. My research continues
with this line of research, combining museum studies with the study of narra-
tive. Yet so far, most of the research has been concentrated on the most typi-
cal museum exhibition narratives, such as chronological narratives in history
museums. Although chronology and periodisation are still characteristic ways
of organising museum exhibitions, other ways have started to gain importance
as well, including the thematic exhibition. My contribution is to look at cases
where textual narrative takes new roles, namely when a fictional text becomes
the focus of an exhibition.
436 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

From Being an Authority Towards Co-authoring –

Textual strategies for discussing the institutional voice
From the perspective of museum studies, we can point out that both pedagog-
ical and museological shifts have affected contemporary museum narratives.
The so-called new museology, starting in the 1980s, has brought in a critical
reassessment of power relations, knowledge and representation in museums,
leading to closer scrutiny of display techniques and labelling (Stam 2005, pp.
54–69, pp. 63–65). Instead of top-down master narratives, more attention is
given to microhistories, groups that have previously been marginalised in official
history, and more communal exhibition processes (MacLeod, Hourston Hanks
& Hale 2012; Svanberg 2010). A large cultural trend, story-centredness, can be
linked with museums moving their emphasis from objects to visitors and expe-
riences (Henning 2006, pp. 90–91). As part of this process, instead of focusing
on their authenticity, artefacts may be used even as reproductions and virtual
models. In an experience-oriented or story-centred exhibition, the coherence of
the story is emphasised over any specific artefact (Henning 2006, pp. 91–92).
This applies to Helsinki Noir, which can be described as an experience-oriented
or story-centred museum exhibition. In Helsinki Noir, artworks were largely used
as supporting a fictional story, providing scenes and characters, corresponding
to descriptions in literature.7

From the perspective of museum texts, Roberts (1997, pp. 1–6) traces a signifi-
cant shift in museum narratives back to the 1970s and 1980s, reflected by visitor
studies becoming more common and museum educators being introduced to
exhibition teams. Introducing more visitor perspective alongside traditional
curatorial practices led the way towards co-existing interpretations and episte-
mologies, taking steps towards shared authority over museum meanings and
acknowledging that the very act of presentation is fundamentally interpretive
(Roberts 1997, p. 2, pp. 72–75). As contemporary museums are striving for
more inclusive and interactive practices, adopting multiple voices and styles in
museum texts makes museums’ communication more transparent, both from
the viewpoint of museums and the exhibition medium. Openly fictional mu-
seum texts can be one way of emphasising the constructed nature of museum
exhibitions, by drawing attention to their literary and institutional origins. Such
self-reflexivity can encourage visitors to construct their own narratives about
what they see (Roberts 1997, p. 143; Roppola 2012, p. 27).

One recent trend having influenced a rising level of creative museum texts and
fictionality (such as in Helsinki Noir) is the popularity of the artist-as-curator
(Tzortzi 2015, pp. 60–64; see also Paunu, this volume). Although museums

7. Although paintings and sculptures had an exhibit label, the story did not explicitly encourage
visitors to read them. In fact, reading the labels could have caused an unnecessary pause to the plot,
similar to long descriptions in a realist novel. Labels drew attention to the museum environment
and thereby to the structures and practices underlying the exhibition medium itself, causing breaks
in the visitor’s immersion in the storyline.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  437

have presented various storytelling elements before, we are witnessing a growth

in creative museum texts done in co-operation, both in the form of audience
interaction (visitor labels, Twitter hashtags, etc.) and artist/author/poet inter-
ventions, and in general, introducing a higher level of subjectivity in the museum
exhibition. Often, these exhibitions show self-awareness of museum exhibition
processes, playing with the ideas of how museal display and the museum in-
stitution influence artefacts. Recent examples of playful use of popular genres
in Finland include the Tampere Art Museum’s counter-fictional art exhibition
Is This for Real? (20.5.2011–28.8.2011), which was curated and imaginatively
scripted by science fiction novelist Johanna Sinisalo (2011). In Serlachius Mu-
seum Gösta’s exhibition The Model and the Mad Painter (14.6.2014–7.5.2017),
novelist Riikka Ala-Harja’s fictional texts were focalised through models in the
artworks, thus giving an active role and voice to those usually in a passive position
of being looked at. In Turku Castle, the exhibition A Few Words about Women
(8.3.2019–8.3.2020) popularised recent scholarship about women of 17th cen-
tury Turku by using women’s magazine styled texts. To complete the exhibition
experience, on sale at the museum shop was a whole glossy-paged pastiche issue
with articles such as interviews, love stories and career or fashion tips.

In Helsinki Noir, the museum curator took on the role of author (or became the
curator-as-artist), by inventing a creative fictional story around both pre-existing
and custom-made artworks. However, not only was the exhibition built around
artworks, it was also partly generated by them. As the curator set out to make a
fictional crime story, they commissioned the crime, or in this case, the victim,
from contemporary artist Jarno Vesala. Vesala had a free hand to come up with a
mysterious crime scene, and after the work was created, curator Luojus decided
on the type of crime that would become the starting point of Helsinki Noir. There
is interaction, or dialogue, as Bal (1996) might put it, between curator, artist,
artworks and eventually visitors, as I shall discuss further.8 Openness to such
interaction has become an increasingly important part of current museum work.
In what follows, I look at Helsinki Noir as a case study of a fictional museum
exhibition text that encourages dialogic interaction.

Entering the Mystery of Helsinki Noir – Introducing the

concept
The exhibition Helsinki Noir – A Crime to Solve was scripted and curated by
Susanna Luojus and built around a fictional murder mystery set in 1930s Hel-
sinki. Upon entering the Amos Anderson Art Museum and purchasing their
ticket, visitors were given an exhibition guide called Helsinki Noir – A Deadly
Proposal (Luojus 2015) that mimics pocket-book detective stories (figure 1).
This booklet, as well as the whole exhibition, was complete with art deco style

8. According to Bal (1996, p. 3), museum exhibition can be regarded as discourse, and the gestures
of showing and display can be understood as speech acts. Bal sees the museal display as a form of
conversation where a first person, the narrator, tells a second person, the visitor, something about a
third person, the object on display (ibid, pp. 3–4). All these parties bring something to the conversation.
438 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

graphic design by Minna Luoma. The dark blueish tones emphasised a sense of
mystery and the visuality drew links to film noir imagery. The booklet included
the exhibition story in three languages (Finnish, Swedish, English), a total of 64
pages, which is a considerable length for a museum exhibition leaflet. The story
was divided into 13 chapters that each had a corresponding wall number and thus
reading place in the exhibition. The narrative was sequential, a combination of
literary text and spatial elements. The reader-visitor walked along a route where
suggested points for stopping and reading had been marked.

In detective stories, the labyrinth is a recurrent motif, and the act of detection
is often epitomised by finding the “red thread”. Etymologically, the word clew
refers to a ball of thread, such as the one helping Theseus out of the mytholog-
ical maze, leading to the detection staple, the clue, something leading you out
of a maze or helping you solve a problem (Irwin 1994, pp. 176–177). To find the
solution of Helsinki Noir, visitors had to orient themselves through partial-
ly maze-like architecture. Some of this was undoubtedly due to the museum
building’s physical layout, but some was the effect of scenography (such as the
use of added walls, roughly resembling residential blocks of the Töölö district,
with colours matching a painting by Marcus Collin). The exhibition started on
the 4th floor of the Amos Anderson Art Museum, then continued half a floor
downstairs, and finally led to floor 4½, where it ended. The wall texts and floor
stickers helped orient visitors. Nevertheless, there was a possibility for visitors
to start from different floors and disregard the suggested route. Museum guides
helped visitors to minimise the risk of confusion.

Figure 1. The booklet Helsinki Noir – A Deadly Proposal (Luojus 2015). The winning entry for the
museum’s writing contest for young people was added to the booklet as an epilogue. Photo: San-
na-Mari Niemi.

At the entrance, an introductory wall text explained that the exhibition concept
“makes the viewer part of a crime drama”, and is a “fictitious dramaturgic com-
position, partly based on a series of historical crimes”. The historical crime series
in question was revealed at the end of the exhibition and is discussed later in this
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  439

chapter. As the suite of the introduction text and the subtitle of the exhibition
suggested, reader-visitors were encouraged to participate in solving the mystery.

In a theatrical manner, the story began as the curtain was lifted (this time, by
visitors entering the exhibition). In the first exhibition room, there was another
curtain, and visitors would find themselves at the scene of a sinister mystery.
Shall we step into the darkness?

At the Crime Scene – The reader-visitor as detective

Floating in the murky water was a long-legged young woman in a short
dress and silk stockings, her hair spread out like a fan. Her face had
that serene, coolly peaceful expression so typical of many of the recently
drowned. (Luojus 2015, p. 44)

Figure 2. Jarno Vesala: Behind the Curtain (2015). Mixed media, including a video projection, audio
and selected objects. In the back of the installation, the projection reveals the victim’s corpse floating
on the waves. Amos Rex Archives/ Photo: Stella Ojala

The story begins on a damp and misty November night in 1930s Helsinki with
a sinister discovery. In the first exhibition room, a custom-made multimedia
installation by Jarno Vesala called Behind the Curtain (figure 2) became visi-
ble and played with darkness and sweeping light illuminating the elements in
sequence. On the front right was a dressing table with a mirror and some small
items, including a set of letters. In the back of the installation emerged the body
of a young woman, seemingly washed ashore by the undulating waves. The
installation itself was ambiguous, but texts directed reader-visitors by raising
the key questions: who is this “Belle of Kaivopuisto”9, as the press dubs her,
and – most importantly – whodunit?

9. Kaivopuisto (Swedish: Brunnsparken) is one of the city’s oldest parks, located in the Southern
tip of the Helsinki peninsula.
440 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

The beginning follows a long tradition of detective fiction by showing the dis-
covery of a young and highly aestheticized female body and describing how it
creates a sense of disorder in the community that needs to be amended (Plain
2001; Bronfen 1992). The victim is aestheticized both stylistically in the text
(with terms such as “long-legged lovely” or “quite innocent and attractive in
demeanour”, Luojus 2015, p. 44), and through the installation. It is an artwork,
meant to be looked at. “Reading” this body opens an interesting duality. Like an
artwork that becomes readable for viewers and connoisseurs of art, in detective
fiction the victim’s corpse is textualized for the clever detective to read, becoming
a corpse-as-text (Plain 2001, pp. 12–13; Bronfen 1992, pp. 6–7). And just like
museum visitors, the fictional public swarms around the crime scene, camera
shutters click and the press is “greedy for headlines that would sell papers”
(Luojus 2015, p. 44). This echoes how the detective story genre has been accused
of voyeurism; it pivots on people’s appetite for crime, murder and the macabre,
and the solving of the crime means going through all clues, including private
lives and intimate documents (Pyrhönen 1999, p. 156). The museum utilizes the
same curiosity to motivate the reader-visitors of Helsinki Noir.

The discovery of the body launches a puzzle of solving the crime, or a game
between the reader-visitor detecting and the curator-narrator trying to keep
the suspense going until the final revelation at the end. Part of the reading pact
around classical detective fiction (unlike thrillers) is the fair-play method, which
implies that the reader must be given every clue, so that there is a fair chance
for them to solve the case (Sayers 1988, p. 73; Pyrhönen 1994, pp. 17–18). This
aspect may have encouraged museum visitors to follow the given exhibition
itinerary in its entirety. According to Luojus (interview 1), many visitors wanted
to follow the storyline in its intended itinerary to see how the story unfolds.

The plot includes multiple elements of a classic detective story. The linguistic
level emphasises this, although the old-fashioned style of the narration can best
be seen in the original, Finnish version of the text. As visitors walked around the
three exhibition floors, they found marked places for reading the next chapter
in the booklet and could look at artworks providing milieus for the events and
features for the main characters. The victim is quickly recognised as Kaarina
Vehmakoski, a young bank cashier (in old-fashioned Finnish pankkineiti).
During police investigations, Vehmakoski’s flatmate Elsa Rikman sheds light
on her character and background, as well as the events of the weeks leading to
her disappearance. The letters which were seen in the first installation become
a key to the mystery. After answering a newspaper advertisement and starting
a passionate correspondence, Kaarina Vehmakoski has fallen in love with a
stylish and continental businessman called Karl Eugen Kramer. A recurrent
theme and clue in the chapters is money: possessions of Kramer, Vehmakoski’s
inheritance, gifts exchanged between the lovers, financial planning, not without
troubles, for their future home and investing in a lot in the developing Kulosaari
area. Eventually, the man turns out to be a confidence trickster named Karl
Oskar Pettersson. Several crimes intertwine in the end: the trickster swindling
Vehmakoski’s inherited money, an embezzlement of almost a hundred thousand
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  441

marks from the bank where Vehmakoski worked before her untimely death
and finally, the death of Vehmakoski. The trickster is caught and his seduction
plan revealed, providing a partial dénouement to the narrative. Kramer-Pet-
tersson is found in possession of a large sum of money, and evidence suggest
that Vehmakoski is likely to be the person behind the embezzlement. But was
her death a suicide or murder? As this is left unknown to the police at the end
of the booklet text, visitors could come up with their own theories. I analyse
this aspect more in a subsequent section about participation.

In addition to the classic whodunit, Helsinki Noir includes elements of the hard-
boiled detective novel and film noir. Already the Noir in the title suggests a close
link, and the open-endedness accentuates the connection. In the hard-boiled
tradition, the quest for solving the crime often becomes more central than the
actual completion of the plot; emphasis is on the detective’s character, vulner-
ability and inner struggle to find reason in a crime-ridden society (Grella 1988,
p. 115). Whereas the classic detective story typically happens in a bucolic setting,
hard-boiled novels focus on cities of stone (Grella 1988, p. 116). Helsinki Noir
contrasts an urban locale epitomised by “shadowy stone city blocks” with the
countryside: Vehmakoski has moved from central Finland to Helsinki’s Kallio,
with “old wooden-house areas now riven by great canyon-like streets with their
massive residential blocks” (Luojus 2018, p. 45). This symbolises the mixing
of the two detective fiction types in Helsinki Noir, while describing the city’s
development in the 1930s.

Intertextuality and Intermediality in Helsinki Noir

Detective fiction is a genre known for intertextuality (Pyrhönen 1994, pp. 36–48),
and this level was evident in Helsinki Noir. The script includes elements from the
historic 1930s Helsinki, but also applies popular crime fiction elements found
in literature and film. Among other sources of inspiration, the curator Luojus
(interview 1) named the classical series of Inspector Palmu (Komisario Palmu),
a character created by Finnish author Mika Waltari and also known from films
by the Finnish director Matti Kassila in the 1960s. The city of Helsinki plays an
important part in the Palmu stories, and this is something Helsinki Noir shares.
The curator also browsed through the Nordic Crime Chronicles (Pohjolan poliisi
kertoo), including police cases and investigation processes in the Nordic coun-
tries. Old radio programmes and video clips from 1930s provided inspiration
regarding period language (interview 1).

There are several types of text in Helsinki Noir. First there is a paratextual
introduction in a neutral style, explaining the exhibition concept. Second is the
booklet by Luojus, written in classic detective fiction style, filled with adjectives
and descriptive nouns that render the style visual and helped reader-visitors in
making connections with the artworks on display: “The country people’s market
barrows bathed in red by the morning sun and bearing their root vegetables,
round heads of cabbage and crispy globes of lettuce, reminded her of childhood
summers” (Luojus 2015, p. 47). The exhibition provided a multisensory experi-
442 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

ence; in addition to texts, paintings and statues, locations were made more vivid
through the use of custom-made audio material by sound designer Johanna
Storm. Among the soundscapes included were central sites of downtown Helsinki:
the market square near the seaside, the Swedish Theatre and the department
store Stockmann with its brand-new lifts. Third is the intimate correspondence
between Kaarina Vehmakoski and the trickster Karl Eugen Kramer (or small-
time criminal Karl Oskar Pettersson), given for visitors to read as evidence.
It was displayed in a strikingly red room, almost like a darkroom, allowing a
picture of their relationship to develop from the letter papers (chapter 5).10 This
correspondence was based on historical letters, as the character of Kramer-Pet-
tersson has a real-life counterpart from Finnish criminal history. In the final
exhibition room of Helsinki Noir (after the last scene of the story), a documentary
film, newspapers and books were on display, telling about the dubious career of
Finland’s most famous con artist, Ruben Oskar Auervaara (1906–1964). This
confidence trickster fooled several women with fake newspaper ads and lured
them to fund his lifestyle. Even the name Auervaara has become a commonplace
term in the Finnish language, symbolising a serial seducer.

In addition to intertextuality, there were interesting intermedial connections

between the text and artworks. The artworks displayed in the exhibition were
given multiple roles, as they were presented as a setting to the fictional story.
Visitors could look at them both from an art historical perspective as part of
1910s to 1930s Finnish art (there were discreet object labels with artists’ names,
dates and techniques) but also as part of the story, providing it with locations,
characters and ambiances. The exhibition included several portraits of anony-
mous models, lending their features to the fictional characters. The examples
include Georges von Swetlik’s Portrait of a Woman (1932) representing the victim
Kaarina Vehmakoski, and Anton Lindforss’ Portrait of a Woman (1926) that
gave a face to Vehmakoski’s flatmate and friend Elsa Rikman. Yrjö Ollila’s The
Clocksmith (1921) represents Vehmakoski’s fiancé Karl-Eugen Kramer as a well-
dressed, polished and respectable-looking gentleman, and the display with clocks
surrounding the painting supported his story about owning a fine-mechanics
company. The final scene shows the man with an ill-fitting suit, disorderly hair
and suspiciously lurking eyes (Vesala’s installation, see figure 3), suggesting the
earlier portraiture was conceivably a red herring or a reflection of Vehmakoski’s
wishful thinking. In the same scene, Tuomas von Boehm’s painting Marionette
(1948) symbolises the trickster’s role as a puppeteer manipulating his victim,
accentuating the nightmarish atmosphere.

10. The red room in the context of murder mystery could also be a nod to the wordplay redrum-mur-
der, made famous by Stephen King’s novel The Shining (1977) and Stanley Kubrick’s horror movie
with the same title (1980). The room had portraits of the two lovers on opposing walls, and the
suitor’s portrait, Yrjö Ollila’s The Clocksmith, was surrounded by loudly ticking clocks. The clocks
were associated with Kramer’s supposed profession as a fine mechanic, but their sounds also made
the atmosphere of the red room pressuring. It reminded one that time was running out: For the
lovers that were so keen to start a family, but also for Vehmakoski, because reader-visitors were all
too aware of the fact that she was near the end of her life.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  443

The landscapes and statues that were mainly parts or smaller-scale versions of
Helsinki’s public monuments, along with Vesala’s installations, played an impor-
tant part in facilitating spatio-temporal immersion, transporting reader-visitors
onto the scene of the fictional events and minimising the distance between the
narrator, addressee and the narrated events. Ryan (2001, pp. 121–130) explains
that through spatial immersion, the reader’s experience combines their intimate
relation with the places depicted and the scene of the events in the story. With
the help of museum architecture and spatial design, visuality of the artworks,
and bodily movement of the visitor, a sense of place and Helsinki’s geography
was conveyed through many channels, compared to a text-only representation.
Particularly through the combination of texts and Vesala’s installations, read-
er-visitors were taken into the narrative scenes, and the distance between them
and the narrated events was minimized. This is a significant asset of museum
narratives.

Even though the plot of Helsinki Noir is fictional, the curator Luojus wanted
to convey historically accurate elements so that visitors had the possibility to
either learn or recognise both milieus and phenomena of late 1930s Helsinki,
“a lively, rapidly growing capital city” (wall text). During our interview, Luojus
(interview 1) explained that locality was an important part of the whole; the
artworks, the series of crimes inspiring the fictional story and the whole concept
were all rooted in the real history of Helsinki. Luojus mentioned that if they
were to produce a similar exhibition in another city or country, they would like
to localise the events to make the experience equally engaging. The Helsinki
Noir booklet includes descriptive passages painting a picture of the city; the
development of the workers’ district of Kallio, the market square and the tram
routes all came from the archives. Details such as “the local tax on Kulosaari
was only three pence per Mark” (Luojus 2015, p. 54) and sipping of the Green
Elevator cocktail, named after a play the characters see at the Swedish thea-
tre (ibid. 53), seem to be inserted into the story partially for the amusement
of Helsinki-based or elite readers, but they also render the historic Helsinki
more real in the exhibition. The ending of the booklet Helsinki Noir. A Deadly
Proposal draws links between fiction and real-life criminal history. Before her
death, Vehmakoski encounters her suitor briefly in front of the cinema Joukola
at Kapteeninkatu 26. After that, all trails linking the two run out, and a winter
storm breaks. The corner of this street is infamous for being the location of police
murders by the fugitive Steen Christensen in 1997, leading to an extensive police
operation throughout southern Finland.11 The corner of Kapteeninkatu street
and Tehtaankatu street was filled with candles and flowers after the tragedy.
Helsinki Noir reminds us how dark history can leave its invisible imprint on the
cityscape and thus affect the sense of place.

11. Rytsä P & Harvala J. Yle Elävä arkisto 22.10.2019. Available at [Link]
keli/2019/10/21/tehtaankadun-poliisimurhat-jarkyttivat-kansaa-1997 [Last accessed 4 March 2021]
444 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Whodunit? Openness to Visitor Participation

As museum curators plan exhibitions with visitor engagement and interaction
in mind, museums’ limited control over the museum experience remains as a
starting point. Henning (2006, p. 101) reminds us that the “exhibition narrative
that visitors enact and embody through their movement may not always be an
explicit one, that is, neither explicitly intended by the curators nor explicitly read
by visitors”. Guided by their horizons of expectation, visitors make individual
choices while experiencing the exhibition. They may start the tour from different
floors, choose not to read the texts or only read parts of them based on their
level of interest, alertness and knowledge.

At the core of Helsinki Noir was the concept of enabling a playful museum
exhibition experience for all visitors, even adults. The Amos Anderson Art Mu-
seum and curator Luojus had done something similar earlier in the exhibition
Forest Outing (Finnish: Metsäretki 1.3.2013–24.2.2014). The target audience
in Forest Outing was families with children, and in addition to nature-themed
artworks, the exhibition included hands-on elements, stuffed animal mascots for
the tour and a children’s book intended to accompany the museum experience
and to continue it at home (Luojus 2013). With Helsinki Noir, the main target
group was older (interview 1), but the role given to visitors was one that called
for imagination and was based on fictional storytelling.

As we look at how museum texts can inspire personal involvement and interac-
tivity with exhibition contents, it is relevant to consider how the text addresses
reader-visitors and what kind of roles or positions are implied (Ravelli 2006,
p. 71). Are visitors, for instance, supposed to digest predetermined informa-
tion, or take a more reciprocal or creative role? Positioning reader-visitors is
inherently linked with questions of control and authority, even (or especially)
when aiming for an active visitor role. The concept of Helsinki Noir was clearly
framed, and visitors were expected to follow the story in a certain order, yet
the genre expectations and the hermeneutic code linked with detective fiction,
as well as the final open-endedness, gave way to varying responses. Visitors
were explicitly called upon to participate using the second-person tense (“Come
and enter into (sic) the mystery!” as stated in a wall text), starting from the
exhibition’s subtitle inviting visitors to solve the mystery. The exhibition texts
and the accompanying booklet aimed at filling in the blanks. Many of the
chapter endings or beginnings provided a hook for continuing, such as at the
beginning of chapter 4: “So, who was the man who had been so courteous to
Kaarina Vehmakoski in the square?” (Luojus 2015, p. 48), and the ending of
chapter 5: “Was life bringing her an unexpected stroke of luck, after all … ?”
(ibid. 50) or ominous statements of the narrator: “It did indeed appear that
Kaarina had now found success” (ibid. 52).

As explained earlier, the exhibition gave no right or wrong answers about the
whodunit, which emphasised the importance of reader-visitors’ imagination. The
museum organised a writing competition for young people to produce optional
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  445

endings for the story. The competition was marketed to students in compre-
hensive school and secondary education, especially in their studies of Finnish
language and literature. Student groups also came to the museum as part of
their literature courses. Even though actual entries in the competition were
few (five potential epilogues were sent to the museum), some teachers told the
museum staff they used the task in schools as an additional activity after their
exhibition visit. The winning text was printed and distributed as part of the
booklet (figure 1). The epilogue offers one possible explanation to the mystery.12
By giving a young visitor’s interpretation this kind of recognition, the museum
showed a good level of participatory effort and responsiveness in their museum
pedagogy.13 Perhaps if the competition had been open to all, and the possibility
to participate promoted in the exhibition itself, they might have received more
texts, which would have given us valuable information about how the story was
received and interpreted.

Another way in which competition and locality were related to engagement in

Helsinki Noir is that visitors were encouraged to recognise various depictions
of early 20th century Helsinki and its surroundings. The exhibition included a
questionnaire box for finding missing addresses for the landscape paintings on
display. This competition named Find Helsinki was both a challenge for visitors
and a way for the museum to get new metadata of artworks in their collections.
Visitors were also encouraged to choose their favourite artwork in the exhibition,
resulting in additional feedback about visitors’ responses to the displayed works.

Bodies in the Museum – Reanimating objects through

immersive displays
To investigate further the connections between crime fiction and the embodied
museum exhibition experience, it is worthwhile to explore Helsinki Noir as
part of a longer tradition of immersive and exciting exhibition strategies. At
various points in history, museums have been accused of being cemeteries of
dead objects. Especially for the early 20th-century modernist and avant-gar-
de movements, museums characterised a reactionary Victorian attachment to
the past (Henning 2006, pp. 37–44). Museums preserve and display artefacts
from times and lives long gone, and, especially in the case of archaeological
and natural historical collections, they literally contain stuffed specimens and
human remains (on the latter, see also Wessman, this volume). Therefore, it is
not surprising that many developments in the area of exhibition display have
originated as an attempt to bring inanimate objects and history to life. This also

12. In Sophia Syrjänen’s text, Kaarina Vehmakoski was murdered in cold blood by Kramer-Petterson’s
wife, due to fear of losing her husband.
13. In The Participatory Museum (2010) Nina Simon makes a distinction among contributory, colla-
borative, co-creative and hosted forms of participation, depending on how much visitors are involved
and to what extent museums dictate the outcomes of participation (pp. 190–191). In Helsinki Noir the
role of visitors was contributory, as they were solicited to participate in an institutionally-controlled
process of completing the exhibition storyline. (See also Viita-aho and Salo, this volume.)
446 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

goes for display types such as dioramas or habitat displays, as well as the use
of mannequins, tableaux and museum guides in period costumes, to name but
a few (Henning 2006; Sandberg 2003). All this puts the choice of crime fiction
and the mysterious corpse in an art exhibition in a rather quirky light.

Simulation-based museum displays and crime fiction share a common feature in

that they allow access to exciting experiences and events without being subject
to physical harm. In an analysis of late 19th and early 20th century wax museum
displays, Sandberg explains that the appeal of tableau techniques was that they
offered visual access to scenes, without subjecting spectators to any physically
harmful effects. “Actually being there could conceivably entail danger, embar-
rassment, discomfort or other risk to one’s body, depending on the nature of
the scene or person depicted” (Sandberg 2003, p. 95). A similar position applies
to Helsinki Noir.

The beginning and ending of Helsinki Noir relied on contemporary artist Jar-
no Vesala’s installations. In the first scene, the body of the victim is behind a
curtain, visually available as a reminder of our own bodily vulnerability, yet
inaccessible. Particularly the last scene (figure 3) brings to mind a 19th-century
wax museum display with mannequins. These displays were often presented
in the form of tableaux and even depicted fictional stories, often supported by
textual guides.14 In a pitch-dark room, visitors would unexpectedly meet Kramer,
whom they had just learned to be a confidence trickster. The criminal appeared
in the same space with visitors, implying that his real-life counterparts have
been – and still are – among us. Vesala’s artwork simultaneously showed the
character of the story, yet left a safe distance for visitors. An uncanny character
with animated expressions and a mumbling voice, the mannequin managed to
frighten some visitors, according to the museum staff. The curator explained
that excitement was also a hoped-for effect when creating an exciting story
(interview 1). Experiencing this kind of excitement can give a cathartic sense of
relief, as can reading crime fiction.

14. Display techniques such as life or habitat groups, dioramas and tableaux were particularly popular
between the 1880s and the First World War. They developed in the context of a more widespread
fascination with living pictures, such as early cinema and photography, and could be found in natural
history museums, folk-ethnographic museums and open-air museums. For instance, wax museums
produced living painting scenes with accurate mannequins. The tableaux would often be linked with
a printed guide narrating the displayed events. In Scandinavia, tableaux even depicted fictional cha-
racters, such as Snow White, Aladdin, or H. C. Andersen’s The Little Match Girl. Interestingly, wax
museums also utilized techniques imitating a cinematic point-of-view shot, or internal focalization,
such as lantern slide projections (Sandberg 2003, pp. 4–8, pp. 80–82, pp. 92–95).
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  447

Figure 3. Jarno Vesala’s artwork, Photograph Not Taken (2013), represented the villain of Helsinki
Noir. It consists of a figure of a man in mixed media, approximately 180 cm high, with moving
expressions, background projection and audio elements. Amos Rex Archives/ Photo: Stella Ojala

The ending of the booklet and the physical exhibition led literally to a dead end,
calling reader-visitors to reread the initial scene with information gained during
the exhibition (Pyrhönen 1999, pp.13–14). This circular narrative structure was
highlighted by the two installations with similar aesthetics, representing the
victim and villain, and the text both beginning and ending with the icy winds
of a winter storm. In the context of detective fiction, the mirror in the first
installation becomes a significant motif. Firstly, it symbolises the imaginative
identification of the detective, in this case the reader-visitors, with the criminal
(or victim), to better understand their motives and solve the crime (Pyrhönen
1999, pp. 31–32). On the dressing table of Kaarina Vehmakoski, it also echoes
how the trickster’s manipulation was made possible: the con artist recognised
and mirrored the hopes and needs of his victim. Vehmakoski could not see past
the charming lies to the real man behind the mirror – or, as the title of the piece
suggests, Behind the Curtain. Finally, as the image reflected in a mirror is an
opposite (left being reversed to right), the mirror reminds us of the splitting of
the two antithetic sides of Vehmakoski (Pyrhönen 1999, pp. 31–32). During the
story, the previously so “calm, meticulous, reliable and diligent” (Luojus 2015,
p. 46) person turns into an actor in a bank embezzlement. The Helsinki Noir
plot plays with contrasting light and shadow, which is also seen in the exhibition
architecture. This aspect was emphasised by the beginning and ending, their
darkness reminiscent of black-and-white noir films.

More Museum Mysteries

The mystery format relates to museums’ continuous challenges in getting their
visitors’ attention. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people’s expectations
were influenced by novelties such as early cinema, department stores and railway
448 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

travel. Now there are things such as digitalism, video games, social media, AR
and VR, as well as an endless flood of pictures and videos. As a response, museum
designers of the 19th century started producing more immersive, mimetic and
illusionistic exhibitions (Henning 2006, p. 53). As museums keep competing with
other pastime activities in the so-called experience economy, the same qualities
are still an important side of a memorable museum experience.

When Helsinki Noir was on display in 2015–2017, it had the asset of novelty and
surprise. Now, participatory mystery games and dark history tours have made
their way into museums, both in Finland and internationally. In Finland, the
murder mystery concept has been used in the Palander House of Hämeenlinna
City Museum in 2018–2021, and their theatrical and participatory tours with
three different plots so far have shown a high demand for such activities. The
Museum of Finnish Book Pukstaavi created an escape-room concept instead
of a traditional museum exhibition to acquaint people with detective fiction as
part of their literary pedagogy. Pukstaavi’s Museum escape: A Threat Loom-
ing over the City (1.5.2019–31.10.2020) resembled the initial idea of Helsinki
Noir in many ways: something strange is happening in the city that puzzles
the local inspector, so visitors were to assist in detecting the case. To add some
international examples, the Natural History Museum in London has organised
criminal investigation mysteries titled Crime Scene Live for adults in recent
years. In November 2019, the National Gallery in London organised a murder
mystery tour Whodunnit? A Halloween Late as part of their Young Producers
programme. Many museum murder mysteries let visitors meet and interview
characters inspired by museums’ artworks, thus creating alternative, story-led art
experiences. How such experiments with fictionality affect people’s connection
with actual artworks is an interesting topic for further study.

The above-mentioned cases are different in their approaches, ranging from

event-type games within the museum milieu to fully curated exhibitions. What
is common to all, nevertheless, is that they have all been either temporary ex-
hibitions or events. As visitors seek novel and fun experiences from museums,
ephemeral mystery tours provide a change, something unexpected and exciting.
They may draw in both old and new audiences and cater to different tastes and
age groups. Luojus (interview 1) explained that Helsinki Noir brought into the
museum some new audience groups, such as crime fiction amateurs, specifi-
cally to experience the detective story. The popularity of mystery games seems
to have a similar attraction and has become a regular thing in many museums.
At some point the trend of using detective stories may become saturated, but
other popular fiction genres also have the potential to provide surprising and
exciting story-led experiences in a museum exhibition space.

Conclusions
As museums seek fresh approaches and have turned more and more towards their
audiences, textual styles and storytelling in their exhibitions have become increas-
ingly multifaceted. The use of fictional museum narratives is not an entirely new
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  449

approach, but participates in, or rediscovers, a long tradition of storytelling in

the exhibition space. It is in line with maintaining visitor attention and providing
possibilities for engagement. As our understanding of the museum as narra-
tive space and storytelling medium becomes increasingly nuanced, museums
have the possibility to create even more comprehensive narrative experiences
for all of the senses. Digital devices and virtual applications may bring about
more possibilities, but it may also be refreshing to see creative narratives that
rely heavily on classical museum media, and at the same time bring interesting
authentic objects within visitors’ reach.

As a curated art exhibition where interactivity was intellectual rather than

hands-on, Helsinki Noir – A Crime to Solve differentiates itself from the many
escape-room or event-type mystery concepts that have since gained popularity
in museums. It was built around the story, not just as a story, and was therefore
quite unusual. The fictional plot generated the exhibition, and the text became
its core meaning. It provided a highly subjective interpretation of the works
displayed. Even though the artworks were put in an atypical position, as the art
historical context was kept to a minimum, fictional elements did not replace all
research-based curatorial knowledge, but instead brought a contrast to it. In a
way, presenting the crime story and traditional labels side by side mirrors the
change in the centuries-long discussion about whether crime fiction is part of
low- or high-brow culture. In recent decades, this separation has become largely
irrelevant and has largely faded away. Against this, Helsinki Noir takes a stance
for adding more varied and visitor-oriented labels alongside traditional ones,
in favour of a higher level of engagement.

Helsinki Noir gives us an example of how museums can apply elements from
various literary genres to create narratives that invite visitors to do a reading
based on shared cultural competence and a familiarity with genre features. In-
tertextuality is one of the defining features of detective fiction, and especially
for amateurs of the genre, Helsinki Noir enabled the pleasure of recognising
familiar elements. Through the mystery format, visitors were invited to do a
co-authored reading of the museum exhibition narrative. The hermeneutic code
was activated from the beginning, and visitors were given the role of detective
as they followed the chapters to unravel a course of events leading to the initial
discovery of the victim’s cadaver.

Participation, experientiality and co-creation are wider trends in the museum

field. As the detective fiction genre calls for the readers’ participation, using such
a genre in a museum exhibition, as well as the writing contest and the related
appendix of the winning text being included in the exhibition booklet, empha-
sises openness on the part of the museum towards the visitors’ perspective and
co-authoring. The texts of Helsinki Noir were written in a style that fed upon
questions and invitations for the reader-visitor. Giving only partial closure to
the detective story had several major implications. On one hand, it suggested
that visitors’ output as imaginary response was needed to fill the blanks. On the
other hand, the process of detection by following clues and documents could
450 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

be seen mirroring the museum processes behind looking for archival evidence
and bridging gaps in historical events.

Besides detective stories, other popular genres provide one way of increasing
engagement in museum exhibitions. Story-led exhibitions based on popular
genres can draw upon people’s knowledge of the genre’s features to create sto-
ries that show both objects and history in a new light. When accompanied by
research-based information, fiction may increase engagement and curiosity,
and thus learning. Stories have been linked with resonance, learning and re-
membering and theatrical techniques by bringing visitors to the scenes, and
bringing events closer to them through shared humanity (Bedford 2014; Hein
2002; Hooper-Greenhill 2006).

From the viewpoint of literature, the spatialisation of narratives brings interest-

ing possibilities. The circulation route, visuality, audio elements, embodiment
and physicality of the experience brought a new level of concreteness to the
detective story. Detective fiction often plays with embodiment and corporeality
(both that of the victim and the detective), so creating a story within a physical
environment can be meaningful. In Helsinki Noir, the displays with contempo-
rary, purpose-built art installations were used at the beginning and end of the
narrative to provide a strong sense of immersion. Visitors were standing face to
face with both the victim and the perpetrator, through utilising the multi-sensory
channels available in the museum exhibition medium.

Detective fiction often reflects its own narrativity and plays with the narrative
structure (Pyrhönen 1994, pp. 32–36). I argue that something similar happens
in a museum exhibition that experiments with the possibilities of fictional nar-
ratives. In recent decades, the rise of different types of storytelling and the use
of multiple voices is connected to rising self-awareness of authority and mean-
ing-making within the museum medium. To conclude, I suggest self-reflexivity
can be seen as a shared element, both in detective fiction and in current trends
in museum exhibition narratives.

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454 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

About Transhistoricity – The

Old Masters exhibited with
contemporary art
Minna Tuominen

Abstract
The anthology, The Transhistorical Museum – Mapping the Field (Bühler et
al. 2018) is the first scholarly attempt to compile an overview and theoreti-
cal mapping of transhistoricity in the field of museum studies. It provides the
grounds for further research and is a demonstration of common practices. In
this chapter, I discuss the possibilities and limitations of transhistoricity in the
exhibition Still Life – The World on Display which I curated for the Sinebrychoff
Art Museum in Helsinki in 2016. In this exhibition, Dutch and Flemish Old Mas-
ters’ art were juxtaposed with Finnish contemporary art. I reflect on the goals
and subject matter, as well as the overall strategy of representations, with the
concepts provided by the 2018 anthology. What does transhistoricity add to the
established exhibition programme of a museum or to the art historical content
of an individual exhibition? What kinds of insights are possible to produce and
what is the added value from doing this?

In general, museums feel the pressure to create new content and find engaging
ways to reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences. Fascinating forays
or sometimes the compulsion for productions, including transhistoricity, seem
to lead to the idea that mixing art historical eras is key in catering to mixed au-
diences. My chapter reviews arguments and explanations for curatorial or art
historical decisions in the making of these exhibitions. What does transhistoricity
add to the art historical content of the individual exhibition?

Keywords: transhistoricity, curating, old and contemporary art, exhibition

trend, audience engagement

Introduction
We are always obliged to re-perform the art we have in our collections in a
contemporary way, just as an actor, when they perform Shakespeare, has
to re-perform it for a contemporary audience, whether in mafia costumes
or in drag. James Bradburne (Bradburne 2018)

In general, museums feel the pressure to create new content and find engaging
ways to reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences (Anderson 2004;
Häkkinen 2019; Future Museums; Pettersson 2020; see also Pettersson and
Paunu, this volume). One way to find inventive solutions has been to exhibit the
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  455

Old Masters in multiple ways, along with contemporary art. In this chapter, I
take this current trend as a given from the perspective of Old Masters’ museums.1

The transhistorical museum or exhibition lets visitors look at the past hand
in hand with the chosen period of time, creating a bridge for possible new ap-
proaches – seeing, feeling, interpreting and learning. This engagement can take
place in many different ways. Objects can be combined from different periods
in exhibitions or permanent collection displays, as a set of guidelines or as an
unexpected intervention (Rikken 2018). Art museums or curators escape from
traditional museological hangings based on time-chains (chronology), linearity,
media, established master/school/period/geographical area or artist groups,
combining them in a new order of dialogue. Expectations for transhistorical
hangings can be varied, but for the most part the viewer is the key; new ways of
looking at artworks should evoke novel associations. What the added value is,
or how it is constructed, is discussed in the following pages. In the first section,
I discuss living artists’ relation to museums and their potential for exhibitions.
Next, I address notions of the concept of time, and then I look at what actually
makes a display transhistorical. Is it the institution, the time, the artwork itself or
the viewer? In the final part of the chapter, I give an explanation for the chosen
art works in the exhibition I arranged in Helsinki, 2016. Social, cultural-historical
and iconographical approaches are reflected with the past and with the relevant
concepts from the anthology, The Transhistorical Museum.

History Lives
How do we engage living artists within the context of museum activities? That is
the relevant starting point when we, as curators for transhistorical exhibitions,
look for art or artists. Where such courses of action succeed is in revealing the
unfamiliar aspects of familiar objects by exposing them in a new context, by
taking them away from their customary cultural or time periods. Personal in-
terpretations of history by curators or artist-curators are set in a dialogue with
the past. The selected exhibition objects work as evidence from the past, helping
visitors to understand single objects in a broader perspective. An additional value
for the visitor in these projects is to show the curator’s choices concerning how
they have selected and come to a conclusion about certain objects, including how
they are grouped and displayed. How to elucidate the curator’s decision-making
process is a big challenge, but when this is made clear, it convinces the visitor to
possibly embrace new readings of artworks (Sharp 2018, pp. 134–145).

When museum institutions, such as the Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in

Amsterdam, the National Gallery in London and the Altes Museum in Berlin,

1. The mixing of the Old Masters with the sale of contemporary art and at art fairs has drawn interest
from collectors lately, such as in Frieze New York and in auction houses, for example when Leonardo
da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi was on sale 15 November 2017 at Christie’s in New York. Moreover,
MOMA rehung some of its master works, such as Picasso’s Guernica and Matisse’s Dance, in new
contexts (Stoilas 2019).
456 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

opened their doors, their mission was to educate contemporary artists about
past masters and canons of art, and also to encourage and inspire them. They
offered a place to contemplate the Old Masters and to work with their own ideas
of art further, also functioning as a work-place. Some artists were involved in
founding art institutions. In such cases, they became part of the conversation at
the very beginning and they were engaged with the canonisation of art. At the
same time, known artists such as Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro had very
critical opinions of contemporary trends and opposing views about traditions
that institutions such as the Louvre had, while they searched for how to express
their own art (Sharp 2018, pp. 134–145). For most modernists, the past was
something they needed to surpass.

Whether the reason lies in searching for new audiences or not, there are greater
objectives for art museums to continue working with living artists, which take us
back to the early history of these institutions. According to Jasper Sharp, Curator
at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, they show their visitors “where they
stand in time and place, within the broader evolution of mankind” (Sharp 2018,
p. 143). Transhistorical projects with living artists, as curators or through their
selected artworks, at their best communicate with visitors independently through
time and place, regardless of when or where the art is made. It also indicates the
power of good art from the past, when one is able to create continuity through
time. These goals are philosophical and when they succeed, they evoke in visitors
deep metaphysical questions. However, these projects are challenging; they
provoke a lot of debate and they can be risky, demanding from institutions thor-
ough consideration, knowledge of their own history and well-chosen selections.
One aim, according to Sharp, is to seek a natural continuity, where institutions
create a dialogue with the past (Sharp 2018).

Time is Not Stable

The cultural theorist, critic and artist Mieke Bal is certain that transhistorical
exhibitions can change the reading of works forever. The contemporary view of
a subject can also change our interpretation of the original artwork. In general,
contemporary culture impacts the past, what we see and how, and this reworks
new versions of older images, as well as new images (Bal 2018, p. 56).2

One way to discern the connections of art from past and present is to consider
anachronism. Acknowledging the past’s presence in our present is useful to
remember when talking about anachronism, which can be either positive or
negative. However, with contemporary eyes, the past looks different, and it is
not always fully comprehensible. Many historians consider anachronism to be
problematic, and in some cases this can be true. In a way, one can see that an
anachronism flattens time and makes everything historically moulded into how

2. Bal makes a note of uncritical touch of practice of transhistorical displays among the writers of
the book and is aware of chance that transhistorical displays can become as boring as chronological
exhibitions if they are not stimulating enough. See also Bal, 2001.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  457

it is seen today from the present time. As a consequence, historical artworks

might be perceived inaccurately. Then a critique is justified, but as Bal sees it,
it is possible to get closer to past artworks by using anachronism as “a partner
in a discussion of what matters in contemporary culture” (Bal 2018, p. 61), but
not as a part of historical heritage. In this way, one can see more clearly how we
can observe the past from the present. At its best, anachronism can be a key to
history and help us better understand a moment in time, for which it has made
contradictory dialogue. Bal thinks that this reasoning is shared by the Baroque
and by our time. The common view is that time is not linear, but past and pres-
ent are co-temporal. Both times are alive at that moment and in that relation.
Both time periods invigorate each other, but do not make them disappear in
timelessness (Bal 2018).3

Bal is critical of the term transhistorical museum itself, preferring to replace it

with the prefix inter- to emphasise the multilayered relations between artworks.
She thinks that the inter-historical museum would keep us aware of relation-
ships between the art of different times and become prepared to learn more
actively of a new constructed exhibition and worlds made around it (Bal 2018,
pp. 61–62). The term transhistorical museum or exhibition is not used widely
amongst museum professionals in informing about exhibitions, at least not
with the wider public. This in itself makes us ask how useful the term actually
is (Rikken 2018). A strong opponent of the term transhistorical is Alexander
Nagel, Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, who calls it
“a relic of historicism” (Nagel 2018, p. 84).

Transhistorical Meaning Produced

According to the curator from the Old Masters and collection department of the
M-Museum Leuven, Peter Carpreau, a transhistorical presentation is impossible
for interpreting the meaning of a work, either through the artist or the artwork
itself. What is left is the beholder, who shapes the meaning of an artwork and
its transhistoricity. There must be at least two artworks from different periods
in such a dialogue. According to Carpreau, a lifetime would be the measurement
for a time difference, which means that history starts when remembering ends, a
period of at least 50–75 years (Carpreau 2018). Nagel is very sceptical of specific
definitions of historical periods, and whether they are needed at all, because
art is not made for a certain time period, but just for the sake of art itself. He
questions what the present time and contemporary art actually are, because the
contemporary moves with time and contemporary art is not as contemporary as
it was just one moment ago. In addition, the concept of time is not the concept to
all people. When does contemporary art change into historical art, and become
a past phenomenon? (Nagel 2018, p. 84).

3. See also Nagel’s views of anachronism, such as anachronism as a feature of art (Nagel 2018, pp.
85–86).
458 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Even older art is not just passive, static images, but actively impacts later times
as well. One can draw fresh views and questions over and over again from it, as
with art from other periods. There can be other ways of reading artworks than
setting old and new art in conversation with each other; recontextualization can
occur without pointing out oppositions or formal aspects. According to Nagel,
the trend of transhistorical displays is a passing one, but there might be deep-
er interest in continuing comparisons within a transhistorical mode. Further,
Nagel thinks that this is not going to change anytime soon (Nagel 2018, p. 90).

Peter Carpreau emphasised the concept of a meaningful presentation, so that

artworks impact each other when they are set into a dialogue (Carpreau 2018).
The Director of Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Penelope Curtis, is also
interested in this connection of artworks and the time difference that they rep-
resent. She asks why we still understand the transhistorical approach as new
and unusual, because in many cases it is the norm. Examples with relevant
artworks include private collections and home museums, where collections have
been put together and displayed many times purposefully, with mixed art from
different periods, not to mention non-artistic spaces, such as ordinary homes. In
a way, all museums, collections and exhibitions where artworks exist together,
that originate from different places and times, are essentially transhistorical.
Of course, there can also be instances where one can misread the purpose of the
connection between contemporary and historical pieces, or where objects lose
something of their specificity if they do not communicate at all with each other
in the new constructed context around them (Curtis 2018, p. 100).

In addition, even art in many national museums can be used in a questionable

way, when objects made in the past are removed from their original context to
the museum for the sake of preservation and continued reuse. They also might
be cared for in the wrong way, for example by over-cleaning. Curtis also men-
tions, for example, the misuse of some objects by the Nazis for their own very
selective aesthetic classification, when classical sculptures were the standard
for the right kind of race. As has become clear, transhistoricity and mixing art
and other objects from different periods can cause problematic interpretations.
If one considers how objects can yield to conversations with each other and
present this to audiences in the optimum way, new insights may emerge. For
example, there might be objects that in a vague context do not attract attention,
but when they are put into a different context they may show real continuities,
both in formality and function, if they help to interpret each other’s meanings.
Curtis continues that one can construct the relationship between the old and the
new by considering material, arrangement, motif, composition, social relations
and cultural usage. An open way of providing information about an object’s pe-
riod and original context will help visitors to open themselves up to additional
meanings, which are exposed through new settings, in addition to old ones, or
as Curtis puts it, transversal meanings (Curtis 2018).

When Jasper Sharp and Philippe de Montebello discussed over-representing old

and contemporary art, it was pointed out that Old Master institutions always
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  459

receive criticism when they decide to display contemporary art on their premises,
even though contemporary art museums have long done the same thing. They
have loaned ancient pieces to multiple exhibitions, but the audience response
is different (Montebello 2015).

Beside the fact that there is nothing new about transhistorical representations,
Curtis notes that most museum and gallery art is grouped more by artists’ nation-
ality and school than by time periods. More relevant would be that artworks exist
in various ways when they reveal a continuity of doing, seeing and understanding.
According to Curtis, transhistoricity gives the opportunity to combine different
themes without specific time periods or classifications, such as historical, local,
international and gender, or artists with varied statuses. This sort of exhibiting
can lead to combining different sorts of audiences and creating new insights
into art (Curtis 2018, pp. 103–104).

Social, Historical and Knowing Approaches in Practice

In this section, I show examples of my own selections of contemporary art in
conversation with older art, and I contemplate the possibilities concerning what
associations and meanings could be produced for understanding the artworks
or themes around them.
As a case study, I present my own intentions shown in three cases in the exhibition Still Life – The
World on Display. I curated it for the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in 2016. What are the methods
that I used, and that came into play? To begin with, I considered the contrasting nature and scar-
city of the artworks when choosing the pieces of contemporary art. This meant that there would
be only one or two pieces of contemporary art per exhibition room, each of which contained four
to ten Old Masters paintings. The Finnish contemporary art and artists that I chose had a larger
message for the whole room. The contrast came from the content, such as opposite pairs of poor
and rich by Anu Tuominen’s artwork and from the gender-based questions in Henrietta Lehto-
nen’s artwork. A formal similarity of a skull, but from a different time in the Old Master paint-
ing by Edwaert Collier’s Vanitas, and in Jiri Geller’s sculpture, created questions about wheth-
er the meaning of the content has changed or not, and how it is possible to combine meanings.

Figure 1. Anu Tuominen (b. 1961) Hunger, 1997. Objet trouvé, found mittens, 5.5 x 17 x 17 cm. Mu-
seum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-2001-20. Photo: Minna Tuominen.
460 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

Inequality – Anu Tuominen

In this exhibition context, Anu Tuominen’s (b. 1961) Hunger (1997) served as
a reminder of the inequitable distribution of the world’s food supply (figure 1).4
The artwork consists of a pair of mittens sewed up which were clearly somewhat
worn and bent slightly upright. The association of this position with begging is
clear, finished with a label. These mittens are set in a room where the opposite
wall was full of paintings depicting mostly food ingredients, showing worldly
abundance in the 17th century. They depicted fruits in different formats and
sizes, big and luscious vegetables, meat in the form of a living animal or dead
game, a fresh fish catch from the sea or a fish cut into juicy pieces and some
exotic imports.5 These types of depictions originated on the walls and tables of
privileged rich people, who used to own the paintings in the 17th century, and
Hunger juxtaposed with them a reminder of the existence of poor people with
very low social status. The association with begging could influence viewers’
feelings in very different ways, not least because at the time of the exhibition in
Helsinki there were more street beggars than before, and the decision-makers
and citizens were diffident and confused about what to do about this social
problem, which was due to mass migration into European countries (Lakialoite
LA 42/2016 vp). In addition, the cold Finnish weather made begging especially
difficult. This was expressed by the hand-made mittens, which are used in win-
tertime. They also suggest the issue of gender, as most handicrafts are done by
women, and they are also used mostly by women and children.

In general, in Tuominen’s art, the discarded mittens and the other recycled mate-
rials are given a new lease of life and a fresh artistic purpose. She plays with words
and concepts, and creates analogies with the material she uses, along with how
she handles and represents it; there are no secrets, even though it is conceptual
contemporary art, because it explains itself (Rautio 2003; Kantokorpi 2001). I
chose to show the mittens in a glass case, in a museal way of displaying precious
objects. The resulting gesture suggests ways for raising awareness of inequality.

4. Anu Tuominen (b. 1961) Hunger, 1997. Objet trouvé, found mittens, 5.5 x 17 x 17 cm. Museum of
Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-2001-20. Available at [Link]
[Last accessed 10 October 2019]
5. Paintings included, for example, Floris van Schooten: Kitchen Interior with a Woman Scaling Fish,
Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum; Jacob Gillig: Still Life with Fish, 1684, Ostrabothnian
Museum; Clara Peeters: Still Life with Game, Art Museum of Estonia, Kadriorg.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  461

Figure 2. Henrietta Lehtonen (b. 1965) Porcelain Tower, 1993. Installation 120 x 96 x 40 cm. Museum
of Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-1994-55:A-Ö1. Photo: Minna Tuominen.

Figure 3. Delft Vases, 17th century. Porcelain h. 62/ 60/ 63. Sinebrychoff Art Museum, S 553/ S 554/
S 552. Photo: Minna Tuominen.

Woman’s Morality – Henrietta Lehtonen

Henrietta Lehtonen’s (b. 1965) Porcelain Tower (1993) rebels against tradition
(figure 2).6 Here, the carefully executed items are carelessly painted, in contrast
with the usual precision and feminine beauty given to a décor of porcelain items.
The porcelain itself can be associated with femininity, and as the pieces are de-
signed after older models they refer to the upper classes and traditional homes,
where they were looked after carefully, where they indicated the household’s
status and where they can be further understood as a woman’s territory, as they
were used to serve a meal. You can find hand imprints and blemishes all over
Lehtonen’s tableware, and in the serving sets, plates, jugs and vases. Even the
handle of the cake server is blotched with colour. This can possibly remind us
of bruises, being blue in colour against the white porcelain, which then leads
to thoughts to domestic violence and definitely to inequality between husband
and wife, man and woman (Aarnio & Sakari 2005, pp. 81–85).

The criticism levelled at an activity traditionally thought of as a feminine pursuit

is contrasted with a series of 17th-century porcelain items, the Delftware vases,
(figure 3)7 which represent rather masculine and hard-edged commercial activ-

6. Henrietta Lehtonen (b. 1965) Porcelain Tower, 1993. Installation 120 x 96 x 40 cm. Museum
of Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-1994-55:A-Ö1. Available at [Link]
object/595507 [Last accessed 10 October 2019]
7. Delftware Vases, 17th century. Porcelain h. 62/ 60/ 63. Sinebrychoff Art Museum, S 553/ S 554/ S
552. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 10 October 2019]
462 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

ities (Dam VII). In the 17th-century Dutch home, for which this blue-and-white
porcelain was produced, they were also a symbol of wealth. The association with
Lehtonen’s porcelain comes from recognition of the feminine use of utensils,
and by that, marking the place called home. Women’s morality in 17th-century
Dutch homes was measured through tidiness, cleanliness and orderliness (Sa-
lomon 2004; Jansen 1996). This is in great contrast to Lehtonen’s porcelain,
which almost abusively points to another kind of home, a home were such things
are not in order. Lehtonen’s porcelain pieces are muddy and unordered, and
therefore morally dubious.

The other level of reading, which I pursued, was the background of the produc-
tion of porcelain. The well-recognised blue and white dense floral pattern in the
Delftware vases in the Sinebrychoff Art Museum collection also recalls their Asian
origin. Seventeenth-century imported porcelain refers to global trade, which
was largely organised by the Dutch East and West India Companies. Therefore,
the Delftware stands for the competitive tensions inherent between imported
goods and locally produced wares. At first, large amounts of porcelain were
imported from China, but conflicts in China gave the Dutch an opportunity to
launch mass production in the Netherlands. In no time, more than 20 competing
faience factories were operating in Delft. Delftware became very popular (and
remains so), but here it also serves as a reminder of long-term developments
from world trade, including the problems it created, such as slavery (Dam VII;
Tuominen 2016, p. 71).

Masculinity is connected to the idea of masculine work on ships, masculine

trade and slavery. But it is also connected to the manufacture of porcelain. How
is this involved with Lehtonen’s artwork, which portrays blemished femininity,
referring to the broken role of a woman? A man can play a role in Lehtonen’s
porcelain as well, as a participant in a domestic situation. Both artworks speak
about culturally produced roles.

Figure 4. Edwaert Collier (1642–1708) Vanitas, 1661. Oil on panel 63.5 x 47 cm. Sinebrychoff Art
Museum, A IV 3457. Photo: Minna Tuominen.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  463

Skull for Death, Skull for Life – Edwaert Collier and Jiri
Geller
The skull in Edwaert Collier’s Vanitas painting (1661)8 stands for the 17th-century
vanitas concept, which itself is one of the most controversial pictorial concepts
within the methodological debate of Netherlandish art history of the mundane
world (figure 4). Collier’s vanitas symbolism is obvious: the skull refers to the
inevitability of death, but the wreath of ivy twisted around the skull is a sym-
bol of resurrection, and both the crown and the sceptre stand for the vanity of
earthly power at the hour of death. Symbols of resurrection promise eternal life.
In Christian belief, one should always remember death and prepare oneself for
it by living a good life, so as to achieve an eternal afterlife. In general, it can be
said that the vanitas tradition is a continuation of the ideas presented in the
memento mori tradition.9 Even though the central idea of memento mori was to
remind one of the blessings of death, it also reminded one of life. The metaphor
consisted of abstractions, namely the limited span of life, worldly vanities and
death itself (Tuominen 2015, pp. 64–65).

Figure 5. Jiri Geller (b. 1970) Dead Boy, Melting, beige in the series Way to Go, 2006. Cast plastic,
automotive paint 25 x 32 x 29 cm. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-2007-48:A-C. Photo:
Minna Tuominen.

Artist Jiri Geller (b. 1970)10 plays with one of the most known iconic pop and
rock staple when he sets his plastic skull on display. The difference is that the

8. Edwaert Collier (1642–1708) Vanitas, 1661. Oil on panel 63.5 x 47 cm. Sinebrychoff Art Museum, A
IV 3457. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 10 October 2019]
9. Memento mori (Lat.), “Remember that you must die”. This was used to remind the viewer of
the transitoriness of human existence by vanitas symbols such as a skull, candle or hour-glass, or
perhaps an insect.
10. Jiri Holopainen took his name from illusionist Uri Geller.
464 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

skull is about to melt away in Geller’s series Way to Go (2006), dripping drops
from its own puddle as if whatever remains of the spirit that once lived in it is
vanishing (figure 5).11 Throughout art history, the skull has served as the symbol
of death and mortality.

In his early years, Geller found his place in the punk world and soon was a
singer in punk band. When music began to lag, Geller pursued a silversmith
education. He soon realised the discrepancy between traditional sculpture and
the immaterial, digital contemporary world. While he was looking for his own
direction, he was interested in testing different materials, and realised that
“sculpture offers great opportunities to stretch and alter reality” (Juntunen 2017,
p. 69). His works were confusing in the 1990s Finnish art world, when he was
mixing new materials and well-known subjects such as Jesus, Shivas, Donald
Duck, stars, balloons and skulls, but in bright colours, made to look as light as
air. They looked as though they were made effortlessly, and for the viewer it was
impossible to guess the materials they were made of, which seemed perplexing.
At first glance, Geller’s sleek skull appears lightweight and easy to produce, but in
actual fact preparing the plastic mixture used to make it was a time-consuming
process carried out by hand (Siukonen 2008). He made skulls as a series, and
combined them with comic strip and pop culture characters such as Donald
Duck’s head. One aspect that Geller noticed from the commercial world was that
everything was always splashing (Jaukkuri 2017, p. 29).12 It became a feature
of his images; many of his works seem to flow and splash. Way to Go is also
well leaking and flooding or dripping away, making the illusion of something
disappearing in front of our eyes.

Curatorial points for choosing these skulls for a dialogue made me ask what ideas,
differences or similarities the painted vanitas skull and the sculptured rock skull
carry with them. Clearly, there is similarity in formal appearance, which helps
the viewer to start justification; but there also exists wide substantial values. As
legendary symbols, they represent the transience of human life. The artist tells
the viewer that he chooses generally-known subjects for his imaginary worlds,
and not ones that would only be known only in their own time and culture. A
skull as an iconographic symbol includes two worlds for a viewer as well: the life
that we are living and the hereafter, existing somewhat on the border, because
of its memento mori message. Time is the shared concept for these two skulls,
which combines and creates a never-ending continuation. At the same time, time
is also a distinctive factor – both skulls refer to time which is out of our control.

This universal subject matter, the skull as death, should also be recognised easily
in many different cultures, and not limited only to certain religions, areas or
specific worldviews. Even though it has been taken into the central message of

11. Jiri Geller (b. 1970) Dead Boy, Melting, beige in the series Way to Go, 2006. Cast plastic, auto-
motive paint 25 x 32 x 29 cm. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, N-2007-48:A-C. Available at
[Link] [Last accessed 10 October 2019]
12. Maaretta Jaukkuri notes that sociologist Zygmunt Bauman saw in the movement and adaptability
of fluids a key metaphor of our whole (post)modern age.
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  465

vanitas paintings, it is a universal and living symbol in popular cultural genres,

such as in alternative music genres, horror films, pirates and Halloween, among
others. For Geller, coming from a punk rocker background, there lives a critical
aspect of the fake in the world we are living in, such as the world of commercials,
and setting a phony skull on show recalls the phony world of illusions with
which we are surrounded. Commerciality is involved with fast-changing powers
in the capitalistic world, which already worried people in the 17th century and
was clearly stated by the upside-down crown in Collier’s painting. Even in this
short exploration, it is shown that a skull can have strong symbolism, whether
used in current image catalogues or in 17th-century art.

Theories and Explanations

Independent curator and writer Abigail Winograd did an exhibition called A
Global Table in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands (2017),
where she researched the tradition of food still lifes from the Dutch Golden Age,
from the viewpoint of world trade and the effects of colonialism. She pointed
out what these paintings reveal from the political and cultural effects of the food
supply. Her mission was to exhibit 17th-century still lifes as historical texts. The
very central question that she asked was why power and wealth was, and still is,
shared unequally through the consequences of colonialism. She visualised the
questions of the environmental, social and economic impact of food production,
reflected from the 17th century. These questions seem to be as relevant today as
they were then (Winograd 2018, pp. 185–186).

Works of contemporary art enabled comparisons of historical and colonial de-

velopment and critical dialogue, gave counterforce and created a visual dialogue
with the Old Masters. Obviously, contemporary art brought the questions nearer
for present-day viewers to contemplate, and even made it somewhat touching,
which was the same feedback that I got from the Still Life – The World on Dis-
play exhibition (Kiiski 2016; Toivakka 2016; Hujanen 2016; Tiittanen 2016;
Kaiken aikaa 2017). In recent decades, artists have given a lot of thought to
food production and the ethics around it. Everyday staple food production and
transportation demands have grown into even more complicated systems. This
exhibition asked current consumers the same questions: Where does my food
come from? How it is produced and transported? Who makes it? How does it
affect the environment and local farmers’ conditions? (Winograd 2018).

As well as contemporary art, cultural historical research enables fresh views to

be used as the backbone of an exhibition. Winograd used anthropologist Sidney
Mintz’s research Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History
(1985) as her theoretical model for the exhibition. Mintz argued that taste and
the pursuit of foodstuffs shaped empires. His research showed changes in global
politics and trade throughout the history of sugar. The consequences have been
ecological, economic and social. With the help of the cultural history of sugar,
Winograd saw that the history of trade could be shown, understood and inter-
preted in a new light. For comparison, a significant source of motivation for my
466 Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities

exhibition was Julie Berger Hochstrasser’s research Still Life and Trade in the
Dutch Golden Age (2007) where she, like Mintz, penetrates the dark histories
of the acquisitions of imported commodities, which were displayed lavishly in
paintings. Hochstrasser showed the tension between fashionable representations
of objects and commodity histories, which production or purchase included the
abuse of other people, capitalisation or moral instability. When Hochstrasser’s
views are highlighted in the exhibition, the knowledgeable viewer will probably
not see the symbolism in the same way anymore or what these paintings tradi-
tionally carry or represent in an exhibition. Still Life – The World on Display
exhibition offered aesthetic as well as symbolic joy to the viewer, but the booklet,
exhibition catalogue and contemporary works of art offered a different way of
looking at it all (Tuominen 2016).

Winograd, as well as Hochstrasser, also pointed out that reality was different
for the beneficiaries of the trade and those devastated by colonial regimes. Co-
lonialism involved the brutal conquest of territory, the suppression of local
populations, the use of slave labour, the import and export of African slaves and
the exploitation of natural resources. It transformed people into commodities
(Winograd 2018; Hochstrasser 2007). When concentrating on an interest in the
politics of food, not only by artists but also by contemporary society, it shows
that these questions are relevant to us. Inequality is such a large issue that it is
challenging to showcase it in an exhibition, but it is important to create a bridge,
in the sense of transhistorical representation.

I took the notion of the inequitable distribution of the world’s food supply as
the basis for a discussion with Anu Tuominen’s Hunger, suggesting that there
is not enough food for everyone due to differences in social status. Winograd
also asks why inequality, which was created during colonialism, is still present
(Winograd 2018, p. 188).

In both juxtapositions, the paintings of abundance with Tuominen’s Hunger

and Delftware with Lehtonen’s Porcelain Tower, older paintings and objects
were status symbols themselves of the wealthy home. Delftware became then,
and still is, very popular, but was included in the exhibition as a reminder that
long-term development based on world trade, including both objects and the
food supply, is connected to such problems as colonialism. Morality, both of
nations and individuals, becomes a focal point.

At the End
Today’s challenges for museums concern how they remain stable in their core
functions, while at the same time reinventing themselves (Montebello 2015;
Boodt 2018; Spijksman & Lehmann 2016). Their job as repositories do not stop,
even if they have to close their doors. Reinventing has more to do with time and
how to make time traps for audiences, where they can take a long look at and
repeated visits to a world that has become faster and more superficial (Monte-
bello 2015). “I’d like to think that we are teasing out all of the ideas and concerns
Section IV – Exhibitions as Transmitters of Changing Museum Identities  467

and dreams and nightmares that are buried in all of the historical works that we
have”, as Jasper Sharp put it about transhistorical presentation (Siegal 2018).
Although museums are under pressure from a number of directions, all of the
authors in The Transhistorical Museum look for quality and true engagement
over time and with their audiences. Peoples’ stories come with the items and
objects depicted in transhistorical exhibitions, which add to the complexity of the
collections’ meanings. Transhistorical curating involves building up multifaceted
knowledge of items in a museum’s care. The living artists’ potential for curating
and as an institutional strength is also recognised. Working as curators, their
arguments for selections fall into the realm of the professional field. However,
many parties can be involved in this. For example, artists and researchers from
different fields can curate jointly.

Even though the term transhistorical was challenged by Mieke Bal and Alexander
Nagel, among others, transhistorical hangings are accepted based on quality
criteria. The last key for making transhistorism happen, regardless of the time
periods in question, is challenging the viewer through new ways of seeing.

Winograd’s interdisciplinary approach to her exhibition project showed the effects

of colonialism, some of which are still with us. A common goal for Winograd’s and
my curating was to make viewers think about the larger worldview through food
(with Anu Tuominen’s Hunger), and reflect on attitudes beyond the timeframe
when the artworks were made. Secondly, I worked with the theme of gendered
assumptions with factory policies in the old times (with Henrietta Lehtonen’s
Porcelain Tower). Here, Lehtonen’s installation was about femininity struggling
out of its role, with a company of masculinity just next to it. Commerciality was
an issue brought to light, both in comparisons of Lehtonen’s artwork with Delft
porcelain and of Geller’s Way to Go with Collier’s Vanitas. A skull holds strong
iconography, which lingers still well into our time and culture. It is imbued
with commerciality, making it a living, flexible and usable symbol, even today.
All of these examples and notions confirm that there is always another way of
seeing, feeling and learning about the present and the past, which will enrich
museum collections, as well as adding multiple layers to the conversation with
our audiences.

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Bühler, M, Carpreau, P, Demeester, A, Karskens, X & Wittocx,

E (eds.) 2018 The Transhistorical Museum. Mapping the Field.
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Boodt, J E 2018 In Search of the Artist’s Eye. On Contemporary Artist

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Bradburne, J 2018 Museums Shake Things Up by Mixing Old and New.

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like-in-the-future-essay-collection/ [Last accessed 5 October 2019]

Hochstrasser, J B 2007 Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Hujanen, M 2016 Koko elämä kukkamaljakossa. Apu 25 November

2016. Available at [Link]
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Häkkinen, S 2019 Muutoksen juoksupyörässä. Museot 2010-luvun

maailmassa. Museologian maisterintutkielma. Jyväskylän yliopisto.
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October 2019]

Jansen, G M C 1996 (ed.) Jan Steen – Painter and Storyteller. National

Gallery of Art, Washington and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam:
Waanders.

Jaukkuri, M 2017 Ristiriitaa, roisketta ja riemua. In Jaukkuri, M, Juntunen,

J, Sivonen, P, Valjakka, T (eds.) Jiri Geller. Fuck the World! Parvs.
Porvoo: Bookwell Oy. pp. 10–35.

Juntunen, J 2017 Jiri Geller, vieraan ulottuvuuden punk-astronautti. In

Jaukkuri, M, Juntunen, J, Sivonen, P, Valjakka, T (eds.) Jiri Geller.
Fuck the World! Parvs. Porvoo: Bookwell Oy. pp. 60–81.
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Kantokorpi, O 2001 Missä on pajunkissan kissa? Anu Tuominen. Artist’s

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Eduskunnalle. Rami Lehto ps ym. Available at [Link]
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Mintz, S 1986 Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history.
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Helsinki. Kangasala: MC-Paino Oy.

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 471

Section V

Ethics
Section V – Ethics
472 Section V – Ethics

Ethical issues are changing the ways in which museums and museum profes-
sionals working with cultural heritage conduct their work. These issues have a
strong influence on the museum field and have also been widely debated for the
past few decades. Professional codes of ethics, such as the ICOM Code of Ethics
for Museums, which was adopted in 1986, steer the museum profession, even
though they are not legal documents (Kidd 2017). Not only museum profession-
als and researchers need to consider the ethics of their actions. A discussion
regarding proper and respectful conduct has entered various areas of science
and research, and this is changing our views on how to handle and display, for
instance, human remains in museums.

Ethical contemplations are often considered to be theoretical in nature. In gen-

eral, these discussions include both how to present museum collections prop-
erly and how to relate to various ownership issues. The authors in this section
highlight these topics in Finland and discuss ICOM’s role in these processes.
ICOM’s ethical guidelines are at the core of this discussion, as is highlighted in
Eero Ehanti’s chapter.

In everyday museum practices ethical considerations can result in very practical

outcomes, as is the case of repatriation projects that museums have been involved
with (Edbom 2005; Harlin 2008 for Sámi repatriation cases). In October 2019,
the National Museum of Finland decided to repatriate its Mesa Verde collec-
tion to representatives of Native American tribes. The collection includes 600
items consisting of human remains and grave artefacts originally compiled by
the Swedish geologist Gustaf Nordenskiöld (National Museum 2019) and was
finally returned in September 2020 to “a coalition of tribes including the Hopi,
the Pueblo of Acoma, the Pueblo of Zia and the Pueblo of Zuni” for repatriation
and, in the case of the human remains, reinterring (US Embassy in Finland
2020). Anni Guttorm’s chapter concentrates on repatriated museum objects,
which have been returned to the The Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida,
and how these repatriations are vital identity builders for the Sámi community.
In her chapter, she states that it is time to interpret the collected information
from a Sámi perspective (see also Aikio 2018).

Archaeologists encounter situations in their everyday work that demand ethical

attention. The debate about human remains in museum collections is complex,
because they all involve different contexts and different time periods. Displaying
human remains is a delicate matter. Anna Wessman’s chapter positions Finland
in the international ethical debate on exhibiting human remains in museum
displays. Through an analysis of three Finnish museums, she highlights exhibi-
tions displaying archaeological human remains and how the planning of these
exhibitions has raised ethical questions, both among museum professionals and
subsequently among the public.

Some museum collections and culturally sensitive artefacts can be too difficult
for curators themselves to deal with, and such themes can become self-censored
and hidden away from exhibitions (e.g., pornographic materials, homosexuality,
Nazi memorabilia or more recent human remains). On the other hand, muse-
Section V – Ethics  473

ums should perhaps also take a more active part in critical debates on difficult
or uncomfortable matters. This is especially the case in showing empathy and
sensitivity towards exhibition themes about major disasters, such as displaying
objects salvaged from the M/S Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994,
drowning 852 people, exhibited in the National Maritime Museum in Sweden
(Silvén 2010, pp. 136–140). Suzie Thomas’ chapter introduces the readers to
difficult subjects (dark heritage) in museum displays and puts Finnish cases
into a broader international context.

Eero Ehanti
The Twin Cornerstones – ICOM’s Code of Ethics for Museums and the Museum
Definition

Anni Guttorm
Repatriated Collections as a Source for Cultural Revitalisation – Case examples
from the Sámi Museum Siida

Anna Wessman
Displaying Archaeological Human Remains in Finnish Museums

Suzie Thomas
Representing Difficult Histories and Contested Heritage in Museums

References
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Worlds: The Challenges and Benefits of Being an Indigenous Museum
Professional. Museum International, 70/3–4. pp. 100–111. DOI:
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Edbom, G 2005 Samiskt kulturarv i samlingar. Rapport från ett projekt om

återföringsfrågor gällande samiska föremål. Arkeologisk rapport. Ájtte,
Svenskt Fjäll- och Samemuseum. Available at [Link]
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[Link] [Last accessed 18 January 2020]

Harlin, E-K 2008 Recalling ancestral voices – Repatriation of Sámi cultural

heritage. Interreg IIIA –projektin loppuraportti (2008). Available
at [Link]
[Link] [Last accessed 18 January 2020]

Kidd, J 2017 Debating contemporary museum ethics: reporting Sekhemka.

International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23/6: 493–505. DOI:
[Link]
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National Museum of Finland 2019 Finland to repatriate American Indian

artefacts to the United States from its national collections. Press
release, 3 October. Available at [Link]
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articles/suomi-luovuttaa-yhdysvalloille-intiaanikansojen-jaanteita-
kansalliskokoelmista [Last accessed 18 January 2020]

Silvén, E 2010 Difficult matters. Museums, Materiality, Multivocality.

In Svanberg, F (ed.) The Museum as forum and actor. Stockholm:
Museum of National Antiquities. pp. 133–146.

Simon, N 2010 The Participatory Museum. Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0.

U.S. Embassy in Finland 2020 Press Release: Native American Ancestral

Remains Repatriated from the National Museum of Finland to
Mesa Verde National Park (September 17, 2020). Press release,
17 September. Available at [Link]
release-091720/ [Last accessed 22 May 2021]
Section V – Ethics  475

The Twin Cornerstones – ICOM’s

Code of Ethics for Museums and
the Museum Definition
Eero Ehanti

Abstract
In this chapter, the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums is discussed based on
discussions initiated in 2015 at the Museum Ethics 2.0 seminar at the University
of Jyväskylä, which continued within ICOM Finland in the form of written com-
mentaries on the Code. This chapter also takes up the most recent events with
the new formulation of the Museum Definition, a debate that has been active
within the museum discipline during the past decade. The Museum Definition
and the Code of Ethics for Museums can be understood as two cornerstones upon
which our profession stands. These are also tools for museum professionals to
use in their everyday working life.

Keywords: ICOM, Museum Definition, museum profession, museum ethics

Introduction
In this chapter I discuss two current debates within the museum sector. First,
I discuss in detail the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums and then shed light
on the current situation of the ICOM Museum Definition. I give a background
to the code, present all the specific principles and discuss them in the light of
recent commentaries from Finnish museum professionals, gathered together
by ICOM Finland. The Museum Definition is then presented followed by a dis-
cussion about the process of renewing it, which at the time of writing is still an
ongoing process.

According to the ICOM Statutes, adopted by the 22nd General Assembly in Vi-
enna, Austria, on 24 August, 2007:

A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society

and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, re-
searches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage
of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study
and enjoyment. (ICOM 2020a)

The ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums gives eight operational principles, which
help museum personnel in their daily affairs:
476 Section V – Ethics

• Museums preserve, interpret and promote the natural and cultural in-
heritance of humanity
• Museums that maintain collections hold them in trust for the benefit of
society and its development.
• Museums hold primary evidence for establishing and furthering knowl-
edge.
• Museums provide opportunities for the appreciation, understanding and
management of natural and cultural heritage.
• Museums hold resources that provide opportunities for other public ser-
vices and benefits.
• Museums work in close collaboration with the communities from which
their collections originate as well as those they serve.
• Museums operate in a legal manner.
• Museums operate in a professional manner.
(ICOM 2020b)

Together, the Museum Definition and the eight principles of the Code of Ethics
for Museums form the cornerstone of the museum profession. Both are for-
mulated and maintained by an organisation called the International Council
of Museums, which is the world’s largest network of museums and museum
professionals. As the former chair of the Finnish national committee of ICOM,
with six years of experience, I have over time gained an insider perspective on
a topic that should prove valuable to the reader.

The Museum as a Profession

Museum professionals are privileged in the sense that we have unique access
to cultural heritage. We hold a key role in deciding which parts of it are worth
preserving and how it should be utilised. We are the ones who manage collec-
tions and make them available to the public. We are specialists, with the power
to restrict access to fragile and rare artefacts and cultural heritage sites, often
in the name of preservation for future generations. Many of us even carry out
research on museum objects or at least have a say on what gets scholarly atten-
tion. Moreover, we have a privileged position to plan and build exhibitions and
make cultural heritage accessible in various other ways.

All this gives us influence on society; one might even call it power, namely the
power of storytelling. Our choices affect what is brought to the public’s attention
and what is not. As professionals we have a variety of possible stories to tell, but
which ones should we choose and highlight? If there is, for example, a magnifi-
cent museum collection, there are certainly numerous ways to make selections
from it for public presentation. Within the museum sector there is always some
sort of selection process going on and somebody who is making those choices.

This is one standpoint for us as museum professionals – our special position

regarding cultural heritage, both as institutions and individuals. Another aspect
Section V – Ethics  477

comes from the fact that cultural heritage is not uniform or standardised; every
museum object and site is different, in its physical form and origin.

One artefact can be important because it is unique, another because it represents

something typical from a certain time or phenomenon. The origin of a collection
also makes a difference because it is worthwhile knowing how an object has come
to be in a museum’s possession. If there are any doubts regarding the acquisition
or ownership of an artefact, all museum professionals involved should become
cautious. If this object is from a different culture, its original community must
be considered, as must the communities involved in its current location. What
material is the object in question made of? Is it made of a sensitive material? Is
it in a state of decay because of the inevitable effects of time? In that case, the
object needs conservation, which then needs to be tended to. Or, perhaps the
object is sensitive in another way, culturally, it might be something not to be
dealt with or displayed without extreme caution (see also Guttorm, this volume).
This might be the case with objects that include human remains, such as hair or
bone, or even complete body parts (see also Wessman, this volume). Objects that
are connected to ritual processes are also sensitive to display. A breakthrough
in research methods, such as DNA, brings many new possibilities for advancing
our knowledge, but caution is needed when using them on culturally sensitive
materials. The increased role of the media and commercialism can play a role
in our everyday decisions as museum professionals.

These are fundamental questions for museums today. How museum collections
are formed and maintained and how museums should encounter different au-
diences and communities are just some questions to think about. This is basic
stuff for us as museum professionals, but things are seldom straightforward
or easy. The Museum Definition and the eight ethical principles given at the
beginning of this chapter offer a framework that guides our work. However, we
must remember that these are not easily adaptable rules and we can’t regard
them as an inflexible operating manual.

Of course, there is also legislation and guidance from national governing bod-
ies that affects museums and the museum profession. In Finland, the relevant
legislation has recently been updated as a part of the process of creating a na-
tional museum policy programme. This programme, published by the Ministry
of Education and Culture in 2018, outlines success factors for Finnish muse-
ums up to the year 2030, with a vision that by that year Finland will have the
most up-to-date museums and the most enthusiastic audience in Europe. It
highlights museums’ roles as experts, partners and enablers, and gives them
an important role in creating a culturally, socially and ecologically sustainable
society (Mattila 2018).

Furthermore, it proposes common values for us working in the Finnish museum

field. These values are community and interactivity, reliability and continuity,
pluralism and democracy, and last but not least, courage and open-mindedness.
The programme also focuses on themes such as encounters and partnerships,
utilising museum collections and the possibilities of digitisation and the like,
478 Section V – Ethics

with clear measures listed for various actors in the field. The publication of
this programme also included a renewal of the Finnish museum system, with
the establishment of nationally designated museums, but also by clarifying the
roles of national-level museums. The programme’s focus on development also
touched upon more sustainable and flexible funding systems for the museum
sector. The Museum Act (729/1992) was also assessed within this process, with
the result being a newly-formulated act that came into effect on the 1st of January
2020 (Finlex 2019).

The renewed act outlines the purposes of museum work and specifies require-
ments for state subsidies for museums. Here several points ring a bell, especially
when considering the principles in ICOM’s Code of Ethics for Museums, in
spite of not being referred to directly in the act. Still, the new Museum Act is
not enough. Legislation on its own can’t naturally cover all aspects of our mul-
tifaceted profession, and this particular law is valid only in Finland. Legislation
differs very much depending on the country, and something more is thus needed
in order to guide us in our museum profession, something that is independent
from national legislation.

ICOM – The world’s largest museum network

ICOM was established in 1948 under the umbrella of the recently-created UN-
ESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), with
a focus on developing the museum sector (ICOM 2020c). As the years passed,
ICOM grew into the world’s largest network of museum professionals and now
has more than 40 000 members worldwide. The organisation consists of a sec-
retariat based in Paris within UNESCO, National Committees, one of which is
ICOM Finland, and more than 30 International Committees focusing on various
subjects or fields within the museum sector. Individual members belong to a
National Committee and to a freely chosen International Committee (ICOM
2020d).

Early on, ICOM took a leading role in matters related to ethics. The most relevant
outcome has been the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums (ICOM 2020b). But
why do we need a code of ethics? The idea is that commonly established ethical
principles allow us to be more confident of our professionalism, and they build
up trust that colleagues, wherever they might be, can be capable of undertak-
ing complicated tasks within the profession, building their decision-making on
common ground. The public should recognise this and trust that their cultural
heritage is in good hands. Simply put, ethical guidelines are needed for main-
taining professional conduct, securing vital internal coherence and gaining the
public’s trust. We as professionals have to earn the trust of society. This can
happen only slowly and by working consistently. As for internal coherence, the
lack of internal trust within society surely has a negative effect on a community.
These are ideas I noted when Janne Behm, an ethics consultant, gave a speech
about professional ethics to us museum professionals at the Museum Ethics 2.0
seminar in 2015 in Jyväskylä. Indeed, the museum field is not an exception for
Section V – Ethics  479

having a designated code of ethics; many professions have similar codes, and
any profession would benefit from having one.

Our Code and its eight principles outline the responsibilities and tasks of the
museum institution, as well as the rights and duties of a museum worker. It is
a common reference tool, which provides guidance in everyday professional
practice. Its background is international, but naturally it also relies on national
legislation. The rules are not strict, straightforward rules, but more like recom-
mendations, guidelines and principles.

The Code of Ethics for Museums can be seen as having three aspects. Firstly,
it defines the responsibilities and tasks of a museum institution (institutional
ethics). Secondly, it defines the rights and responsibilities of a museum worker
(professional ethics). Thirdly, it can be seen as having a communicative role
towards the public, as it tells what can be expected from museums and their staff.

Worth noting is that all ICOM members are committed to respecting the Code of
Ethics for Museums. There are national committees, whose task it is to make the
code known in each country. This means, for instance, that they may translate
the code into a local language and help individual members familiarise them-
selves with the code. This task is not to be underestimated, as legislation and
management of cultural heritage issues varies worldwide. The code is also an
updated and adaptable document, essentially a tool that helps museums and the
people working in them with their day-to-day business. ICOM’s committee on
ethics (ETHCOM) works on updating the code, and in 2019 a new international
committee for ethical dilemmas was created. The latter promises to become an
open forum for ICOM members to join when discussing ethical dilemmas (IC
Ethics 2020).

The Museum Definition

What is the Museum Definition? It is “the backbone of museums”, stated Jette
Sandahl, previously director of the Museum of Copenhagen and founding director
of both the Women’s Museum of Denmark and the Museum of World Culture
in Gothenburg, in September 2019 at ICOM’s General Conference in Kyoto,
Japan, when presenting the outcomes of the standing committee for Museum
Definition, Prospects and Potentials (MDPP). Sandahl was the chair of this
committee, which was established at the previous General Conference in Milan,
Italy, in 2016 with the task of renewing the Museum Definition, something many
looked forward to very much, as the definition was felt to be somewhat outdated.

While this definition is meant to define the essence of what constitutes a

museum, it is also understood as an ideal, which is interpreted somewhat
differently by museums, and ICOM recognises as members also institu-
tions which only partially or to varying degrees fulfil all the criteria or
functions. Over the decades minor adjustments have been made to this
definition. In December 2018 the ICOM Executive Board decided that it
is time to develop an alternative definition which will be more relevant
480 Section V – Ethics

and appropriate for museums in the 21st century and future museum
landscapes. (Sandahl 2019, p. 3.)

In principle the definition explores what museums are, what we do as museum

professionals, how we do it, and last but not least, why we do it, as Sandahl out-
lined in her speech in Kyoto. It should also convey these principles, both inside
our field and outside to the public, and as such it guides and supports museums
in their everyday practices, as well as their visions for the future. Furthermore,
she concluded, the definition should be a dynamic tool, meaning that it should
be a valid, functional definition, not a static one, but one open to continuing
assessment and modification.

The Museum Definition is relevant to us all, a fact which became evident in

the halls of the Kyoto conference centre during the 85th General Conference in
September 2019, when delegates from all around the world entered a heated
debate about the proposed new Museum Definition and the processes as to how
it was created.

The proposed definition is as follows:

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical

dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and address-
ing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and
specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future
generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for
all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and
work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect,
preserve, research, interpret, exhibit and enhance understandings of the
world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global
equality and planetary wellbeing. (ICOM 2020a)

This proposed definition was neither accepted at the General Conference, as

the original plan was, nor rejected. After intense debates, the General Assembly
voted for a postponement of the whole process. This means that at the time
of writing, ICOM does not have a renewed definition. Nevertheless, what was
proposed in Kyoto was the outcome of three years of work within the definition
working group, which had been engineered by an extensive worldwide process
of gathering opinions from all committees. Roundtable discussions were also
organised in Finland, and the results were forwarded to the international work-
ing group. In the end, every ICOM member was free to submit proposals for
the definition. All this information was processed in the working group, whose
members then modified definition proposals for the Executive Board to decide.
The proposed definition was finalised there.

ICOM Finland’s round table discussion was an intense discussion with museum
professionals at various stages of their careers. As instructed by the MDPP, a
set of given questions was discussed. As for the role of museums in decades to
Section V – Ethics  481

come, the Finnish delegates saw museums as forums and enablers for societal
discussions. Moreover, they saw museums as providers of information, and
thought that museums can even have a role in promoting peace in society. As
for threats, increasing inequality, along with political and economic polarisation,
were mentioned as things to deal with in the future, as well as climate change.
Museums can provide tools for tackling these issues, if resources are sufficient,
which they are not, unfortunately, at the moment. Questions directed towards
current trends and threats raised many thoughts. Opening up to the public and
having more inclusiveness were seen as relevant in today’s environment. Visitor
numbers are rising in Finland and museums are seen as being in a strong position
at the moment, but the question of how to maintain this when public funding
is getting scarcer needs to be asked. New funding models are needed to meet
all the expectations that people and society have towards museums, but they
should not jeopardise their core functions. Good strategic planning and models
from private corporations should be brought more into the museum field also
in Finland, where museums have traditionally been maintained largely by the
government (ICOM Finland 2018).

This was our take on the questions the MDPP commissioned national committees
to discuss. Our roundtable discussion reflected on thoughts about the Finnish
museum sector and the results of these discussions were passed on to ICOM’s
secretariat, as instructed. The other ICOM committees did the same, and later
on an open call for definitions was launched, resulting in hundreds of wordings
from around the world. All this means that the MDPP committee and ICOM had
extensive material to work on when formulating the proposal for a new definition.

This process shows how the huge network within ICOM can be mobilised to work
for a common goal. It also reveals the flip side of the coin, namely the difficulties
involved in trying to come up with wording and a solution suitable to all parties.
National committees are, however, all very different. Something that might be
relevant to us here in Finland might be far less important to members from
developing countries, who live in completely different geographical, economic
and political realities. Nevertheless, the proposed definition as such speaks a
great deal about today’s museum world, which is why I set out to discuss it at the
end of this chapter, after first walking through the Code of Ethics for Museums.
482 Section V – Ethics

Figure 1. The ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. Photo by the author.

Walking Through the Code of Ethics for Museums

Let’s now take a closer look at the code itself. While going through the eight
principles, I also refer to a commentary we carried out on them in Finland. This
was initiated in a seminar titled Museum Ethics 2.0, organised jointly by ICOM
Finland and the student association Corpus, from the University of Jyväskylä.
These discussions were published (mainly in Finnish) in a publication series
of the Finnish Museums Association (Museoetiikka 2.0 – Mylläri et al. 2016).

To further promote the discussion within the museum field, ICOM Finland invited
eight museum professionals to comment on one principle each, and write a blog
post about it. The commentators were chosen by the Board of ICOM Finland,
and they represented various positions and aspects of the museum field, ranging
from people occupied in hands-on museum work, to a professor of museology,
to the Director General of the Finnish Museums Association. The outcome was a
deliberation on problems regarding the code, its strengths and validity in today’s
environment and observations of issues needing updating. All blog posts were
ultimately translated into English, published on ICOM Finland’s website and
distributed through ICOM’s network, in order to give the international field a
possibility to reflect upon Finnish views regarding the code (ICOM Finland 2017).

As I present the Code, the quotes are the titles of individual principles and the
wordings as they stand in the code. I then summarise what they cover and in-
troduce the Finnish comments.
Section V – Ethics  483

Principle 1: Museums preserve, interpret and promote the natural

and cultural inheritance of humanity.

The first principle and its subdivisions go on to set some of the very basic prem-
ises of museum work. “Museums are responsible for the tangible and intangi-
ble natural and cultural heritage”, it says, and for this a proper institutional
standing with clear objectives and policies, adequate physical premises with
suitable environment and security, competent staff and financial resources are
required. The rule also concerns sources of funding. Whatever the case might be,
museums should maintain control and integrity of their programs, exhibitions
and activities. Non-commercial aspects are found there as well, which have
been included in the Museum Definition. In short, income-generating activities
should not compromise the standards of the institution (ICOM 2020b, pp. 2–6).

I took a close look at the first principle. Of course, these are the essentials,
including the premises, staff and so on, and as such, the principle’s points are
very important reading for any museum professional for better understanding
our institution. In Finland, we are fortunate enough to have many of the points
covered by legislation. If an institution here calls itself a museum and wants to be
part of the state funding system, the museum law sets very similar requirements
to the ones listed in this first principle of museum ethics. However, what I came
to deliberate on was the overlying tone of the rule, the huge burden it seems to
place on our shoulders. Can we really be responsible for the tangible and intan-
gible natural and cultural heritage? Does this steer us towards an exhaustive
sense of duty? In reality, not all heritage gets attention, only what is chosen or
possible to preserve and highlight. This should be acknowledged. There is no
need to take on all that responsibility, especially alone, as today’s mood in the
museum field is very much inclusive; communities are invited to participate.
It is very good that the latter rules include and emphasise communities and
co-operation (Ehanti 2017, pp. 6–8).

Someone must also facilitate all this preservation. If there are no resources, how
are we to preserve anything? This leads to the currently obvious issue museums
are facing more and more, even in countries such as Finland, where cultural
heritage work has been largely funded by society. This is where we might find
ourselves involved with the non-commercial nature of museum work lurking in
this first principle, and in the very definition of a museum (Ehanti 2017, pp. 6–8).

Principle 2: Museums that maintain collections hold them in trust

for the benefit of society and its development.

One of the cornerstones of museums, namely collections, is discussed in the

second principle, which highlights the importance of them as significant pub-
lic inheritance. Museums have a duty to acquire, preserve and promote their
collection, and within this public trust comes the notion of stewardship, which
includes rightful ownership, permanence, documentation, accessibility and re-
sponsible disposal (ICOM 2020b, p. 8).
484 Section V – Ethics

This principle calls for consistent and sustainable collection work. A written
collections policy addresses acquisition, care of collections and their proper use.
Sources of collections cannot be illegal, not even questionable, and ownership
must be lawful. Special attention is required when dealing with culturally sen-
sitive materials, whatever they may be (ICOM 2020b, pp. 9–11).

Another burning issue of the day, the deaccessioning of collections, is also

touched upon here, although not in any depth. Therefore, the ETHCOM com-
mittee expanded this second rule in 2019 by publishing separate guidelines for
deaccessioning (ETHCOM 2019). This was needed, because there are plenty of
aspects to be considered when deaccessioning items from museum collections.
Collections formed over long periods of time might contain objects which are
no longer suitable for a museum. And museums are naturally also concerned
with the costs of maintaining their collections.

There certainly are valid reasons for including deaccessioning as a relevant

and natural part of collection management, but the process was felt to be too
time-consuming and difficult. This is one of the findings Nina Robbins made in
her 2016 doctoral thesis on disposals in Finnish art museums. Her thesis also
researched views on different methods for actually carrying out deaccessioning
(Robbins 2016).

One option could be to donate objects to other museum collections, specifically

to those with greater interest in a specific set of objects. That would be an easy
way, and is also the preferred method of deaccessioning among the art museum
professionals that Robbins interviewed. The second method was destruction,
after thorough documentation. The third method was returning the object to
the previous owner, and the fourth was donation. So what about selling deac-
cessioned artefacts? Art museums do sell certain paintings, which do not fit into
their collections policy, and they use the money for acquiring other works of more
significance to them. Selling artefacts to another museum ranked as the fifth
most popular method in Robbins’ thesis (Robbins 2016, pp. 174–175). Her study
covered art museums in Finland; the picture is most likely different elsewhere
and with different materials. Selling artworks, for instance, most likely ranks
higher in societies where museum funding is organised differently from here.

ICOM’s new Guidelines on Deaccessioning of the International Council of

Museums lists ten reasons for deaccessioning. It also guides how to make a
deaccessioning decision in a legitimate way. “In no event should the potential
monetary value of an object be part of the motive for determining whether or
not to deaccession”, the guideline says (ETHCOM 2019). It is indeed interesting
to discuss monetary values here, as selling museum objects might potentially be
profitable for a museum. The code does not outright ban selling deaccessioned
items as a means of disposal, nor does the accompanying guideline, as long as
funds are used for the benefit of the museum collection, i.e., for acquisitions
and the taking care of the same museum’s collection. However, they both warn
against using the proceeds of sales for the costs of regular museum administra-
tive expenses or maintenance.
Section V – Ethics  485

Even though the path to smooth museum deaccession might be laborious, muse-
ums are increasingly heading in that direction. This means that museums need
to update their collection policies about deaccessioning processes and issues.
The National Museum of Finland is one such example.

Furthermore, the Code’s second principle contains a highly relevant point, i.e., a
museum should maintain its collections properly. It should have clear procedures
and responsibilities outlined, proper storage facilities, documentation and, of
course, conservation by preventive and, if needed, interventive means. All this
is intended to make sure that a museum collection is maintained and preserved,
so that it remains available for exhibition, loans, research and other uses. This
might be quite a challenge for a museum, and even in some cases a cause for
deaccessioning. If a collection cannot be preserved, should it be deaccessioned
somehow in order to facilitate its better preservation and use elsewhere, thus
freeing resources for something else? (ICOM 2020b, pp. 14–15).

Nina Robbins, who currently works both as a university level teacher and mu-
seum professional, commented on this principle, together with Päivi Ukkonen,
a lecturer in conservation at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences,
and Minna Turtiainen, curator of collections at the Kerava Art Museum. They
deliberated on the influence of museum collections and the energy within them.
They acknowledge that museums must constantly justify activities that don’t yield
short-term profits. Great efforts are needed for collection management. Does
this have an influence? Do collections work somehow for the benefit of society?
Yes, answer the commentators, “Collections are the core of the operations that
will stand the test of time”. They are the capital only museums can possess,
something definitely not to be wasted! “Each object has characteristics exceed-
ing its information value” (Robbins, Ukkonen & Turtiainen 2017, pp. 10–11).

Principle 3: Museums hold primary evidence for establishing and

furthering knowledge.

The third principle clearly indicates the value of museum collections as primary
evidence, something a museum should acknowledge in its collections policy.
In principle, it states that museums have responsibilities “to all for the care,
accessibility and interpretation of primary evidence collected and held in their
collections”. The principle clearly calls for making collections and all relevant
information available as freely as possible. The principle states that a museum
should carry out research and do it according to a policy or principle. In other
words, research should be consistent and serve the institution’s aims, even if
they happen to be in conflict with individual workers’ research interests. So,
an individual museum worker researching items from the museum’s collection
must secure permission to do so. The principle also leads to something obvious,
namely documentation, which should always be done, especially when talking
about destructive analyses. Furthermore, “research of human remains and ma-
terials of sacred significance must be accomplished in a manner consistent with
the interests and belief of members of the community, ethnic or religious groups
from which the objects originate” (ICOM 2020b, pp. 18–21).
486 Section V – Ethics

Minna Sarantola-Weiss, Research Director at the Helsinki City Museum and

Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Helsinki, commented on this
matter by outlining a set of questions on which any museum could potentially
deliberate. Is the value of collections as research material clearly identified in
the collection policy of a museum? Is this in accordance with the museum’s
stated mission? Are popular trends allowed to affect this? How much do in-
dividual researches consider their employer’s strategies, and where is the line
between an employer’s rights and obligations? How long can a researcher sit
on material for some possible research use? Do museums dare to challenge or
even change predominant truths? Does funding influence research topics? On
what principles are results published? Is there a research policy? Indeed, how
much research does a museum carry out or facilitate to meet the demand that
museums really should produce information and make it available to the public?
(Sarantola-Weiss 2017, pp. 13–15).

Principle 4: Museums provide opportunities for the appreciation,

understanding and management of the natural and cultural
heritage.

“Museums have an important duty to develop their educational role and attract
wider audiences from the community, locality, or group they serve”, starts the
fourth principle. Interaction with communities is highlighted here as an impor-
tant part of museums’ educational role (ICOM 2020b, p. 24).

An obvious way to fulfil this principle is to organise exhibitions. According to

this principle, exhibitions should be in accordance with the stated mission,
policy and purpose of the museum, and constructed so that proper care and
conservation of collections is not compromised. Information presented must
be well-founded, accurate and give appropriate consideration to represented
groups or beliefs. Unprovenanced material should not be displayed. Reproduc-
tions may be used as well, but if they are, museums should respect the integrity
of the original when replicas, reproductions or copies of items are made. All
such copies should be permanently marked as facsimiles. Again, it should be
stressed that human remains and materials of sacred significance should be
acquired only if they can be housed securely and cared for respectfully. This
must be accomplished in a manner consistent with the interests and beliefs of
members of the community, ethnic or religious groups from which the objects
originate (ICOM 2020b, pp. 24–26).

This was commented on by Reetta Karhunkorva and Leena Paaskoski from the
Lusto Forest Museum in Punkaharju, Finland, where the former works as Senior
Forest Culture Specialist and the latter as Development Director. They brought
forth the concept of communities in their discussion. What is a good functional
relationship like? How do we interact with the people who surround us? Yes, we
definitely have an educative role and other well-intentioned functions, where we
give something of value to people, but surely this isn’t a one-way street. Mutually
beneficial co-operation with the various actors is very possible. Indeed, it is a
must these days, as museums are expected to widen their funding basis. Could
Section V – Ethics  487

it be like a good romantic relationship, where both parties share, trust, take re-
sponsibility and eventually benefit? (Karhunkorva & Paaskoski 2017, pp. 17–18).

Principle 5: Museums hold resources that provide opportunities

for other public services and benefits.

“Museums utilise a wide variety of specialisms, skills and physical resources

that have a far broader application than in the museum.” This opens up pos-
sibilities for co-operation and the provision of services to other actors, which
is a positive, as long as those activities are in accordance with the museum’s
mission. Identification of illegally or illicitly acquired objects, authentication
and valuation (appraisal) are mentioned here, but caution is called for. Where
museums provide an identification service, they should not act in any way that
could be regarded as mainly benefiting themselves from such an activity, either
directly or indirectly. Valuations may be made for the purposes of insuring
museum collections. Opinions on the monetary value of other objects should
only be given upon official request from other museums and competent legal,
governmental or other responsible public authorities (ICOM 2020b, pp. 28–29).

In her comment to this principle Satu Itkonen, Head of Public Programmes at

the Ateneum Art Museum, noted that the code might give a somewhat restricted
view of potential co-operation. The code underlies museums’ duty for co-oper-
ation with public actors in the identification, authentication and valuation of
things, for instance. Indeed, we can and do help certain authorities. But how
about taking a broader view and thinking about how our expertise could be
shared with the social and health sectors, for instance? Why do our museums
lack the courage to expand beyond their stated mission? This question is ac-
tually a quite relevant one, and not just regarding this rule, because in several
chapters of the code it is stated that “it must be in accordance with the museum’s
stated mission”, whatever that might actually be in any given situation. Mission
statements should be written in such a way that creative interpretations are not
excluded (Itkonen 2017, pp. 20–21).

Principle 6: Museums work in close collaboration with the

communities from which their collections originate, as well as
those they serve.

Then there’s the principle of collaborating with the communities from which
their collections originate. Museum collections reflect the cultural and natural
heritage of the communities from which they have been derived. As such, they
have a character beyond that of ordinary property, which may include strong
affinities with national, regional, local, ethnic, religious or political identity. One
obvious way to do this is to cooperate by sharing knowledge, documentation
and collections with museums and cultural organisations in the countries and
communities of origin (ICOM 2020b, pp. 32–33).

The return of cultural property is discussed here. The code guides museums to
be prepared to initiate dialogues for the return of cultural property to a country
488 Section V – Ethics

or an indigenous group. Furthermore, when a country, people or place seek

the restitution of something that can be demonstrated to have been exported
in violation of international and national conventions, and shown to be part
of that country’s heritage, the museums concerned should, if legally able to do
so, take prompt steps to cooperate in its return. Items originating from conflict
zones are mentioned here, as well as things not to be purchased by any museum
(ICOM 2020b, p. 33).

The other big thread in this principle is the aspect of respect towards contem-
porary communities, which is something seen as vital these days, especially
when museums actively want to be involved with the surrounding society. The
principle calls for a respectful and harmonious relationship with communities
(ICOM 2020b, p. 34).

All this cannot be overlooked, but listening is one thing, and believing or acting
upon it is another. Is the customer really always right? The Director of the Finn-
ish Labour Museum, Kalle Kallio, commented upon this principle, that the code
seems to warn against hurting anyone, in stating so clearly that communities
should be respected according to their wishes and conditions. “Surprisingly
many rules in the code seem to have been created for the needs of a postcolonial
museum world”, he writes, and finds “shame about innocent people exploited,
robbed and racialised by imperialist museum system”, in the wording of the
principle (Kallio 2017, pp. 23–24).

While this is a genuine concern, it is a poor match for the ethical problems of
Finnish museums, where a more current concern is how an overly sensitive
approach can leave sore points of the past untouched. Is there a hint of postco-
lonial shame lurking there?

In addition to underlining dignity, the code fortunately states that museums

should also promote human well-being, social development, tolerance and re-
spect by advocating multicultural and multilingual expressions. As a matter of
fact, these higher values, which are based on the UN’s Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948), should be emphasised, instead of naive talk about
communities (ICOM Finland 2017, pp. 23–24).

Principle 7: Museums operate in a legal manner.

Museums must conform fully to international, regional, national and local legis-
lation and treaty obligations. In addition, the governing body should comply with
any legally binding trusts or conditions relating to any aspect of the museum,
its collections and operations. (ICOM 2020b, p. 36)

The legal framework is outlined in the seventh principle, with a listing of relevant
international legislation. Why does the code states that museums must act in
a legal manner? Kimmo Levä, the Secretary General of the Finnish Museums
Association, who commented on this principle, asked why. It might seem odd to
highlight such an obvious thing. Following the law is hardly a choice, let alone
an ethical one. On the other hand, do museums fully conform to this rule? I’m
Section V – Ethics  489

thinking about ambiguous copyright and personal data laws, which, if followed
fully, would destroy the foundation of all collection work. Rather than pledging
us to conform “fully to international, regional, national and local legislation and
treaty obligations”, should the principle instead be modified to say something
value-based about how museums must promote justice, particularly from the
perspective of their key task and related questions? Alternatively, one could just
omit the word fully from the text (Levä 2017, pp. 26–28).

Principle 8: Museums operate in a professional manner.

Members of the museum profession should observe accepted standards

and laws and uphold the dignity and honour of their profession. They
should safeguard the public against illegal or unethical professional con-
duct. Every opportunity should be used to inform and educate the public
about the aims, purposes and aspirations of the profession in order to
develop a better public understanding of the contributions of museums
to society. (ICOM 2020c, p. 40)

Various important aspects of professional conduct are handled here, including

the familiarity of relevant legislation, knowledge of professional responsibili-
ty, academic and scientific responsibilities, confidentiality issues, museum and
collection security, personal independence, etc. Another set of points covers
the conflicts of interest that a museum professional might face (ICOM 2020b,
pp. 40–44).

Janne Vilkuna, professor of Museology at the University of Jyväskylä, comment-

ed upon museums operating in a professional manner by asking: “Do they?”
and continued, “Museums do not operate or do anything at all.” According to
him it is the people who operate a museum, while doing their jobs and getting
paid for it. In doing so they have to keep in mind all 16 prohibitions and their
18 subsections if they wish to respect the code. Vilkuna finds the code to be
a list of “musts and thou shalt nots” of almost biblical character. What is the
point of all these obligations and responsibilities, all of which are placed upon
the employer, when there is nothing gained in return? Do the goals of our work
become evident enough from the code? (Vilkuna 2017, pp. 30–31).

Challenges in Ethics
Although the present set of principles remains valid and should be familiar to all
museum workers, it seldom offers easy answers, as situations differ. For instance,
one museum’s justified artefact or exhibition might be ethically questionable
from another museum’s point of view. How about the issues of confidentiality?
Are they easy to follow? Perhaps not, if legislation happens to contradict ethical
confidentiality responsibilities.

There are also risks in taking all of this too seriously. Ethically strict interpreta-
tions of the code might prevent the spreading of information and drive people to
search for information from less qualified sources. One thing is that many of us
490 Section V – Ethics

seek to publish and communicate with the media as much as possible. Of course,
this is fine, but publishing and gaining personal prestige through museum work
might be selfish self-promotion, which is in principle against the code.

I have also reflected at length on being a professional and how it relates to the pro-
fessional community. Can one act for the profession but against the professional
community? Or, should one always be loyal to their professional community,
even though it might mean degradation of the profession’s status in society?

Redefining the Museum

Let us now retreat back to the meeting halls and corridors of the Kyoto General
Conference, where a proposal for the new Museum Definition was strongly de-
bated during that week in September 2019. In fact, the debate had already started
in July, when the proposal was first published. Here is the proposal once again:

Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical

dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and address-
ing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and
specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future
generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for
all people.

Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and
work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect,
preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the
world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global
equality and planetary wellbeing. (ICOM 2020a)

What was swiftly brought forth by several committees, led notably by ICOM
France and the ICOM Europe regional alliance, was a disappointment regard-
ing the process of how this proposal was formulated. Despite wide rounds of
discussions and an open, worldwide call for definition proposals, there were not
enough chances to reflect on this proposal before the Kyoto Conference, many
felt. Perhaps another round of comments from committees before going to the
vote would have been beneficial, and would have given more choices in the
actual vote. As it turned out, there was only one formulation that was brought
for voting. Many proposed postponing the whole process.

Nevertheless, the process was agreed upon back in 2016 at Milan’s General
Conference. This is why ICOM Finland, together with other ICOM Nord commit-
tees, did not favour postponement. “Call the question!”, as one of the delegates
urged us all to do. “We cannot change the process now”, reminded many; the
vote was in the accepted meeting agenda. But eventually the votes were cast for
postponement of the process. Because ICOM is based in France, the meeting
followed French legislation, thus making the postponement possible. The result
of the vote was postponement, with a great majority, and the process continues.
Section V – Ethics  491

Figure 2. ICOM members in the Museum Definition panel in Kyoto General Conference, Kyoto,
Japan, September 2019. Photo by the author.

At the time of writing this chapter, this process is continuing. The standing
committee MDPP continues its work with a modified assembly. The dead-
line will be extended to allow good time for committees to participate, for
which there clearly is a huge need among members. ICOM Finland, together
with all the other committees, now looks forward to receiving guidelines
for mobilising our members in this longstanding but important discussion.

The process is one thing, but what about the exact wording of the proposed
definition? Its content and humanistic message is something very few in the
museum field would oppose, I think, and so said many in the Kyoto debates,
including our fellow Nordic committees. Together we decided to vote for
the proposed definition in the final voting, which did not happen. Such a
definition would have worked, we thought. But we represented the Nordic
countries, where such an open and perhaps vague definition would have
been well received. However, in countries where the definition is more tightly
linked to legislation and funding models for museums, it might not have.

One could argue whether this is actually a definition at all, or more of a

vision statement. Some of the terms and expressions in the statement (e.g.,
polyphonic space, contributing to planetary wellbeing, etc.) are quite vague.
Moreover, the definition is very wide and it could mean that any institution
or actor could claim museum status and thus enjoy its benefits. Governments
also differ in various countries and they change regularly, which means that
a museum definition that is too vague could be interpreted and utilised by
different governments very differently. On the other hand, it was deliberated
in the discussions how such a definition would make it possible to establish
492 Section V – Ethics

a museum, which in some political climates could be quite challenging, in

light of the present definition.

Then there was a debate about the exact words, which either were or were
not in the proposal. Education was one of the missing words, a key one,
many thought when they expressed amazement that such a key activity of
museums was not specifically included in the wording. This was a concern of
many hereabout as well, which many voiced in discussions in online forums
and at ICOM Finland’s events after the Kyoto conference. I must of course
underline that although the board of ICOM Finland took a favourable view
of the proposed definition in accordance together with other ICOM Nord
committees, opinions of course differ here as well.

I think that this is the beauty of discussing something this important in such
a huge and varied network of museums and professionals. But it is a curse
of sorts as well. How can one in the first place come up with a definition
suitable for all?

Conclusion
The twin cornerstones of museums are the Code of Ethics for Museums and the
Museum Definition. But can these together provide us with a professional identity
and give us the tools we need in order to succeed confidently in our daily work?

The preamble of the code states that it “presents a minimum standard for mu-
seums. ... It is also intended that individual nations and the specialised organi-
sations connected with museums should use this Code as a basis for developing
additional standards” (ICOM 2017).

The relevant thing here is the notion that the code should be used as a basis for
something additional. Each national committee should review and discuss the
code within its local cultural heritage field. This was done by ICOM Finland,
both with the seminar and the commentaries referred to above. Moreover, even
individual museums can complement the principles so that they to better meet
the needs of a specific museum and community. National Committees can also
assist in this work, since it is also their duty. ICOM Finland has also organised
discussions in individual museums, and we regularly give lectures about museum
ethics for museology and conservation students. The process of renewing the
ethical code never ends, because the code is an adaptable tool.

The present text of the code is the result of years of discussions; the ETHCOM
committee will now continue this work with recently-published guidelines on
deaccessioning. Other additions are also on the way, namely on acquisitions,
sponsorship and fundraising.

As for the Museum Definition outlined by Jette Sandal at the beginning of this
chapter, we must also remember that this is broad and complex. Covering such
a concept in one single definition proved to be challenging. As with the ICOM
Section V – Ethics  493

Code of Ethics for Museums, the Museum Definition can also never be final or
static. It is also an adaptable tool, whose reviewing process never ends.

One of the best things with ICOM is its huge network of museum professionals
from all around the world, who gather at events or online forums to debate
relevant issues. This is what I found myself thinking about when sitting at the
debate tables in Kyoto, and when listening to opinions from such different points
of view, some of which I would never have thought of myself.

The code and definition are, after decades of work, now a part of ICOM, in a
very usable form. After the next rounds of updates, they are even more valid for
today’s society. Certainly, they provide us with vision and confidence, and they
guide us in our daily affairs.

References
Ehanti, E 2017 There are plenty of obligations, but what about resources?
Discussion about Museum Ethics in Finland. Helsinki: ICOM Finland.
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ETHCOM 2019 Guidelines on Deaccessioning of the International Council

of Museums. Available at [Link]
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final_EN-[Link] [Last accessed 30 January 2020]

Finlex 2019 Museolaki 314/2019. Available at [Link]

alkup/2019/20190314 [Last accessed 30 January 2020]

IC Ethics 2020 International Committee on Ethical Dilemmas. Available at

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Discussion+about+ethics+-+ICOM+Finland+.pdf [Last accessed 30
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ICOM Finland 2018 Museomääritelmä – Round table. Blog post 18

December 2018. Available at [Link]
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accessed 30 January 2020]
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ICOM 2020c History of ICOM. Available at [Link]

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network/committees-directory/?type=137 [Last accessed 30 January
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Itkonen, S 2017 Discussion about Museum Ethics in Finland. Helsinki:

ICOM Finland. pp. 20–21.

Kallio, K 2017 Do not always believe the community. Discussion about

Museum Ethics in Finland. Helsinki: ICOM Finland. pp. 23–24.

Karhunkorva, R & Paaskoski, L 2017 What is a good and functional

museum relationship? Discussion about Museum Ethics in Finland.
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Programme 2030 of the Ministry of Education and Culture. Opetus- ja
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Mylläri, J, Nurminen, M, Paaskoski, L, Pykäläinen, A, Saarinen,

J, & Sarantola-Weiss, M (eds.) 2016. Museoetiikka 2.0:
Puheenvuoroja ja keskustelunavauksia. Suomen museoliiton
julkaisuja 70. Suomen Museoliitto. Available at [Link]
[Link]/doc/verkkojulkaisut/Museoetiikka_2.[Link] [Last
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Levä, K 2017 Discussion about Museum Ethics in Finland. Helsinki: ICOM

Finland. pp. 26–28.

Robbins, N 2016 Poisto museokokoelmasta: Museologinen arvokeskustelu

kokoelmanhallinnan määrittäjänä. Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities:
Jyväskylän yliopisto.

Robbins, N, Ukkonen, P & Turtiainen, M 2017 On the influence of

museum collections and the energy in objects. Discussion about
Museum Ethics in Finland. Helsinki: ICOM Finland 2017. pp. 10–11.

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Museum International, 71 (1–2). pp. 6–9.

Sarantola-Weiss, M 2017 Does your museum conduct research?

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Helsinki: ICOM Finland. pp. 30–31.
Section V – Ethics  495

Repatriated Collections as a
Source for Cultural Revitalisation
– Case examples from the Sámi
Museum Siida
Anni Guttorm

Abstract
Repatriated collections are a source of cultural revitalisation because of the
tradition, history, knowledge and values that they carry. At its best, the process
and outcome of repatriation can empower and create unity in the community.
In the chapter these themes are considered from the perspective of Sámi culture.
The aim of this article is to present examples of how repatriated Sámi collections
can, and have already, helped in revitalising Sámi cultural heritage.

In recent years, the trend of returning indigenous cultural heritage to its origins
has intensified. Indigenous communities, museums and cultural heritage pro-
fessionals are increasingly discussing repatriation. Repatriation processes are
starting to take place all over the world as indigenous communities are becom-
ing empowered and reclaiming their rights to own their past. This discussion
has also arisen in Finland, where several museums have rethought the destiny
of their Sámi collections. This has led to Sámi object repatriations to the Sámi
homeland, specifically to the Sámi Museum Siida. When returned home, these
collections enable and advance the cultural revitalisation of the Sámi.

The revitalisation of Sámi cultural heritage through repatriated collections

happens in many ways. Returned collections represent the right of the Sámi
people to manage their own cultural heritage. In the past, Sámi culture has
been researched and interpreted by outsiders through objects collected from
Sámi homelands. For today’s Sámi it is important to be able to manage that
information from their own perspective. The practical aspect of repatriation is
that the Sámi community can now more easily get access to such objects, as well
as benefit from them. Repatriations strengthen the idea of our traditions and
heritage, and in this way empower the Sámi as a community.

Keywords: repatriation, revitalisation, Sámi cultural heritage, communality,

recalling

Introduction
In the late 1800s and the beginning of 1900s, Finnish painter Gabriel Engberg
travelled three times to Lapland, seeking inspiration for his artistic work. In
496 Section V – Ethics

his two first trips in 1898 and 1905, he spent time in the Inari area and with the
local Sámi people. From these trips he bought Sámi objects for the collections
of the National Museum of Finland and for himself (Hautala-Hirvioja 1999, pp.
84−87, pp. 95−97). Later he became intendent and director of Häme Museums,
and the artefacts he obtained from Lapland thus ended up in the collections of
Häme Museums. Engberg was just one of the many travellers who explored
Sápmi, or the Sámi homelands in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland
and Russia. Many travellers acquired Sámi objects, which then were taken to
museum collections and exhibitions outside of Sápmi. Now such Sámi objects
are returning home, to Sápmi, through repatriations.

In recent years, the debate about returning indigenous cultural heritage to its
origins has become more vocal and more visible. Indigenous communities have
awakened to reclaim their rights to own their past. Due to that, repatriation pro-
cesses are taking place all over the world. Also in Finland, several museums have
rethought the destiny of their Sámi collections and have decided to repatriate
them to Sápmi, to the Sámi Museum Siida. Now the repatriated collections can
enable, further and deepen the cultural revitalisation of the Sámi.

Repatriations have great significance to the Sámi community, because the Sámi
as an indigenous people have the right to manage their own cultural heritage.
As museums repatriate their Sámi collections to the Sámi community, they
acknowledge the Sámi people’s right to manage their own cultural heritage. In
the cultural revitalisation work of the Sámi, repatriated collections play a key
role. Collections carry traditions, history, knowledge and values that may now
be used as a source or a basis for cultural revitalisation. Through repatriated
collections, the revitalisation of the Sámi cultural heritage happens in multiple
layers and ways.

The Sámi Museum was founded in 1959 in Inari as the first Sámi museum
in the world. It was founded by the Sámi themselves, through the first Sámi
association in Finland, Samii Litto. The idea of founding a Sámi museum was
to preserve the Sámi cultural heritage that was left after the Lapland war in
1944–1945 had destroyed vast areas in Lapland (Jomppanen 2003, p. 19). In
1998 the Siida building opened, consisting of the Sámi Museum and the Nature
Centre of Northern Lapland. One of the Sámi Museum Siida’s main tasks is to
work interactively with the Sámi community and to intermediate and enable the
repatriation and subsequent revitalisation processes through its activities. That
is also the aim of the collection’s management in the Sámi Museum (Guttorm
2016, p. 5, p. 17).

Through these repatriations, the Sámi Museum’s role as a caretaker of Sámi

cultural heritage and keeper of the Sámi community’s memories is fulfilled and
strengthened. Since the collections of the Sámi Museum date mostly from the
1900s, these repatriated objects dating from the 1700s and 1800s complete
the collections of the Sámi Museum. The return of the Sámi object collections
enables the Sámi Museum to display and examine these objects in the Sámi
community. By doing so, previously lost knowledge, know-how and traditions
Section V – Ethics  497

can be commemorated and brought back into use. In this chapter, I first briefly
introduce the repatriation processes that have taken place in the Sámi Museum
Siida. The focus of this chapter is on practical examples of how repatriations
may enable the revitalisation process. The examples have been taken from the
work that we do in the Sámi Museum Siida. My perspective is from the Finnish
part of Sápmi, and on repatriations that have taken place in Finland.

Sámi Object Repatriations in Finland

In 2006−2007 the Sámi Museum Siida, Ájtte Museum in Sweden and Varang-
er Sámi Museum in Norway conducted a project entitled Recalling Ancestral
Voices – Repatriation of Sámi Cultural Heritage. The project aimed to find out
which museums in the Nordic countries manage Sámi objects in their collec-
tions. The project resulted in an estimate of about 10 000 Sámi objects being
in Finnish museums. Furthermore, there are a great number of Sámi objects
in the collections of European museums (Harlin 2008). This project has led
the way for the current repatriations of Sámi objects to Sámi museums and
communities. Now Sámi communities, in co-operation with Sámi Museums in
Norway, Sweden and Finland, are furthering the returning of Sámi objects to
Sápmi (for example, Norsk Folkemuseum).

Since 2015 there have been several Sámi object repatriation cases in Finland. As
a national museum of the Sámi in Finland, Sámi Museum Siida has nationwide
responsibility for collecting, preserving and presenting the Sámi cultural herit-
age. In 1999, the Sámi Museum became one of 16 special museums of Finland,
each of which has their own special tasks and fields of collecting. According to
this, the Sámi Museum has a special task in taking care of the Sámi cultural
heritage in Finland. This responsibility has been strengthened even more as the
Sámi Museum became part of the national TAKO Network (see also Ahola, this
volume), which cooperatively coordinates acquisitions for collections. In the
network, the Sámi Museum is likewise responsible for the Sámi cultural heritage.
Currently the Sámi Museum is the only museum in Finland actively collecting
Sámi cultural heritage. This is why the repatriated Sámi object collections have
been donated to the Sámi Museum Siida.

The first repatriation to the Sámi Museum Siida came from the Museum Centre
Vapriikki in Tampere in 2015. The Sámi collection of Vapriikki consisted of
about 40 Sámi objects from the 1800s. They were collected in 1905 from the
Inari area by the painter Gabriel Engberg. In 1906 he then sold the collection
to the Häme Museums, the predecessor to the Museum Centre Vapriikki. Ne-
gotiations between Vapriikki and Sámi Museum started in January 2015 and
soon the collection was transported to Inari and integrated into the collections
of the Sámi Museum. The collection has mostly artefacts related to clothing
and tools (figure 1).
498 Section V – Ethics

Figure 1. Revealing Vapriikki’s repatriated Sámi collection in the Siida’s auditorium. Photo: Sámi
Museum Siida.

The second repatriation happened in 2016. The Hämeenlinna City Museum

repatriated their Sámi collection of 25 Sámi artefacts to the Sámi Museum. The
Sámi objects of the Hämeenlinna City Museum had been collected by travellers
and officials working in Lapland, from the areas of Inari, Utsjoki and northern
Sodankylä, at the beginning of the 1900s. The collection consists mostly of clothes
and textiles, as well as bone and antler objects, of which the oldest are from the
beginning of the 1800s.

In spring 2017, the National Museum of Finland and the Sámi Museum con-
cluded a letter of intent, according to which the National Museum will donate
their collection of Sámi objects to Siida. The National Museum’s Sámi collection
consists of approximately 2,600 objects. It includes the oldest Sámi objects found
in Finland, because the collection has been accumulating since the 1830s. In the
collection, there are clothes and parts of clothes, household objects and equip-
ment meant for transportation and making textiles (Puurunen 2005, pp. 25−26).

In 2018, the Forest Museum Lusto repatriated their Sámi collection of about
ten objects to the Sámi Museum. The objects in question became part of Lusto’s
collections when a collection was donated to the museum by the Finnish For-
est Research Institute in 1993. The Research Institute began accumulating its
collection in the 1920s, and the Sámi objects were also acquired in this period.
The objects in the collection relate to transportation and the nomadic lifestyle
of the Sámi.
Section V – Ethics  499

Revitalisation in Interaction with the Sámi Museum’s

Collections
The Sámi people and their ancestors have inhabited Sápmi since time imme-
morial. It wasn’t until countries began to strengthen their administrations in
northern areas in the 1800s that the lifestyle of the Sámi started to gradually
transform. For the Sámi living in present-day Finland, the turn of the century
signified big changes in societal conditions. Closing the borders between the
Grand Duchy of Finland and Norway in 1852 and 1889, and then later in 1920
between Soviet Russia and Finland divided previously well-connected Sámi com-
munities (Lehtola 2012, p. 23). The turn of the century was also a period when
countries began to map Sápmi, as well as building roads to the area (Lehtola
2012, pp. 14–15). This led to a situation where the Sámi and Finnish cultures
encountered each other more than previously.

Already before the turn of the century, Sámi culture had been researched and
interpreted for hundreds of years through immaterial knowledge and objects
collected from Sápmi. In Finland, the peak in traditional lappological research
dates from the 1910s to the 1930s. At that time, many notable lappologists trav-
elled to the North, meeting the Sámi and gathering information on them (Lehtola
2017, p. 85). That is also the period when Finnish museums were actively making
acquisitions of Sámi objects for museum collections. For example, the National
Museum of Finland acquired most of its Sámi objects at the beginning of 20th
century (Puurunen 2005, p. 15). Years of active collecting of Sámi artefacts came
to a halt when the Second World War started.

After the Lapland War ended in 1945 and the Sámi returned home from evacu-
ation, the Sámi way of life changed. During the evacuation to the central parts
of Finland, Sámi had adapted many features from the Western lifestyle. Sámi
people lost a lot of their material culture such as houses, tools, equipment for
transportation and domestic animals due to the Lapland War, and that acceler-
ated a change in lifestyle and in livelihoods. Life had to be rebuilt from scratch.
After the war, the public education system was intensified and now all Sámi
children had to go to public schools, instead of their earlier itinerant schools.
In Sápmi, where distances are great, this meant that Sámi children lived most
of the year in school boarding houses (Lehtola 2012, p. 402, pp. 409−411). At
this time the use of the Sámi languages decreased, and many Sámi traditions,
for example, craft skills, were neglected.

“The past of the Sámi has often been talked about as a history of colonialism,
subjugation and repression” (Lehtola 2015, p. 23). The history of the Sámi has
many examples of unequal power relations, and the Sámi have been consid-
ered victims by outsiders. Nowadays, the Sámi are equals in research, instead
of passive objects of the study in question (Lehtola 2015). Therefore, it is now
important for the Sámi to be able to use and interpret information collected
about and from them, from their own Sámi perspective (Lehtola 2004). In this
way, traditional knowledge in Sámi culture is managed by the Sámi themselves.
500 Section V – Ethics

This makes cultural revitalisation possible. For rehabilitating a culture, it is the

traditional knowledge and information within the objects that has significant
value. In the repatriation processes, objects are re-socialised by placing them in
their original environment, re-creating and recalling meanings for them. Like-
wise, they may be used as an inspiration in revitalisation (Simpson 2009, p. 122).

The true value and meaning of the repatriated Sámi collections is that by being
physically in Sápmi, they are more easily accessible to the Sámi and benefit the
Sámi community. In Sápmi the Sámi objects have, of course, special values be-
cause many of the repatriated objects can still be traced to their original owners,
makers or users. This creates a bridge between past and present Sámi genera-
tions. In addition, repatriated objects carry tacit information about traditions,
worldviews, ways of making handcrafts and the social system. This information
can be understood only by members of the community, so these objects only
truly open up in the hands of the Sámi, who have such inner knowledge (Harlin
2017, pp. 75–76).

Repatriated collections make cultural revitalisation possible in many ways. The

revitalisation process can be carried out on a community, group or individual
level. On all levels, the process of cultural revitalisation is equally important and
meaningful. Repatriated museum collections can inspire revitalisation in multiple
areas as well. From the Sámi perspective, repatriations can, for example, enable
the revitalisation of making handcrafts (techniques, materials, patterns and ways
of decorating), ways of using traditional Sámi clothes and other products and
Sámi languages, by reviving words related to crafting and the use of objects. To
proceed with the revitalisation process, museums must present and examine
collections interactively with the community and share the knowledge that they
have with community members.

To give an idea of how cultural revitalisation has happened in the projects of the
Sámi Museum Siida, I will describe few examples. Each of them talks about the
possibility of revitalisation in different ways and on different levels.

Foremother’s Shoelaces Brought Back into Use

In the Museum Centre Vapriikki’s repatriated collection, there were multiple
pairs of fine shoelaces from the 1800s. Most of them were identified by Sámi
handcraft artists to be typical of the Inari area. Sámi people use woven shoe-
laces to tie reindeer skin or fur shoes. Sámi shoelaces carry lots of information
about the person who wears them. In many cases, you can see which area the
person is from and to which family the person belongs from the patterns and
colours of the shoelaces. We soon noticed at the museum that the shoelaces in
the repatriated collection would be perfect research material.

This repatriation inspired our intern Laura Aikio in 2016 to study a pair of
shoelaces that was included in the repatriation. At the time, Aikio studied Sámi
handcrafts in the Sámi Education Centre and was doing her internship in the
Sámi Museum’s collections. She did research on patterns, weaving techniques,
Section V – Ethics  501

colours, history and provenance of the shoelaces. She got assistance from ex-
perienced elder Sámi handcraft artists in connecting the shoelaces to a certain
area and family. What she discovered was a most interesting coincidence. The
shoelaces that were returned to Sápmi in Vapriikki’s repatriation were woven
by one of Aikio’s foremothers and therefore the pattern of the shoelaces was her
family’s. Aikio made identical shoelaces for the collections of the Sámi Museum,
for herself to wear. In this way the tradition of making these shoelaces in Aikio’s
family continues.

This example shows that the Sámi can find handcrafts made or used by their
ancestors among the repatriated artefacts, and can become empowered and in-
spired by these objects. For many Sámi handcraft artists, the process of studying
museum artefacts, in this case repatriated objects, is at the same time a process
of building a connection with one’s ancestors (Harlin 2019, pp. 55–56). Bearing
this in mind, museum objects are more than just their physicality, and they get
their meaning, story and roots through the process of repatriation, which then
leads to revitalisation.

Recalling the Skolt Sámi Root-sewn Boat

In 2014, the Sámi Museum Siida and the Sámi Education Institute in Inari
began a project aiming to build a traditional Skolt Sámi boat with root seams.
According to Finnish historian and linguist T. I. Itkonen, the Skolt Sámi built
their boats without nails until the in the early 1900s (Itkonen 1939). After that,
the tradition of making the root-sewn boat was forgotten. Therefore, the main
aim of the project was to restore the lost boat-building technique, together with
the Skolt Sámi community (Alava & Rantamäki 2016, p. 3).

The oldest Skolt Sámi root-sewn boat is in the collection of the National Museum
of Finland, where that boat and boat-building tools were documented carefully.
After that, the boat building began in Sevettijärvi, where community members
were able to participate in the project. While making the boat, the building pro-
cess itself, as well as the memories and knowledge of the Skolt Sámi community
regarding the root-sewn boat, were documented. Documentation was conducted
by photographing, filming, interviewing and taking notes. Finally, the documen-
tation was put together and made into a report and short documentary, both of
which are accessible to the community on the internet, as well as to others who
may be interested (Alava & Rantamäki 2016, pp. 4–5).

The project was received with enthusiasm by the inhabitants of Sevettijärvi and
boat building became a part of activities in the village (Alava & Rantamäki 2016,
p. 11). The building project was conducted in a central place in Sevettijärvi, in
the yard of the Sevettijärvi school. This made the project more visible to the
community and others, as well as making the entire process more inclusive and
interactive (Magnani & Magnani 2018, p. 19).

In autumn 2015, the root-sewn boat was finished and donated to the Skolt Sámi
community (Alava & Rantamäki 2016, p. 11). Now the boat is in the Skolt Sámi
502 Section V – Ethics

Heritage House in Sevettijärvi, where it can be viewed during the summer. The
boat has also played a part in communal events in Sevettijärvi, as villagers have
a chance to row with it during certain events.

This is one example of how repatriation, whether it is material or immaterial, or

in the best-case scenario both, can enable the revitalisation of forgotten tradi-
tions. The root-sewn boat project brought the community together, not just to
build the boat, but to spend time together and share, teach and learn knowledge,
traditions and memories. While building the boat, different generations met,
and in this way the traditional Sámi way of passing knowledge from the elder
generation to the younger one happened naturally.

Figure 2. Three generations, Matti Sverloff, Arttu Niemenmaa and Pieti Niemenmaa, building a
root-sewn boat together in Sevettijärvi. Photo: Natalia Magnani.

Making Sámi Cultural Heritage Open and Available to

the Sámi Community – Digital databases and 3D
In the repatriation processes, the importance of sharing knowledge with and
among the community is vital. Digitalisation is one key to this, as it enables
easy access to knowledge and widens the audience, if that is wished. Due to
repatriations, the openness and availability of Sámi Museum Siida’s collections
have become more important and desired. One solution for this is to make
objects accessible on the internet. Since a large number of the Sámi population
in Finland nowadays lives outside of Sápmi, it is necessary to enable them to
examine the collections from a long distance. Since the repatriated collections
are the ones that interest people most, we have decided to exhibit them on two
different internet databases.
Section V – Ethics  503

Sámi collections that have been repatriated to the Sámi Museum Siida can be
examined on the national online search service, Finna ([Link]). Finna
works as a catalogue, where people can browse different collections, download
pictures and ask questions about or add information to the objects. For us in the
Sámi Museum, Finna has also been an important platform for increasing the use
of Sámi languages in the museum field. All the objects of the Sámi Museum in
Finna have Sámi names, according to which Sámi language group they belong
to or are collected from.

Repatriations have also acted as the starting point for a new kind of research
in the Sámi Museum Siida. We have tried different 3D-modeling techniques
(see also Immonen and Malinen, this volume) with the repatriated artefacts, in
order to find out which technique works best with different types of objects and
materials. The aim of the 3D-modeling is to improve the community’s access
to museum collections, and at the same time to reduce the handling of delicate
objects. In some cases, a 3D-model can be shown instead of an actual object,
which preserves the object by avoiding unnecessary handling. We are also looking
for interactive and innovative ways of exhibiting objects in 3D-models in Siida’s
future permanent exhibition.

Currently, the 3D-models that have been made from repatriated objects are
visible on the internet, and some of them can be viewed in the facilities of the
Sámi Museum. When making collections available on the internet, however, it
is important to think carefully and in co-operation with the community as to
which objects can be published on a public platform. Some objects hold tacit
information about the culture that the community does not want to share with
people outside the culture; therefore such objects should not be published in
an open database. Perhaps the best solution is to think on a case-by-case basis
as to which 3D-models can be published (Magnani, Guttorm & Magnani 2018,
pp. 5–6).

Opening collections to internet databases makes cultural revitalisation available

to and possible for larger groups of people. As mentioned above, because many
Sámi live outside of Sápmi, visiting Sámi collections in the museum is not always
possible. For them, public and easily-accessible online databases are one way
of enabling revitalisation. Even though it is not the same as being physically
present, and thus being able to examine and possibly touch them, online data-
bases provide at least the possibility to see pictures of objects and gain access
to their provenance. Open collection databases may also inspire and encourage
community members and others to actually visit the Sámi Museum’s collections.

Digital repatriation or repatriating objects in digital form is one interesting way of

returning knowledge concerning indigenous artefacts to indigenous communities.
While digital repatriation is quick and easy, and enables access to collections
for wide audiences, it also has some challenges. When the objects are digitised
and possibly published in some database, indigenous communities may lose
control of any knowledge that relates to the objects. Indigenous communities
may want to manage such information concerning the objects themselves, de-
504 Section V – Ethics

cide who can use them and in what way, thus keeping some exclusive rights to
that knowledge. Considering all this, digital repatriation does not replace actual
repatriation, but is one additional form of it (Christen 2011, pp. 185–187). From
the perspective of the Sámi Museum, digital repatriation is a viable option for
getting information regarding Sámi collections in museums around the world
available to the Sámi community. This is a worthy next step in the repatriation
work of the Sámi Museum Siida.

Conclusion
Repatriations represent the right of the Sámi people to manage their own cul-
tural heritage. In their history, the Sámi people and their culture have been
researched and interpreted by non-Sámi through the artefacts acquired, bought
and in some cases taken from the Sámi. For contemporary Sámi communities it
is crucial to be able to manage their cultural heritage from their own perspective.
The repatriation process and the results of it can empower and create unity to
the community. This happens in multiple ways, of which cultural revitalisation
is perhaps one of the most meaningful regarding future Sámi generations. Re-
patriations strengthen the idea of our traditions and our heritage, and that is a
powerful enabler for revitalisation work. The best outcome of repatriations is
therefore their symbolic connection with Sámi ancestors.

Knowing your roots and your ancestors is essential in building and strengthening
individual identity, as well as a community’s group identity. The Sámi Muse-
um Siida has a vital role as a caretaker of Sámi roots and communal memory.
Through repatriations, the museum can fulfil its task more comprehensively.
The Sámi community can memorise and recall its past, and can return, maintain
and strengthen the connection to its ancestors. Repatriations bring past gener-
ations, their worldview and the work of their hands closer to the contemporary
Sámi community. By bringing them closer and enabling such a connection,
revitalisation becomes possible.

In this chapter I have described through examples the repatriation processes

in the Sámi Museum Siida, and how this has enabled cultural revitalisation. In
the future, repatriation work in the Sámi Museum will continue, since there are
Sámi collections around the world to be made accessible to the Sámi community.
The repatriation of physical objects will of course be at the centre of this work,
but in addition, we will examine other methods of repatriation. After all, the key
element of repatriation is to return traditional knowledge and memories within
objects. Furthermore, the ways that repatriation enables cultural revitalisation
will increase and become more innovative. The potential of repatriated collections
is still not fully utilised. Hopefully in the future, we will see more open-minded
and inventive projects that will interest and involve the Sámi community as a
whole. In this way, the full potential of repatriated collections as a source for
cultural revitalisation can be realised.
Section V – Ethics  505

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a Database for the People. In Förster, L, Edenheiser, I, Fründt, S
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Harlin, E-K 2019 Returning Home – the Different Ontologies of the Sámi
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Knowing from the Indigenous North. Sámi Approaches to History,
Politics and Belonging. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 47–66.

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kuvataiteessa ennen toista maailmansotaa. Jyväskylä: University of
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Itkonen, T I 1939 Kolttalappalaisten veneet. Suomen Museo, vol. 46.

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Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura.

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community-based heritage management of indigenous collections:
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121–129. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0033.2009.01669.x
Section V – Ethics  507

Displaying Archaeological Human

Remains in Finnish Museums
Anna Wessman1

Abstract
This chapter discusses the different motives for displaying the dead in museum
exhibitions relating to Finnish prehistory. While the act of excavating, storing
and displaying human remains can evoke feelings, especially in other countries
with larger indigenous populations such as the United States, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia, an ethical debate associated with human remains is
more or less absent in Finland. Yet when displayed, archaeologically excavated
burials awaken much interest among the public.

Ethics are not universal. People with different ideological or religious beliefs
may react very differently when being confronted with human remains. More-
over, values can shift and be in conflict, depending on location. Thus, ethics are
bound to a specific context.

In this chapter a short analysis of three Finnish museum displays is given. The
museums in question are the Museum Centre Vapriikki in Tampere, the National
Museum of Finland in Helsinki and the Cultural History Museum of Åland in
Mariehamn. I have interviewed the storytellers, namely the museum person-
nel who are behind the interpretation of the displays, and I have also tried to
gain information on what the audience thinks about these displays containing
archaeological human remains.

Keywords: human remains, archaeology, museum exhibitions, ethics, inter-

views

Introduction
Death and burial are crucial aspects of archaeology. Archaeologists not only
excavate human remains; they also study and publish them. While there is a
lot to be learnt about life and death by studying archaeological human remains,
displaying them in museums and making them public can also evoke a range of
feelings. Would the deceased have wanted to be put on display in a museum if
he/she had a say in it? Is it ethically right? While some visitors are outraged by
the “pornography of death” (Gorer 1955), most seem to be fascinated with dead
bodies and approach them with great interest and reverence.

1. This chapter has been peer reviewed.

508 Section V – Ethics

Human remains have been displayed in museums (and elsewhere) for centuries,
from the early 16th-century cabinets of curiosity to contemporary museum ex-
hibitions. While the idea of displaying human remains began with pedagogical
aspects, in order to learn about human anatomy, it also made people sometimes
gaze at them with morbid curiosity (Alberti 2011; Hallam 2016).

Displaying death is not an easy task for curators, who have to make choices and
decisions regarding what is interesting, which stories should be told and how
they should be presented to the public. When doing this, there is always a risk
of disrespecting the dead, and more importantly, the living who feel connected
to the deceased. In some museums the dead are hidden behind blankets or in
special rooms in order to give museum visitors a chance to decide for them-
selves if they want to encounter the deceased or not. Curators may also use new
technology, such as face reconstructions, or decide to display only replicas of
the bones (Swain 2007, pp. 162–166). It is usually “the strikingly ‘human’ and
‘whole’ cadavers that have provoked the strongest emotional responses from
the public” (Williams 2016, p. 293), which implies that other non-visual human
remains, such as cremains2, are not perhaps as sensitive to display.

There are plenty of ethical guidelines and frameworks for excavating and display-
ing human remains, but most of these seem to relate to contemporary groups,
foreign cultures and to the repatriation movement (Swain 2002, p. 98; Tarlow
2006, p. 200; Swain 2007; Nilsson Stutz 2013). Displaying remains of indige-
nous people is broadly unacceptable throughout much of the world today, and
there are also strict laws and regulations concerning the stewardship of human
remains (Chamberlain & Parker Pearson 2001, p. 186; Lackey 2006, pp. 146–147).
There are, for example, several museums in the UK that no longer exhibit human
remains (Sayer 2010, p. 484), perhaps due to the fact that displaying them is too
sensitive and makes some viewers uneasy (see Thomas, this volume).

In Finland, however, there is almost no public debate concerning the display

of human remains. This might seem a bit surprising, because the only indige-
nous people in the entire European Union, the Sámi, live here in Fennoscandia
(Harlin 2019). While there have been discussions and several large repatriation
initiatives of Sámi cultural objects (see Guttorm, this volume), these have mostly
consisted of ethnographic materials (Harlin 2019; Magnani et al. 2018; Harlin
2008). Yet, as with so many other indigenous cultures, Finnish museums also
possess human remains from the Sámi population. Some of these have been
obtained unethically and have been studied and measured by scientists while
others consist of archaeologically excavated burials.

Nonetheless, Sámi earthly remains have been repatriated in Finland. Some 95

skulls, which had been part of the anatomic collections at the University of Hel-
sinki, were reburied in Inari in 1995. Later the remainder of the university’s Sámi
collection was also repatriated to the Sámi Museum Siida, where the remains

2. The ashes of a human body after cremation.

Section V – Ethics  509

are still curated (Söderholm 2002; Ranta 2011; for a wider discussion about how
these bones were originally collected see Ruohonen 2012). More recently the
remains of 25 Sámi individuals were reburied in Lycksele in Swedish Lapland
(Skogelin 2019), but a wider discussion about our colonial past or on the rights
to curate cultural heritage is only starting (Scarre 2012; Nilsson Stutz 2013). For
example, repatriation of the large archaeological collections excavated in Sápmi,
the areas where the Sámi people live, has not been publicly discussed. Naturally,
this is a delicate and sensitive subject for the Finnish authorities, especially the
Finnish Heritage Agency (Harlin 2019), but it should nonetheless be discussed
openly with the descendant communities.

Human remains and ethics related to them can be discussed from a variety of
perspectives, ranging from archaeology, osteology, medicine, religion, law and
philosophy, as well as from minority and indigenous viewpoints (Drentzel et al.
2016, p. 7). Ethical debates often ask who has the right to decide about handling
human remains. Do scientists have a monopoly over the past and a priority to
study them, or should possible communities of origin and the broader public
also have a say about how remains should be treated and what should happen
to them? Moreover, how can archaeologists be sure that they are being objective
regarding the interests of both the living and the dead? (Scarre 2006, p. 198).
According to the Swedish archaeologist Liv Nilsson Stutz, the argument should
not be about who owns the given human remains. Instead, it should focus on how
these remains are studied, used and displayed. In the end science only “offers
one way of seeing and understanding the world”, even though this view can be
important (Nilsson Stutz 2009, p.168). Alberti et al. (2009, p. 144) have also
stated that the question should not be when, where or if human remains can be
displayed, but should instead focus on how they are displayed. Thus, sensitivity
seems to be important (Sayer 2010).

So, can there even be comprehensive answers to these questions? (Tarlow 2006,
p. 215). According to many, ethics is an intellectual debate that should not be
superseded by bureaucracy (Tarlow 2006, p. 215; Nilsson Stutz 2009, p. 169).
Therefore, it is important to be active in these discussions and also to understand
our responsibilities in this discourse, both as researchers and curators. In that
sense, ethics are never fixed or final (Nilsson Stutz 2009, p. 169).

Human remains in museum displays have been studied in detail by several schol-
ars before me (Swain 2002; Alberti et al. 2009; Nilsson Stutz 2016; Williams
2016; Albinsson 2018). These papers have discussed cases from Scandinavia,
Europe and the United States. However, the topic of displaying human remains
in Finnish museums has not been as widely discussed, even though there has
recently been increased interest (Vilkuna 2000; Vilkuna 2001; Paasikivi 2014;
Moilanen 2014; Maijanen et al. 2019; Äikäs 2020). In an article on the image
of Sámi religion in museums, Tiina Äikäs (2020) reflects on a late 16th-century
noaidi inhumation burial from Kuusamo, which was until autumn 2019 on dis-
play in the Lapland exhibition of the Museum of Northern Ostrobothnia in Oulu.
510 Section V – Ethics

In this chapter, I focus on three museum exhibitions containing archaeological

human remains. My research questions have concentrated on the museums’
motivations for displaying human remains and on any potential ethical debates
these displays have evoked, amongst both museum professionals and the public.

• How was the decision to display human remains taken?

• Was there an ethical discussion prior to this amongst the relevant mu-
seum professionals?

• How have the audience reacted to the displays?

The human remains discussed in this chapter all date to prehistory or the be-
ginning of the Christian era, and are interpreted as pagan burials. Yet, one
of these displays, the Levänluhta display at the National Museum of Finland,
contains human remains which have recently been genetically studied. The re-
sults show that the DNA of three individuals (out of 98) closely matched the
DNA of the present-day Sámi population. Since the site is dated to the Iron Age
(AD 300–800), and located far away from present day Sámi regions, the result
came as a surprise to the researchers (Wessman et al. 2018; Sikora et al. 2019).
Nonetheless, this is an interesting aspect, which may result in future discussions
about the ethnic and cultural affiliation of these individuals, possible repatria-
tion and even their display within a museum context. Recent funding from the
Academy of Finland and the Kone Foundation has just enabled more ancient
DNA analysis to be carried out, which means that the genetic composition of
these individuals will be ensured in the future. However, so far this display has
not caused any negative reactions among museum visitors, which is odd, when
the debate about the Sámi noaidi burial from Kuusamo is taken into account
(YLE 2019; Koillissanomat 2019).

Methods
Since many permanent exhibitions regarding Finnish prehistory have recently
been renewed, I wanted to take into account the opinions and motivations of
museum professionals who have been responsible for planning the exhibi-
tions examined in this study. I interviewed museum professionals from the
National Museum of Finland, the Cultural History Museum of Åland and the
Museum Centre Vapriikki in Tampere. I also visited these exhibitions and
made observations of the displays. Unfortunately, there was no possibility to
study audience opinions for this study, partly because one of the temporary
exhibitions discussed here had already closed. Therefore, I relied on the visitor
feedback that has come up anecdotally in my interviews. However, a recently
published questionnaire study from the Museum of Northern Ostrobothnia
in Oulu supports many of the results from my interviews, and I cite it when
appropriate (Maijanen et al. 2019).

Due to the limited time available, I relied on two main approaches. Firstly, I
conducted qualitative interviews at three different museums during the spring
Section V – Ethics  511

and summer of 2019. Some of these interviews were done in the exhibition
space involving the ethnographic go-along method, which involved observ-
ing and talking while moving through the exhibition space (for a definition
of the method see Kusenbach 2003). Others were group interviews with the
exhibition team, some of which were conducted through Skype. I chose this
approach instead of an online survey because I wanted to get more compre-
hensive discussions and not just straightforward questions and answers. A
second round of data collection took place in the form of emails, with a set of
specific questions for those who had been involved in the exhibition process.
I interviewed a total of nine people for this study; six worked at the National
Museum of Finland, the Cultural History Museum of Åland or the Museum
Centre Vapriikki in Tampere. I also conducted three interviews with people
who had been connected to the making of these exhibitions, but who were not
employed by these institutions.

I conducted interviews with a semi-structured approach, letting the inter-

viewees talk freely and proceed in the order they felt was best. The interview
questions ranged from the first planning stages, the exhibition script and how
the displayed remains were selected. I also wanted to know their opinions
about displaying human remains and about possible ethical questions relating
to this, as well as how visitors have reacted to the displays. The interviews and
emails were conducted in Finnish and Swedish, ultimately being translated
into English by me. All participants were informed about the intentions of this
study and that I would be using the findings of the discussions for this chapter’s
research. They all signed a written consent form. The interviews were recorded
and transcribed by me. I have anonymised the quotes in this chapter in order
to make the text more fluent.

The National Museum of Finland

The permanent exhibition about prehistory at the National Museum of Finland
was opened in April 2017 (for more about the permanent exhibition reform see
Forssell, this volume). The exhibition is not chronological, as its predecessor
was, but instead follows six different themes: origins, movement, worldview,
identity, encounters and materialism. The museum outsourced the process of
writing the exhibition manuscript to archaeological experts from the Universities
of Helsinki and Oulu. Prior to this, the museum also arranged a panel discussion,
mainly intended for Finnish archaeologists. I was invited to take part in this panel
discussion. The displays were designed by Tuomas Siitonen and Panu Heikkilä
(Anttila 2017, p. 7; Herva & Lahelma 2017, p. 9). Later, the script was published
as a book, which is sold in the museum shop. According to one of the authors of
the exhibition manuscript it is “a document about how this exhibition is made
… because only a fraction of it is in the exhibition” (interview respondent H5).

Death and burial are introduced in two displays: the Levänluhta water burial
site (AD 300–800) and the 11th-century grave number 56 from the Luistari
inhumation cemetery in Eura. Levänluhta was in fact one of the examples that
512 Section V – Ethics

the museum wished architects would address, when they launched the initial
architect competition for the exhibition. Levänluhta was prioritised early on
because it had scientific interest and was internationally known. “The site was
known as an intriguing mystery with many open and unanswered questions.
Moreover, it is a special burial, because the bone material is large and so well
preserved. We wanted to add the latest research results to the exhibition” (inter-
view respondent H3). According to one of the persons who wrote the exhibition
manuscript, Levänluhta stands for movement in the exhibition. “We thought
that the Levänluhta site would visualise movement into the afterlife through
the element of water, a theme that was a key also in the manuscript” (interview
respondent H6).

Even though most of the objects on display in the exhibition derive from burials,
the contexts of the finds are not highlighted in any way, or even stated in the ex-
hibition labels. According to one of the persons behind the exhibition manuscript,
this was done deliberately. “The exhibition is not meant to be teaching material.
It portrays glimpses from an ancient world and is therefore fragmentary. Many
other themes and perspectives are invisible in the exhibition too, for example
economy and childhood” (interview respondent H5).

In the exhibition, Levänluhta is displayed in a narrow aisle between two larger

galleries. The space feels a bit crowded and small, due to a low ceiling. The light-
ing is dim and it is quite dark in the space. On the left side of the room, there is
a deep niche in the wall, which is lit. The lights are focused on an assemblage
of human skulls and bones. The atmosphere gets more dramatic because of the
dark reddish-brown colour on the bones, which is due to the bones having orig-
inally been buried in ferrous water (figure 1). While not many visitors actually
spot this, one can look up in the showcase and see water-lily leaves from the
underside. This means that the bones are actually depicted to be in situ, float-
ing under water as they had originally been placed during the Iron Age (for an
overview on the archaeological context see Wessman et al. 2018). “The display
of the deceased from Levänluhta in a small enclosed space works quite well in
my mind. It gives some kind of impression of being “inside” the pond, some-
thing which we also indicated in the manuscript” (interview respondent H4).
The grave goods are placed in front of the bones. Opposite from this showcase
is a small closet-like dark space with a screen showing images and short videos
from the actual Levänluhta site in Ostrobothnia, including drone videos from a
bird’s-eye view, as well as a video filmed under the murky water.
Section V – Ethics  513

Figure 1. The grave goods from the Levänluhta burial in the front and the assemblage of human
bones in the back of the picture. At the top it is possible to distinguish the painted water lilies, which
give the impression that the bones are underwater. Photo: Tuomas Siitonen Office/The National
Museum of Finland.

When moving to the neighbouring gallery from the Levänluhta showcase,

the visitor encounters burial 56 from Luistari in Eura, an iconic burial site
in Finnish archaeology in many ways. The burial is displayed in a showcase
mimicking the actual burial as it was excavated. The bones and grave goods
lie on sand. An enlargement of the drawing from the original excavation site
on the back of the showcase asks, “Who was this rich woman?”

A reconstruction of an ancient dress, based on textile remains from the bur-

ial, is displayed on a mannequin on the right side of the burial in a separate
showcase. There is also a monitor with a short text about Finnish Iron Age
burial customs. The reconstruction of the ancient dress is very well known,
both among scholars and the public, partly due to the fact that the former
President of Finland, Tarja Halonen, wore a reconstruction of this dress at
the Independence Day Ball in December 2001 (Schauman-Lönnqvist 2017).
The mannequin and the burial are known as the Eura Matron, giving not
only a face but also a name to the deceased, thus personifying the deceased
in a very concrete way. The mannequin was also an essential part of the
previous prehistorical exhibition, and pictures a middle-aged woman with
blue eyes and fair hair, which is made into a bun at the back of her head.
While this reconstruction should be studied in detail, there is unfortunately
no room for it here. It should be pointed out that there is not yet any reliable
scientific evidence of either the woman’s hair or eye colour.
514 Section V – Ethics

Even though the Luistari showcase depicts an actual in situ burial, it is clear
when comparing the drawing and the burial that it is not 100% accurate.
Even though it is not stated anywhere on the museum labels, the original
stamped bronze sheath from the matron’s knife has actually been replaced
with a similar one, which was found in the nearby Osmanmäki cemetery,
because the original was already destroyed during the excavations due to its
poor and fragmented condition (Etu-Sihvola 2019). In addition, the pres-
ervation of the bone material is rather poor. It is probable that the majority
of the public does not even understand that the fragments in the showcase
actually come from a human being. The skull is almost completely missing
and only fragments of the long bones, pelvis and finger bones are left. “And in
a way when they [the bones] are coloured by the bronze objects ... you don’t
even easily recognise that these are actual bones; this right femur here looks
like wood” (interview respondent H4). Hence, the public’s focus is probably
put on the massive bronze jewellery and the bronze spiral ornamentation,
which lines the clothes of the deceased in this burial.

The Luistari burial was not our [the manuscript team’s] proposal and is not
as such part of the exhibition’s [six] themes. As such is it a bit unattached
… also, the location of this burial feels arbitrary. Perhaps the idea is to
join it with the “movement theme” in the map application [situated in
the same space], but I’m not sure in what way. (interview respondent H4)

According to respondent H4, the idea of this section is to tell visitors about
the archaeological research and scientific knowledge that is gained by studying
graves, and also what can be learnt from them in order to be able to make re-
constructions. “Here we highlight ‘the burial’, not so much the deceased … the
find context is important, how the artefacts have been found together; that is
what attracts the eyes first, how the objects are linked together”.

Respondent H4, an archaeologist by training, said that Levänluhta is not part

of the guided tours because the space is too small and narrow for a group to
stop there. Luistari, on the other hand, is included because it consists of both
the burial and the science connected to the find.

Naturally we mention her age and height and what is known about her,
but we highlight more the burial tradition, the tradition of burying the
dead with grave goods during Iron Age and how this provides us with
information. And this, in turn, helps us to do reconstructions like this
one. So, we can get an idea of the ancient world and how things looked
back then, so a lot of focus here is put on reconstruction of the ancient
dress. (interview respondent H4)

None of the freelance guides at the museum has ever reported spontaneously that
a visitor would have commented on anything relating to the ethics of displaying
human remains, but it should be pointed out that the museum does not ask for
feedback or follow this up with their guides either. Only one piece of feedback
has come to the museum by email, in autumn 2019, regarding the display of
Section V – Ethics  515

the Levänluhta water burial. According to respondent H4, the feedback was not
so much about ethics, but more about the space in which the remains were on
display. “The person said that the spaces were not the best possible and that
these [bones] should instead have been on display in a more quiet and calm
space” (interview respondent H4).

According to respondent H4 this response was sent around the same time as
the first DNA results were published in the media regarding the deceased from
Levänluhta (Sikora et al. 2019). Thus, she thought that the feedback was con-
nected to that (and the genetic background of some of the deceased on display).
However, she also confirmed that the space is problematic because the display
is situated in a narrow corridor where people are passing by and it is not easy to
stop by the showcase with a larger group, for example. Moreover, visitors have
to pass through this corridor in order to get into the next exhibition gallery, thus
not giving the visitors the opportunity to decide for themselves if they want to
see the remains or not. There is no other way to move through the exhibition
than to go past these human remains.

According to one of the authors of the exhibition script, no discussion about

ethics was brought up in the meetings he attended, but he did not bring it up in
the meetings either. “Mostly the discussions [in the meetings] were very cursory,
about how much and which objects should be displayed and about especially
fragile objects involving the conservation team” (interview respondent H5). Yet,
according to respondent H4, some discussion about the ethics of displaying
human remains did happen.

We thought that we would try to display these remains in a way so that

they could describe the original site, that we would present it with lights,
so that we would create an atmosphere as if we are under water, that up
there you could see the pond’s surface. So, we didn’t make any assem-
blage of these bones or anything. Instead, we wanted to display them [the
bones] in a way that they are there on the bottom of the pond. I’m content
with this display, but of course I am comparing it to the old [exhibition].
In the old [exhibition] they [the bones] were treated in a very different
way, because they were displayed in an assemblage, which was not, in
my opinion, a good way. I think that this is a good way. Here you can
see the context, that this is an archaeological find from a certain place.
We try to explain it by this display and through the photographs in that
other room. I see this as a good way to approach this subject. (interview
respondent H4)

The respondent is referring to the old exhibition, which was built in the 1990s.
There, the Levänluhta burial was on display in an isolated showcase, with human
bones piled up on the lower shelves and skulls and grave goods displayed on the
upper shelves, with very limited archaeological context. Since the showcase was
isolated, it was also very visible in the exhibition space, attracting a lot of morbid
curiosity due the large amount of bone material. What the respondent perhaps
wants to explain here is that she feels the burial site is now better contextualised,
516 Section V – Ethics

and is not perhaps so much a focal point in the exhibition anymore, even though
the display still contains a lot of human bone material.

The Museum Centre Vapriikki

The Birckala 1017 exhibition in the Museum Centre Vapriikki in Tampere was a
temporary exhibition (9.6.2017–16.3.2019) about the Late Iron Age in Tavastia,
and more specifically an exhibition promoting the results of the archaeological
excavations of the Tursiannotko settlement site in Pirkkala. The exhibition was so
popular that it was extended (Birckala 2019). “We wanted to make the exhibition
memorable” (interview respondent H2). The exhibition described both life and
death in the Late Iron Age, which meant that burials were also displayed. One of
these was The Janakkala Swordsman, a 14th-century inhumation burial found
by an avocational metal detectorist club called Kanta-Hämeen Menneisyyden
Etsijät in autumn 2013 (YLE 2013). The burial received international attention
upon discovery and is now a famous site in Finland, also known to the public
(YLE 2014).

The thing that got me interested in this exhibition was the fact that in this
display, even though it depicted the reconstruction of a real inhumation burial,
the skeleton was a replica. Moreover, the plastic skeleton was not explained or
highlighted in the exhibition texts or in the multimedia elements attached to
it. I asked the interviewees about why they wanted to display a replica instead
of the authentic bones, and one respondent stated:

There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the skeleton was in such a bad
condition, that I didn’t want to handle it at all, because its condition
would only deteriorate. So, in a way it’s better that all the small pieces
that are preserved [from the body] are saved for future research. Another
point is that our [plastic] skeleton is almost identical with the drawings
in the excavation report. Therefore, the small fragments of bone would
not have given the same impression. We wanted to show how it looked
[when the burial was opened], and that some bones turn into dust when
you excavate them. It is important to preserve everything for later re-
search. We didn’t want to take the risk that our handling of the bones
would hinder future research, such as ancient DNA research, involving
the bones. It was clear when we looked at these bones in the storage room
[at the Finnish Heritage Agency in Helsinki] that we don’t want to break
the bones. (interview respondent H2)

It was evident that this burial had an important role in the exhibition space,
probably because it was so renowned. The display was large, taking up a whole
room, and depicted its original context, a field with the title The Janakkala
Swordsman – The last pagan in Häme? (figures 2 and 3).

“We wanted to display the burial in a way so that it looked exactly the same as
when the archaeologist opened it” (interview respondent H1). The burial was
placed under the floor in a glass showcase. “We wanted to make it impressive
Section V – Ethics  517

... It was important that one was able to walk upon it” (interview respondent
H2). “It was also the fact that we wanted to promote research. We got a good
story from the burial and it was a multifaceted site” (interview respondent H1).

Figure 2. The Janakkala Swordsman’s display at the Museum Centre Vapriikki. Photo by the author.

Figure 3. A close-up on The Janakkala Swordsman display. Photo: Saana Säilynoja/Museum Centre
Vapriikki.

There were also other inhumation burial contexts on display in the exhibition,
such as small fragments of skull bones and teeth from an inhumation burial
in Ylöjärvi, but the rest of the burial materials consisted of grave goods, which
were displayed outside of their original contexts. According to respondent H1
this was done on purpose:
518 Section V – Ethics

Sometimes as an exhibition maker, you want to hide the fact that these
objects are from burials. We want to talk about life, not only death. You
might, for example, display the jewellery inside a jewellery box instead. If
you only display burials, then the average visitor won’t understand what
they tell about the person’s life. (interview respondent H1)

The museum never received any criticism from the public relating to ethics. The
only feedback they got relating to a burial came from another archaeologist who
was not content with how the burial from Ylöjärvi was interpreted. Hence, it
was related to scientific aspects and not the display itself. The exhibition project
manager said the following:

I want to make it clear here that we didn’t do this [use a replica of the
skeleton] out of respect for the deceased. It was the scientific side that
was of importance here. We haven’t discussed the ethics before this [in-
terview] but perhaps we need to think about this more in the future. Erm,
somehow, I feel a little bit dumb because we hadn’t thought about this
but at the same time, I hope that the Finnish society wouldn’t go into this
kind of niggling. (interview respondent H1)

As an archaeologist you are so used to excavating burials, and you know

that old burials like these do not evoke strong emotions in the audience.
(interview respondent H2)

The Cultural History Museum of Åland

The permanent exhibition about prehistory in the Åland Islands opened in August
2016. While the former exhibition was thematic, the new one is a chronological
exhibition about the prehistory of the Åland Islands (Dahlblom 2018, p.14, p.
33; Robins 2018, p. 44, p. 51). In the exhibition space there are human remains
displayed in two different places. These remains come from two periods: bones
from an adult and a child from the Jettböle Stone Age site in Jomala, a human
skull from the Viking Age and cremains, which also date to the Late Iron Age.

According to my interviews, the prehistory exhibition at the Cultural History

Museum of Åland is an exhibition that focuses on chronology, archaeological
research and its methods, such as human osteology. It was important for the
museum personnel that visitors meet people from the past in the exhibition,
because they had not been visible in the previous exhibition.

Two Jettböle individuals are displayed on a wall close to the entrance of the ex-
hibition space. This includes an adult, and displayed a bit lower to the viewer’s
right, a child. The bones are comprised of fragmentary materials, displayed in
anatomical order but actually consisting of several individuals, which is also
highlighted in the texts, which bear the title The Jettböle Puzzle. Some of the
bones have traces of cutting, chopping and even traces of fire, which suggests
either some sort of complex ritual treatment or cannibalism (see Nuñez 1995;
Götherström et al. 2002). The Jettböle site is an iconic Stone Age site on Åland
Section V – Ethics  519

and it is famous for its Pitted Ware pottery, well-preserved human bone ma-
terial and clay figurines. Yet, the cannibal theory was not anything that the
exhibition team wanted to highlight or even mention. Respondents had the
following comments:

We don’t want to make this into a sensation. We want to show that we

are serious with this. (interview respondent H8)

We wanted to show that these Stone Age people were like us, that these
are in fact human beings like we are today. But we wanted to do it in a
scientific way. (interview respondent H8)

Their lives are as important as their deaths … but at the same time there
is a risk that people might feel that authentic human remains in an exhi-
bition are disturbing … my opinion is that this is so important, that there
are so many people who have heard about Jettböle and that there are a
lot of misinterpretations regarding it. We want to correct these errors
and wrong ideas that the general public might have. Moreover, even if
this is delicate, I feel that we need to be brave and also display difficult
matters … in an objective way. (interview respondent H9)

Thus, the exhibition team wanted to give the deceased an identity and to show
that even though these individuals were buried a long time ago, they are not
really any different from people today.

Figure 4. The Jettböle display at the Cultural History Museum of Åland. The remains of an adult
and a child are upright on the wall. The Mystery from Karrböle is at the bottom right in the picture.
Photo by the author.

Besides the Jetttböle Stone Age individuals, there is the skeleton of a dog and
one more example of human remains in the same showcase. This is the crushed
520 Section V – Ethics

skull of a Viking Age man from Karrböle in Jomala, excavated from a burial
mound in the 1960s. Only the skull is displayed with the title The Mystery from
Karrböle. It depicts an abnormal way of disposing the deceased during a time
when cremation was otherwise the norm. The text also asked why this individual
had a crushed skull and if perhaps he was murdered.

In a way this skull is a bit more benign [than the Jettböle remains], even
though it is a skull, and in another way, I can feel that it is a bit grim, the
way it [the skull] looks up at you from the clay like that ... but we haven’t
had any reaction from the public on that. (interview respondent H9)

Since the skull is crushed and it has been taken out of the excavation as part
of a larger lump of earth, it is difficult for the visitor to distinguish the actual
skull from the earth. Even the exhibition team has questioned the fact that the
skull is perhaps not even recognised as human by the public, because it does
not resemble a human skull. The team had discussed the necessity of adding a
sketch or drawing to the skull, but not everyone in the team agreed to it, so the
idea was left out.

If we would display these out of context and start to show something just
for the sensation of it, to display a skull under a strong light for example,
that would be tasteless and could be criticised. But when you present
something as an object that can be interpreted and can give information
about history, then the human remains rises almost to the level of other
artefacts in the exhibition. (interview respondent H8)

For the public, the skull from Karrböle might still feel a bit odd in its current
context. It stands out because it does not fit into the otherwise chronological
theme of the exhibition. Moreover, one may ask why only the skull is on display,
and not the rest of the body? As a researcher I also reacted to the use of the term
“object” in the context of talking about human remains.

When moving on to the Late Iron Age the visitor meets a cremation cemetery
from Svartsmara in Finström with the title Gifts for the Final Voyage. The grave
goods, which had originally been placed inside an urn, are separated on different
shelves. Human bones, bones from a dog, a cat and a goat/sheep are displayed
separately, together with the grave goods, which consist of glass beads, a bronze
key, pottery, a so-called clay paw and pieces from a comb (figure 5).

When I asked if the curators see any differences between displaying unburned
or cremated human remains in regards to ethics, the answer was no. Still, re-
spondent H8 stated that “to the audience it is easier to see bones which are very
fragmented because you can’t make them into a body part.” Because of this,
cremations burials do not seem to evoke any strong feelings among the public.

Previous studies have shown that cremains might even be seen as less inform-
ative, both by curators and the public, when they lack distinct identities. Thus,
they are often seen as less human (Williams 2016).
Section V – Ethics  521

Figure 5. The Svartsmara cremation cemetery on display. Human bones (numbers 10 and 11), bones
from a dog (number 7), a cat (number 8) and a goat/sheep (number 9) are displayed separately,
together with the grave goods. Photo by the author.

New scientific methods, such as ancient DNA and isotope analysis, came up in
the interviews, because they have been able to give so much new information
to archaeologists:

Human remains almost becomes books, and it is always a valid question:

do we dare to open this book and show what is in it? I think it’s important
to show the context around the human remains and ensure that the story
is based on facts. (interview respondent H8)

According to respondent H9 there has been no feedback from the audience related
to displays of human remains. However, he said that the exhibition designer who
had objected to the idea of displaying human remains in the exhibition from the
beginning never came to terms with this part of the exhibition.

In time he could almost accept the idea that there would be an adult on
display in the exhibition but he was never comfortable with the idea that
there was a child there: “Oh, my God!” And not any finger bones: “No,
no, no!” He was very sensitive about this. I actually think that in the end
we designed that part of the exhibition and he just accepted our vision.
It was still too much for him. (interview respondent H9)
522 Section V – Ethics

Discussion
The human remains on display in the three museums I studied range in dating
from the Stone Age to the beginning of the Christian Era. They mainly derive
from articulated inhumation burials, i.e., from quite well-preserved osteological
materials. Only a few cremations were on display in these museums and they
were seldom brought up or discussed in detail during the interviews, which
implies that they were not really seen as problematic. This fits well into the
argument made by Howard Williams (2016) who has stated that cremains are
often de-humanised and silent in museums due to their fragmented nature.

Naturally, the fragmented nature of cremated bones also hinders multiple lab-
oratory analyses, such as those utilising isotopes or ancient DNA. It is possible
that this makes cremations less interesting from a museum perspective, because
their narrative is more limited in regards to inhumation burials. Museums might
also favour inhumation burials in their displays, because they are more visual
and thus perhaps more interesting from the public’s point of view. Recent-
ly, unburned human remains, such as, e.g., the Levänluhta water burial, have
also undergone a lot of multidisciplinary research, which perhaps gives them a
stronger narrative (Wessman et al. 2018; Sikora et al. 2019).

I would think that cremations are easier to display, because in these the
individuality and in some ways also the humanity of the deceased has
disappeared. The bones in inhumation burials makes death more visual
and more concrete. It’s more difficult to deal with them as artefacts.
(interview respondent H6)

In this regard, it is perhaps a bit odd that no cremation burials are displayed
at the National Museum of Finland. While articulated inhumation remains get
more coffin-like showcasing and more space in exhibitions (Adolfsson 2018), cre-
mains become more de-individualised and anonymous in the exhibition narrative
(Williams 2016). This fits well with the Svartsmara Late Iron Age showcase from
Åland, where the cremains from animals and humans had been osteologically
separated from each other and removed from the original burial urn. They had
also been assembled on the glass shelves as individual “objects”, classified by
type, just like the grave goods that followed the deceased into the grave mound.

When one reflects upon which bone materials have been selected for these exhi-
bitions, it is important to remember that there is a very limited amount of human
bone materials dating to prehistory to choose from. In Finland, cremation was
the prevailing burial form throughout much of the Iron Age and older burials
rarely remain preserved, due to the acidic Finnish soils. This naturally makes
it difficult for curators to choose “new” or “fresh” burials/remains to put on
display, which in turn forces the existing remains to be on display more or less
continuously. At the same time, it is a bit odd that the public only meets inhumed
bodies at the National Museum, even though they were actually quite rare during
Finnish prehistory. It is probable that the fame of these inhumed bodies and
their high information value are seen as more important than everything else.
Section V – Ethics  523

Responses to the interviews were of course varied, but the interviewees in all
three museums agreed on one thing: when displayed, human remains were often
there to highlight the educational and scientific knowledge that can be gained
from studying bones. The pedagogical importance of human remains on display
has also been brought up elsewhere (Paasikivi 2014, p. 9; Maijanen et al. 2019,
p. 5). It also became evident that most of the human remains on display were
carefully selected and given much thought beforehand. Questions regarding
their scientific value and their state of preservation were discussed, but only
one museum decided to use a plastic skeleton, in order to keep human remains
preserved for future scientific purposes. The remains were examples of not so
much the death culture in itself, but more about the scientific knowledge that
these individuals may reveal to researchers. Several interviewees said that it was
important to bring up what can be learned by studying archaeological materi-
als, especially burials. The research results of, e.g., osteology or new scientific
analyses were important background information for these displays; the results
of these analyses were also used by museum guides on their tours.

Despite the fact that human remains have an educational value, to some curators
the motivation to display human remains might also be to show the “wow-factor”
and the spectacularity of human remains:

When you can see human skulls, then that is something that naturally
fascinates children. And they want to know more about it ... There is a
certain excitement associated with human skulls; they are exciting targets,
so they draw attention. (interview respondent H1)

Another interviewee (H4) stated that “skulls are intriguing”, at least among the
younger museum visitors. Thus, in a way, museums are perhaps offering the
public exactly what they want.

The next most flagged issue was the lack of ethical discussions prior to and/or
after the exhibition process. Several of the museum professionals pointed out
that ethical discussions were not touched upon prior to the exhibition, and that
displaying human remains was never seen as a problematic exhibition theme.
This might relate to the fact that archaeologists were involved throughout the
process and to them human remains are probably more mundane than they
are to others, but there might also be culturally-related issues involved in this.

Currently, 72% of the Finnish population are members of the Lutheran state
church (The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland website 2019), but when
it comes to religiosity, Finland is in line with the other Nordic countries in be-
ing quite secular. For example, church-going activity among Finns is very low,
limited mainly to baptisms, weddings and funerals (Pantti & Sumiala 2009, p.
125). Only the Cultural History Museum of Åland argued and reasoned with the
exhibition designer as to why human remains were important, why they needed
to be exhibited, and exhibited in an authentic way. The exhibition designer came
from Sweden, a country where ethical debates have a long history and are more
frequent, both in archaeology (Drentzel et al. 2016; Iregren & Jennbert 2015;
524 Section V – Ethics

Karlsson 2004; Iregren & Redin 1995), but also in the media and amongst the
public. Recently there has also been a strong debate about the withdrawal of
human remains from museum exhibitions, especially concerning so-called ana-
tomical collections (SVT 2019; Sveriges Radio 2019). While I have no knowledge
of the designer’s personal beliefs, one can only assume that he was familiar with
the Swedish debates and/or perhaps possessed strong religious beliefs. This
might give an answer as to why ethical discussions took place in this museum
and not in others. Åland and Sweden perhaps resonate better with international
debates, and Sweden is perhaps a country that contemplates issues surrounding
mortality and the display of human remains more than its eastern neighbours do.

There is a major historical difference between Finland and Sweden. While Sweden
remained neutral, Finland participated in the Second World War three times
(the Winter War and the Continuation War against the Soviet Union, as well as
the Lapland War against Germany). Approximately 96 000 Finns died during
these wars (2.1% of the entire population), which meant that these wars affected
the entire population immensely (Männistö & Kivimäki 2016). It is probable
that these wars, including the rebuilding phase afterwards, have played a huge
part in how Finns look at life, but also at death (see also Thomas, this volume).

None of these displays contained reconstructions of prehistoric people, with

the exception of the mannequin from Eura at the National Museum of Finland,
which is not a reconstruction of the deceased per se but instead a reconstruction
of her ancient dress.

I was mostly struck by the fact that the public does not seem to react very strongly
to displayed human remains. While human remains, inhumations especially,
seem to awake a lot of feelings and are even seen as offensive in some other
countries (Curtis 2003, p. 21; Swain 2002, p. 99) Finland is not (at least yet)
part of this debate. This assumption can be confirmed by a questionnaire survey
targeted at museum visitors in Oulu 2018–2019, where only 3.2% of the respond-
ents were against displaying human remains in museums. The majority felt that
human remains can be on display as long as they are displayed in a respectful
and educational way (Maijanen et al. 2019, p. 5, p. 9). Could one reason for this
lie in the fact that these remains are prehistoric and thus more distant, with an
unclear ownership? Since they derive from prehistoric burials, they might not
be seen as spiritually or ethically problematic by museum professionals or the
public. According to the questionnaire in Oulu, 18.9% of the respondents felt
that only human remains over 100 years of age should be displayed in museums
(Maijanen et al. 2019, p. 6), which might indicate that there is indeed an age
limit for when displaying human remains becomes problematic.

Alternatively, can the reason be that Finnish museum visitors are reluctant to
contact museums with negative feedback, even if they have been offended by
the displays? Is this perhaps due to shyness or politeness? This could explain
why no negative feedback reached the curators.
Section V – Ethics  525

According to Hedley Swain (2002, p. 99) and Duncan Sayer (2010, p. 483) the
skeleton is not taboo within Western Christian culture. Human remains might
help us to empathise with past people. Moreover, personal contemplations of
mortality might even nowadays take place in museums, because death is mostly
connected to medical institutions (Sayer 2010, p. 481, p. 488). However, this is
only true when we discuss human remains that are seen as the ancestors of the
majority of the population. If the remains belong to a minority population, the
story is very much different (Nilsson Stutz 2016, p. 269).

Finns have perhaps a more relaxed attitude towards death and corpo-
rality, it is like with the sauna and nudity. We are more relaxed with this
than other nationalities. My mother, for example, remembers that the
dead were placed inside the saunas and … It’s part of life ... I’m not sure,
perhaps we might need to start warn our visitors in the future about this
[human remains] at the entry of an exhibition. (interview respondent H2)

Conclusion
Based on my interviews, human remains do not seem to be highlighted as an
ethical dilemma within the Finnish museum sector. The human remains that
were chosen to be on display in the exhibitions discussed in this chapter were
selected based on their archaeological features, preservation or amount of lo-
cal or national renown. It is evident that inhumation burials have been given
more room than cremations in these exhibition displays, perhaps because they
are more visual and because they “tell a better story”. Moreover, there were
only limited ethical discussions within the exhibition teams preceding these
decisions. The only museum that stood out in the interviews was Åland, which
is both geographically and perhaps also culturally closer to Sweden. The exhi-
bition designers’ strong emotional reaction to exhibit human remains was in
this context quite substantial.

Moreover, my interviews show that there was hardly any feedback (either pos-
itive or negative) from the audience regarding human remains on display. This
suggests that death and human remains do not evoke strong feelings amongst
Finns, but it might well be that this debate has not yet really reached Finland.

Acknowledgements
I want to warmly thank everyone who agreed to talk to me about the human
remains on display in these three exhibitions, and to the anonymous reviewer
for critical but useful remarks on this chapter. I also want to thank Professor
Kristiina Mannermaa from the University of Helsinki for initiating the idea to
include Åland in this chapter. All opinions expressed in this chapter are my own.
526 Section V – Ethics

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532 Section V – Ethics

Representing Difficult Histories

and Contested Heritage in
Museums
Suzie Thomas1

Abstract
Museums are one source of leisure, with visits forming activities for local com-
munity members in their free time, as well as touristic attractions for visitors
on vacation. For many people, museums are also a source of knowledge, and
they perceive them to be an authority from which they expect to receive verified
information. This can take place, for example, through organised school and
college visits, visits made in free time or through participation in museum-led
projects and events. Therefore, the decisions that museums make about how
to present history, and what (or more importantly whose) history they present,
and what strategies they employ to present this history, have the potential to
inform and influence perspectives on the past in the present. When this con-
tains difficult memories connected to warfare, atrocities or discrimination and
oppression based on ethnicity, gender or anything else, museums have to be
especially mindful of how they treat and present these topics.

In this chapter, I explore some of the frameworks informing representation in

museums and use case studies from within Finland and elsewhere. I investigate
some of the ethical questions that emerge around the politics of representation.
While there are no hard and fast answers to how museums should engage with
difficult and painful history, I suggest reflection upon the impacts of challenging
public perceptions through innovative approaches to museum displays. These
themes also intersect with the wider question of the social responsibility of
museums.

Keywords: contested heritage, museum exhibitions, museal silence, conflict,

difficult history

Introduction
Museums are sources of leisure and tourism, as well as for education and knowl-
edge gain. Despite some aspirations of pushing boundaries and challenging
preconceptions (Dodd et al. 2013), many visitors still expect an entertaining and
enjoyable, possibly not overly intellectually taxing, experience at the museum
(Falk, Moussouri & Coulson 1998). At the same time, debate concerning the

1. This chapter has been peer reviewed.

Section V – Ethics  533

social responsibility of museums continues to take place. Research acknowledges

on the one hand that museums are perceived by many as an authority voice,
transmitting the truth to its patrons (Ashley 2005), while on the other hand
the museum has also been conceived of for some years as a forum, a space in
which the visitor can hear and find their own voice (Bradburne 1999). As many
of the chapters in this volume reveal, museums therefore find themselves at
the forefront of efforts to increase public participation and co-creation or even
co-authorship (see also Niemi, this volume). This presents museum staff with
more and more ethical dilemmas as they work to interact more fully with society.
Greater engagement brings with it greater risks, especially when themes to be
discussed do not naturally engender consensus with their audiences.

In this chapter I discuss some of the many potentially difficult or controversial

topics that museums might choose (or choose not) to cover in their exhibitions
and interpretation strategies, not least the almost universal challenge of how
to deal with the legacies of past conflicts. These are a part of the human past
that can be considered as contested heritage, since there is rarely a consensus
on such events or their legacy and impact, as they often depend on an indi-
vidual’s or community’s particular perspective. I first present some examples
from Finland, before broadening out to explore the literature on research into
this topic from around the world. My Finnish museum case studies primarily
address the 20th-century conflict legacies of the Second World War (WWII),
and, even more sensitive despite occurring further back in time, the continued
impact of the Finnish Civil War2 of 1918. I then briefly explore the violent and
ongoing contested heritage legacies of nuclear warfare and weapons testing
with examples from Japan and the Marshall Islands, interpreting or reconciling
long-term sectarian violence with an example from Northern Ireland, and the
impact of domestic terrorism with an example from the USA.

Difficult Issues
The means by which practitioners, communities and institutions address so-
called difficult issues has attracted debate for some time. Scholars such as Michel-
Rolph Trouillot (1995) suggest that certain aspects of the past and of identities can
be purposefully silenced, subjugated even, as different power struggles express
themselves through the creation of official history. Helaine Silverman has noted
that the concept of contested cultural heritage has been recognised by researchers
from various fields with an interest in human society and activity, as different
sectors of society aim to use heritage to suit their own agendas or narratives.
She observes that the use of contested heritage can be seen in the ways in which:

2. In Finland there are different names for what is widely known by outsiders as the Civil War, which
also indicate the political viewpoints around the conflict, including: “vapaussota (War of Liberty),
kansalaissota or sisällissota (Civil War), luokkasota (Class War), punakapina (Red Rebellion), tor-
pparikapina (Crofters’ Rebellion), veljessota (the war between brothers)”. Available at [Link]
[Link]/Finnish-Civil-War-3.35 [Last accessed 28 January 2020]
534 Section V – Ethics

… religious, ethnic, national, political and other groups manipulate (ap-

propriate, use, misuse, exclude, erase) markers and manifestations of
their own and others’ cultural heritage as a means for asserting, defend-
ing or denying critical claims to power, land, legitimacy and so forth.
(Silverman 2010, p. 1)

Issues of remembering but, equally crucially, forgetting at individual, local,

national, regional and global scales have been addressed by many researchers.
Paul Connerton (2008), for example, suggested seven types of forgetting for
different acts leading to the erasure or forgetting of cultural memory, which
work at a societal scale and may be necessary for a society’s survival or ability to
move on from a traumatic period in its history. The categories that Connerton
(2008, p. 59) proposed are:

• repressive erasure
• prescriptive forgetting
• forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity
• structural amnesia
• forgetting as annulment
• forgetting as planned obsolescence
• forgetting as humiliated silence.

Without expanding too heavily upon these processes here, it is clear that these
concepts are also relevant to museum practice, especially to strategies concerning
which stories to present and which to omit. As reflectors of society, museums
have a role in promoting which histories are remembered and which are not
presented. These considerations relate to the well-being of a society, particularly
after a traumatic event such as civil war, occupation or colonisation (see also
Guttorm, this volume), and reflect again on the perceived roles of museums as
representations of the wider community or even nation.

Rhiannon Mason and Joanne Sayner (2019) more recently discussed the ways in
which museums use silence, suggesting that this can occur in eight distinct ways:

• silences in the historical record as collected by museums

• museums being silenced by external pressures
• museums’ collusion in society’s silences
• museums using silence obliquely
• museums thinking they have nothing to say
• silence by design
• museums staying respectfully silent
• communities wishing to remain silent.

Athough they do not reference him, their proposal is similar to Connerton’s

notion of forgetting, as according to Mason and Sayner “silence is an integral
part of processes of remembering” (2019, p. 5). Their eight ways to think about
museal silence indicate everything from strategic decisions concerning collection
policies, to political forces at play (not least access to government funding, i.e.,
Section V – Ethics  535

silence by external pressures), to perceived sensitivity towards and with the

communities affected (see also Myllykoski, this volume, for a suggestion of an
expansion of these silences). Their framework is therefore useful for thinking
about how museums deal with contested heritage topics such as uncomfortable
or shameful periods in history.

Museums and Difficult Issues

Despite Mason and Sayner’s noted forms of silence within museums, museums
are nonetheless taking the role of forum or becoming understood as contact zones
(see Schorch 2013 for a critique of this viewpoint), and becoming spaces where
debate can take place, even about difficult issues. This approach has been very
successful in some cases, but has also sometimes caused unexpected problems.
It raises questions regarding the responsibility of museums and their staff, and
the extent to which they are equipped to deal with the outcomes.

Norway-based museum director Kathrin Pabst has offered insights from her
research about contested heritage in museums, and has noted some negative
outcomes, where museums and their staff are challenged to deal with the con-
sequences of opening up painful issues. As she observes:

Projects may deal with themes of war, violence in closed institutions,

violation of human rights, the limits of the freedom of speech or the
treatment of minorities. It may also touch upon the dark sides of con-
temporary society: poverty, mental health, or the abuse of alcohol. It is
common to all these issues that the themes may trigger strong emotions
and reactions among all persons involved: the individuals who are about to
relate something difficult and painful they have experienced, visitors who
must react to these testimonies and handle their own feelings attached
to the revealed stories, the local society and its members who might have
to reconsider how they understand their own identity, and not least the
museum employees who must respond simultaneously to their own and
other people’s feelings. (Pabst 2019, pp. 29–30)

It seems reasonable to suggest in this context that some topics are simply too
taboo for museums to tackle (perhaps as a part of museums staying respectfully
silent), especially if they possess the possibility of acting as a trigger to past
traumas (see also Pollard 2016 for a discussion of trigger warnings in conflict
archaeology teaching concerning war graves).

Difficult Histories and Contested Heritage in Finnish

Museums
My research in recent years has focused on the presentation of WWII, especially
the experiences of Finnish Lapland, in museum displays (Thomas & Koskin-
en-Koivisto 2016; Seitsonen et al. 2018; Thomas, Koskinen-Koivisto & Hek-
kurainen 2019). In focusing on the material legacy of the so-called Lapland War
536 Section V – Ethics

(1944–1945) in particular, colleagues and I have noted the apparent down-play-

ing of the experiences of this particular region and its residents, especially in
comparison with the wartime narratives of the south of the country (see also
Kivimäki 2012, p. 483). Indeed, we found that in national museums such as the
Finnish Military Museum, the Lapland War seems marginalized in the narrative
presented to the public, in comparison to the Winter War (1939–1940) and the
Continuation War (1941–1944)3, which occupy a far greater area of permanent
displays.

Even in the Finnish Sámi Museum based in the Siida building in Inari, Finnish
Lapland, the impact of WWII enjoys only passing mention in the museum’s
permanent exhibitions. This is especially curious given the significant impact
of the war on Sámi life, with many experiencing displacement and evacuation
during the war, and the period signifying a rupture of Sámi culture (Lehtola
2015, Thomas & Koskinen-Koivisto 2016)4.

Exceptions to this apparent museal silence on the Lapland War can be found in
temporary exhibitions, such as Wir waren Freunde/Olimme ystäviä/We were
Friends, which exhibited in the Provincial Museum of Lapland in Rovaniemi,
running from April 2015 to January 2016 (Alariesto et al. 2015). The exhibition
focused on the period 1941–1944, the years prior to the Lapland War itself,
when German military and others associated with the German military project
of WWII (for example, labourers of Organisation Todt and Soviet prisoners of
war) were present in large numbers in Finland’s northernmost region. Themes
on display included fraternisations between German soldiers and local Finnish
women, the system of bartering that developed and the media and propagan-
da, particularly in newspapers, of the time. An exit survey indicated that the
exhibition engendered a range of reactions, which, as has been noted elsewhere
(Thomas, Koskinen-Koivisto & Hekkurainen 2019), to some extent varied ac-
cording to the nationality of the visitors surveyed. Hence, many local Finnish
museum visitors were positive about the exhibition’s addressing of the realities
of everyday life during that period in their region, something that some felt had
been neglected for too long. German visitors also often appeared to appreciate
an exhibition that did not focus on the negative aspects of Nazism but rather
depicted the German soldiers as human beings. However, visitors with other
national backgrounds, for example those from Switzerland and the UK, seemed
far less comfortable with the whole premise of the exhibition, expressing concerns

3. The Winter War and so-called Continuation War were both fought against the Soviet Union,
involved the whole country and garnered the assistance of Germany. In contrast, the later Lapland
War focused specifically on the north only, and was against former co-belligerent Germany (at the
behest of the Soviet Union following a treaty agreement). It has been seen as both only of marginal
significance to the rest of the country, and also as a source of some national embarrassment following
the apparent friendship with Nazi Germany (Seitsonen et al. 2018).
4. It is important to note that, at the time of writing, the permanent exhibitions at Siida were due
for renovation, and it is likely that the refreshed exhibitions will also address sensitive issues such as
the impacts of both WWII and, indeed, of Finnish colonialism on Sámi culture and identity (see also
Aikio 2018 for reflections on the need to develop “a Sámi way of doing museum work”).
Section V – Ethics  537

at the lack of problematisation, as they saw it, of the very presence of Nazis in
Finnish Lapland, given what we know about the many atrocities that the regime
carried out. A consciousness on the part of the museum staff concerning the
potential controversy of their temporary exhibition is also found in the fact that
the exhibition was timed to be dismantled and removed before late January,
a period when many Israeli tourists visit Rovaniemi and the surrounding area
(Thomas, Koskinen-Koivisto & Hekkurainen 2019).

Another, in this case more permanent, exception5 to the apparent marginalisation

of the Lapland War is found in the Salla Museum of War and Reconstruction
(figure 1) in the Salla municipality, Finnish Lapland. The town of Salla itself is
nowadays New Salla, with the original settlement stranded in the buffer area
between Finland and the Russian Federation, following Finland’s loss of territory
to the Soviet Union as a result of WWII. The museum, situated in the former
railway station house, features artefacts from the time of the Lapland War,
and information about the work of reconstruction that stretched into the 1950s
and beyond. The burning of Lapland and the recovery period after the war are
bound up with the story of Salla itself, and hence the war and reconstruction
are presented and understood as local history within the museum (see also
Koskinen-Koivisto 2019).

Figure 1. External view of the Salla Museum of War and Reconstruction. Photo by the author.

In addition to challenges in addressing at least some of the events of WWII,

researchers have also commented on the apparent enduring sensitivity around
the Finnish Civil War, already over a century ago. This war took place shortly
after Finland gained its independence from the Russian Empire, with interna-
tional intervention too as Soviet troops supported the Red side, and Germans
the White side (Seitsonen & Kunnas 2009).

5. There are other exceptions too, where there are permanent exhibitions on the Lapland War such
as the Lätäsenon saksalaiset asemat / Järämän linnoitus / “Sturmbock” 1944 museum in Järämä.
538 Section V – Ethics

As Anu Kantola (2014, p. 92) has observed, “civil wars in particular give rise to
complex memory politics”, going on to note that it took 90 years in the case of
the city of Tampere, hit by deadly battles that marked the defeat of the Reds in
1918, before it seemed “possible to organise a memorial of the war” (Kantola 2014,
p. 93). The Tampere 1918 exhibition, still a permanent fixture at the Vapriikki
Museum Centre in Tampere (figure 2), opened in 2008 alongside a suite of other
activities and events intended to help commemorate and also offer reconcilia-
tion against the backdrop of still-recognised societal (and sometimes familial)
divisions caused by the schism of the Civil War. Elsewhere within Finland, there
are memorials for both Reds and Whites, although memorials for the victorious
latter group are more prevalent, with White-dominated commemoration events
overshadowing efforts to commemorate the Red side for many years following
the conflict (Szpunar 2012). There have nonetheless been efforts to document
more of the memorials for both sides, with the Finnish Labour Museum Wers-
tas, also in Tampere, creating a database for memorials to Reds.6 The database
contains elementary information and photographs. Anne Heimo identifies the
complex nature of the information on this database, even in the present time:

An interesting feature is that all the photographs have been digitally

manipulated so that all the names engraved on the memorials are unread-
able. This is to ensure the privacy of the dead, which in this case the Data
Protection Ombudsman has regarded important, because the memorials
are considered politically sensitive even today. (Heimo 2014, p. 151)

Figure 2. Section of the Tampere 1918 exhibition at the Museum Centre Vapriikki. Visitors encounter
a bodiless firing range. Photo: Nina Robbins.

The difficult aspect of this Civil War, like many others across the globe, is the
very closeness of it. Not only is it still relatively recent in the sense of having
happened only a century ago, but it is also close, as in personal, because so

6. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 28 January 2020]

Section V – Ethics  539

many families still recognize and carry the legacy of the divisions that the Civil
War caused. In national narratives deriving from conflicts against an outside
enemy, it is easier for citizens to find a kind of unity against a common other.
Geographer Anssi Paasi (2003), for example, has noted the importance of con-
structing a regional identity in opposition to others on the outside. When the
conflict is against fellow citizens, even brothers and sisters, it becomes much
more difficult to heal the rifts, and to move on as a nation. These are arguably
cases where a museum professional needs to be extremely careful in how they
portray past events, “museums’ collusion in society’s silences”.

Difficult Histories and Contested Heritage – A global

perspective
In some cases, sites associated with extreme trauma and suffering have expe-
rienced a kind of transformation into symbols of peace. This is the case with
nuclear war heritage such as Japan’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial7 (including
the Peace Memorial Park and Hiroshima’s iconic nuclear survivor, the Genbaku
or A-bomb Dome) and Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site8 in the Marshall Islands.
Both are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and both, despite their association
with the most destructive and deadly weapons ever used, are symbols of peace,
according to their UNESCO descriptions. Their inclusion, also as reminders of
war and destruction (without which these two places would not have been con-
sidered for World Heritage nomination) are already somewhat paradoxical to
the traditional notions of heritage: “The bomb and the bulldozer symbolise the
agencies that transform the world apace at the cost of both9 aspects of heritage”
(Lowenthal 2005, p. 86).

In the case of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, inscribed into the World Heritage
List in 1996, it can be seen that the call for peace, and a direct and deliberate
association of peace with the city where the first atomic bomb used in war fell in
1945, was sought from early on. Already in 1949 Japan enacted a law to re-plan
and rebuild the city, called the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law
(Utaka 2007, p. 37). The Peace Museum in Hiroshima takes its own strategy of
communicating peace, but also confronting visitors with the visceral, shocking
horror of atomic attack through individual artefacts and stories (Giamo 2003, pp.
717–718). At the same time however, observers have also criticized the museum
for focusing on the atomic victimisation of Japan and aspiring to world peace
through the abolishment of nuclear weapons, without sufficiently acknowledging
the other atrocities of the war, including those committed by Japan itself (Giamo
2003). Recalling Mason and Sayner’s forms of museal silence, this approach
could perhaps represent both “museums being silenced by external pressures”
and “museums’ collusion in society’s silences”.

7. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 10 October 2019]

8. Available at [Link] [Last accessed 10 October 2019]
9. In the context of this quotation, Lowenthal refers to both cultural and natural heritage.
540 Section V – Ethics

The still uninhabitable Bikini Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
had its indigenous population evacuated (but not protected from radioactive
fallout) to make way for US nuclear weapons tests (Smith 2009). It included in
its World Heritage nomination a plan to create a Peace Museum, to be located
in the Marshall Islands’ capital, Majuro (ICOMOS 2010, pp. 17–18). Although
the museum has not yet materialised, the theme continues here of making as-
sociations with peace in spite of the Atoll’s inexorable connection with nuclear
weapons and destruction.

It is not only transnational warfare or state-sanctioned colonial appropriation

of places for re-use in military testing that invite questions of appropriate in-
terpretation and musealisation. In Northern Ireland, a British-ruled section of
the island of Ireland with a long and extremely complex history of conflict and
sectarianism, museums have faced dilemmas concerning what parts of that
history to show, and how to do so. Elizabeth Crooke has long documented and
analysed the depiction of this cross-community conflict, known as the Troubles.
She has noted that the continued sectarian nature of community identity in
Northern Ireland has meant that in the past museums have not been willing, or
even perhaps able, to address many aspects of Irish history, as it often “has more
potential to antagonise than to gratify” (Crooke 2001, p. 120). According to her
research, not only is there concern that history may become instrumentalised
to prolong and justify continued unrest, but also that the issues behind certain
events and how they are remembered are so nuanced and complex that they
cannot be displayed without causing personal pain to many. Concerning remem-
bering and forgetting in museums and in society more broadly, she suggests:

It is also important to be reflective and accept that time must pass before
the ability to represent certain aspects of the past will emerge. Further-
more, we need to respect the people and allow some personal memories
not to become public history. We may not have the right to all knowledge.
(Crooke 2001, p. 136)

Another museum closely associated with painful and difficult events, although
confined to one day, is the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum in
the USA. Built on the site of the Murrah Building, where on 19th April 1995 the
infamous Oklahoma City bombing took place, its perpetrator a US-born white
supremacist terrorist, the National Memorial monument and museum form an
important focus for national reflection and commemoration (figure 3). Aside
from the national memorial, the museum itself offers an intensely emotional
experience, employing techniques designed to make the visitor feel the enormity
of the attack and its impact. This includes a moment early on into the exhibition
experience where visitors are required to sit in a room and listen to the recording
of a court hearing that took place in the neighbouring building. Visitors are told
beforehand that some minutes into the recording, they will hear the explosion
as it happened. Therefore, with the next part of the museum inaccessible until
the recording has played in full, visitors have no choice but to endure the tension
of listening to a couple of minutes of mundane discussion, knowing that any
Section V – Ethics  541

second the explosion, and the screams of fear and panic, will be heard. Rather
than forgetting or silencing, every visitor is compelled to remember, and in a
way relive, the very moment that the attack happened.

Figure 3. Part of the National Memorial in Oklahoma City, USA. The museum building stands next
to the outdoor memorial area. Photo by the author.

In another ethically questionable strategy, photographs from the rescue attempts

in the aftermath are displayed, including a once iconic image of a fireman car-
rying a severely injured little girl out of the wreckage of the Murrah Building.
The text explains that the child later died from her injuries, and that both the
fireman and the child’s family had expressed displeasure at the image’s wide
use to represent the Oklahoma City bombing. Despite this acknowledgement of
their wishes and concerns, the planners of the exhibition nonetheless decided
to show this tragic and, in my opinion, inappropriate image. This seems to be
the antithesis of “museums staying respectfully silent”. It is unclear why the
planners made this decision, although the fame of the photograph, a Pulitzer
Prize awardee, perhaps led to the planners reasoning that because the image
was already so well known it would seem odd to visitors if it was not on display.

The exhibition however, and even more so the National Memorial itself, serve
an important purpose in the context of providing a space for collective grieving
and memorialisation, and through that process a search for optimism. This has
led some observers to label the National Memorial as “an exemplar for how
memorials, through the shared experience of grief, communicate renewal” (Veil,
Sellnow & Heald 2011, p. 164).

Discussion
In the examples in this chapter we have seen that dealing with contested herit-
age, and in particular heritage connected to conflict and acts of atrocity, is not
a challenge confined only to cultural history museums in Finland, but may be a
542 Section V – Ethics

universal issue for museum practice and theory. There are many other types of
culture or art, which may be difficult to present – for example art installations
that address taboo subjects such as sexualities or violence. The focus of this
chapter has rather been the impact of past historical events, especially those
that have caused continued controversy or that are open to different, contrasting
interpretations and understandings. In the case of Finland, perhaps the two best
known difficult historical phases are those of the Civil War and WWII. Other
periods that may continue to be difficult to address, although they are memori-
alised in places, include the Finnish Famine of 1866–186810.

I have tried to provide a glimpse into just some of the difficult, painful and
controversial issues that museums sometimes find themselves dealing with (or
not). I have presented some examples from around the world, as well as focusing
on some core examples from Finnish museums. As other scholars have noted,
museums, as key cultural institutions and transmitters of accepted history, have
a particular place in the public understanding and consumption of particular
narratives. They also have strategies available to them to help make decisions
about what to depict, what to leave out and who to include in or exclude from that
process. These can be affected by what already exists in museum collections, but
also in the ways in which those collections are interpreted, hence the “museums
thinking they have nothing to say” may simply need to re-read their collections
to see what other stories can be told through their objects (Mason and Sayner
2019, p. 11). There is a proverb that “time is a great healer”, and certainly with
regard to traumatic events, it would seem that, as time goes on, it does indeed
become easier for certain traumatic pasts to be discussed in a public sphere such
as a museum. At the same time, as with the case of the Finnish Civil War, we also
see that some events are so traumatic at a national level that their discussion
remains difficult, even when later events such as WWII have become open to
exhibition and interpretation.

Museums are at once an ideal forum for encouraging societies to reflect upon
past actions and their impacts, while at the same time being in a position where
it may be difficult and, some might argue, even inappropriate to scratch at some
of those wounds. In this sense, it is not only accountability to government or
even funders (see also Kaitavuori, this volume) that might affect a museum’s
willingness to address difficult issues, but also the question of whether muse-
ums are equipped to deal with the after-effects, such as triggering recollections
of past traumas in its visitors. As Connerton has discussed, forgetting can be
just as crucial as remembering, from the individual to the societal level, and in
some cases it is an essential element of moving on. These processes also affect
museum practice. Hence, the observations of Mason and Sayner on museal
silence are likely to continue to be a useful means for making sense of museum
exhibitions on difficult issues.

10. Historian Andrew Newby has been documenting memorials, place names and other markers
that refer to the Great Hunger Years in Finland at [Link] [Last
accessed 28 January 2020]
Section V – Ethics  543

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 547

Section VI

Biographies
Section VI – Biographies
548 Section VI – Biographies

Teemu Ahola is a museum professional with long and versatile experience in

collection management and development. Ahola acts as a head of collections of
Tampere historical museums. Previously he has worked as a head of collections
and deputy director of the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas. He is also a member
of Board of the Finnish Museums Association and Teollisuusperintöseura ry.
Ahola has been previously acted as chair of the nationwide collections manage-
ment network TAKO. His main achievement is the creation of the model for the
nationwide division of collecting tasks. In addition to this work with collections
management, Ahola is active in themes of built heritage and the history of indus-
trialisation/de-industrialisation. He is also active in the subject of Museology,
and has been teaching the subject at the University of Tampere. Ahola’s main
passion is networking and the co-development of museums and heritage issues
on the national and international levels.

Dorothea Breier graduated from Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg (Germa-

ny) and did her doctoral dissertation at the Department of European Ethnology
at the University of Helsinki. Her thesis on Germans and their descendants in
contemporary Helsinki deals with aspects of transculturality, belonging and
(self-)identification of people of such background. With her postdoctoral project
at the University of Helsinki, Breier turned to a new field, namely that of grassroot
initiatives and their contribution to (social) sustainability. She is interested in
how citizens’ perspectives can point out issues of society that would otherwise
remain either unnoticed or neglected by institutions, and how forms of activism
may provide locally specific do-it-yourself solutions for perceived problems.

Johanna Enqvist received a PhD degree in archaeology in 2016 from the

University of Helsinki; her dissertation concerned the concepts, discourse and
ideology of Finnish archaeological heritage management. Before her doctoral
studies, she worked several years as a field archaeologist and heritage official
at the Finnish Heritage Agency. Enqvist is currently employed as a research
coordinator at the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences (Tieteen ter-
mipankki), a multidisciplinary research infrastructure project funded by the
University of Helsinki and the Academy of Finland. Relating to her work at the
Term Bank, she conducts postdoctoral research on concepts, conceptual systems
and discourses of heritage. Enqvist’s research interests include politics of the
past, key concepts and the theory of heritage studies and archaeology, heritage
management, interdisciplinarity and the digital humanities.

Eero Ehanti has an MA in art history from the University of Helsinki, a BA in

conservation from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and some 20 years
of experience in various museum positions in Finland and abroad. Early on he
specialised in the conservation of cultural historical objects, but has subsequently
worked on research, collections management and a wide range of exhibitions.
Since 2016 he has led the conservation department at the National Museum of
Finland. He also chaired the Finnish committee of the International Council of
Museums (ICOM) in 2015–2020 and is a founding partner of a small heritage
consultation company, For Our Generation (FOGHeritage), based in Tallinn,
Section VI – Biographies  549

Estonia. For Eero, museums are a means for understanding, communication

and creativity.

Benjamin Filene is Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs at the Smithso-

nian’s National Museum of American History, appointed in 2020. In previous
positions, he served as Chief Curator at the North Carolina Museum of History
in Raleigh, North Carolina, Director of Public History at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro and Senior Exhibit Developer at the Minnesota Histori-
cal Society in St. Paul. Filene is author of Romancing the Folk: Public Memory
and American Roots Music (2000) and co-editor of Letting Go? Historical
Authority in a User-Generated World (2011). He received his PhD in Ameri-
can Studies from Yale. Through a Fulbright fellowship, he worked in Helsinki
for five months in 2019, collaborating with the University of Helsinki and the
Helsinki City Museum.

Hanna Forssell has worked in the National Museum of Finland since 2000 in
various positions, mainly in the field of audience work and museum education,
as well as a project manager for the main exhibition reform 2016–2017. She has
also written non-fiction books and is a graduate of the University of Helsinki.

Anni Guttorm is a Sámi Curator at the Sámi Museum Siida in Inari, Finland.
She works with both the Sámi collection’s management and the ongoing repa-
triation processes at the Sámi Museum Siida. At the moment she is also a board
member of ICOM Finland.

Heikki Häyhä MA (conservation) works as Senior Lecturer at the Metropolia

University of Applied Sciences, Department of Conservation. He is also a part-
ner of the heritage consulting company, For Our Generation (FOGHeritage).

Visa Immonen is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Turku, Fin-

land. He worked as an Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies at the
University of Helsinki in 2016–2017. Immonen was a postdoctoral fellow at
the Getty Research Institute in 2015–2016, and a visiting scholar at Stanford
University in 2010–2011. Immonen’s research focuses on medieval material
culture, but he is also interested in the use of digital media in heritage work.
Presently he is directing a research project which explores the 3D digitalisation
of archaeological finds.

Sari Jantunen MA (education, craft science) is a former Collection Curator

in Lusto – The Finnish Forest Museum. Since spring 2018 she has worked as
a curator in the Craft Museum of Finland, specialising in information services.

Kaija Kaitavuori received her PhD in art history in 2015 from the Cour-
tauld Institute of Art, London. Her thesis investigated participation in art and
is published under the title of Participator in Contemporary Art (2018). She
has previously held senior roles at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in
Helsinki and the Finnish National Gallery, working in museum education and
institutional development. Her post-doctoral research (University of Helsinki)
investigates organisational change and the implementation of New Public Man-
550 Section VI – Biographies

agement in the Finnish National Gallery. She teaches at the Academy of Fine
Arts and Aalto University in Helsinki.

Kimmo Levä is Director General of the Finnish National Gallery. His previous
positions have included Managing Director of the Finnish Museums Associa-
tion and its companies, Museum Director at Mobilia (National Road Traffic
Museum), and Director of Museum Services in Turku City. He has served as a
board member of many museums and associations, including the Finnish Post-
al Museum, Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova (Museums of History and Contemporary
Art), the Culture for All Association, Europa Nostra Finland, and the Finnish
Museum Directors Association. He also has experience in international museum
organizations, such as the ICOM International Committee for Museum Man-
agement (INTERCOM) and the Network of European Museum Organizations
(NEMO). Kimmo specializes in the commercialization of museum services, and
the strategic and financial management of museums. He holds an MBA from the
University of Wales and an MA in history and political science from Tampere
University. He has published several books, articles and numerous blog posts
in connection with the museum field.

Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski is specialised in corporate art collecting and

corporate art programmes. She is working as a University Teacher in art history
at the University of Jyväskylä, Deptartment of Music, Art and Culture studies.
Her PhD research Corporate art collections in Finland. Collecting policies,
practices of displaying art and meanings of art in business (2015) was the first
doctoral dissertation on Finnish corporate art collecting. Her working experience
covers art history research, teaching, art consultancy, museum education and
marketing communications. Luukkanen-Hirvikoski has been working both in
the public and private sectors. Besides corporate art programmes, her research
interests are art object studies, the art market, modern art and contemporary art.

Ismo Malinen is the Chief Curator of picture collections of the Finnish Heritage
Agency. He has worked in various museums since the late 1990s. Malinen’s work
focuses on collections and their use, but he also actively develops digitalisation
and digitation, both in Finland and on a European level. Presently one of his
activities is directing a 3D digitation project at the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Mikko Myllykoski is the CEO of Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre. He has
worked in multisensory science engagement since 1990, mostly in interactive
exhibition production. He is a board member of ECSITE, the European Net-
work of Science Centres and Museums, and has chaired program committees
for both ECSITE’s and ASTC’s annual conferences. He has also chaired the
Finnish Association for Science Editors and Journalists. He received the State
Prize for Information for the touring exhibition Nordic Explorers in 1997. He
holds an MA in history from the University of Helsinki, and has published books
and articles about history, museology and science engagement. Myllykoski is
an active speaker and convenor at science communication and engagement
conferences worldwide.
Section VI – Biographies  551

Sanna-Mari Niemi (MA in Comparative Literature) is adoctoral candidate in

the University of Helsinki’s Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts and Society,
and the Justus Liebig University Giessen. Combining theories of comparative
literature and museum studies, her dissertation project is a cross-disciplinary
research on contemporary museum exhibition narratives. Niemi has several
years of practical experience in the museum field.

Liisa Oikari is a museum professional with a strong focus on museum collection

management. She holds an MA in Ethnology from the University of Helsinki
and a BA in conservation of cultural historical objects from EVTEK University
of Applied Sciences. She has also studied museology and cultural heritage. Her
interests include material culture studies, biographical history and microhistory.
Oikari has been active in the museum field for over ten years and specialised
in collection management and collection care. She has worked as a conservator
at the National Audiovisual Institute of Finland, as the collections manager at
the Gallen-Kallela Museum and as a researcher and head of collections at the
Mannerheim Museum.

Leena Paaskoski is a Development Director in the Finnish Forestry Museum

Lusto. She is an Adjunct Professor in European Ethnology and an expert in
museology, forest culture and forestry professionalism. As a museum profes-
sional she has actively been developing a museum concept, dynamic collections,
museums’ social impact and ways of networking with the forest sector. Lusto is
a national museum responsible for forest culture and the stronghold of Finns’
relationship with the forest.

Henna Paunu is Chief Curator at EMMA – the Espoo Museum of Modern Art,
and is responsible for their collections and public art projects. Exhibitions she
has curated include Nubben, featuring the Lars-Gunnar Nordström Collection,
No Ordinary Moments, a show from the EMMA Collection, curated with Director
Pilvi Kalhama and the Human and Power section of the Saastamoinen Foun-
dation Collection Exhibition. She also served as curator in the development of
the Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage concept. Paunu’s previous position was at
the Rauma Art Museum, where she served as co-curator of the Rauma Biennale
Balticum in 2002–2014, while also curating contemporary art exhibitions for
children and young people. The concept Henna Paunu created for the Rauma
Art Museum earned the museum the Children’s Day Prize from the Finnish
Ministry of Education and Culture in 2014, in recognition of the community’s
outstanding achievements in the field of children’s culture. She also works as a
critic and writer, as well as board chair in 2018–2021 of the Frame Contemporary
Art Finland, the promotional centre for contemporary art. The core of Paunu’s
curatorial work is site-specific commissions, the promotion of ecological thinking
in art and the integration of curating and pedagogical thinking.

Susanna Pettersson, Director General at Nationalmuseum, Sweden, is an art

historian specializing in museum history and collection studies. Before moving
to Stockholm she worked as Director of the Ateneum Art Museum (Finnish Na-
tional Gallery). Her other posts have included Director of the Finnish Institute
552 Section VI – Biographies

in London, Director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation and Museum and Director
of Development at the Finnish National Gallery. She is also Adjunct Professor
in Museology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research interests
include museum history, collection studies and the history of art history, as
well as 19th-century and modern art, and she publishes widely. Her latest exhi-
bition, co-curated with James Putnam, was Inspiration – Iconic works (2020),
which was shown in Stockholm and Helsinki. She has participated in several
national public governance and international working groups, such as the Eu-
ropean Union’s OMC working group on Collections Mobility (2008-2010). She’s
Vice-President of the Aalto University Board (Finland), and board member at
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde (Sweden), Konsthistoriska sällsskapet (Sweden)
and the American Friends of the Nationalmuseum (USA).

Kristina Ranki has been the director of the Mannerheim Museum in Helsinki
since 2013 and also works as Ombudsman for the Niilo Helander Foundation.
She holds a PhD in history from the University of Helsinki from 2007. Her doc-
toral dissertation examined Finnish Francophilia and the patriotic cosmopolites
between 1880 and 1914. Ranki has been active as a university teacher, researcher
and cultural producer since 2000. Her museum activities go back to being a
guide in the Mannerheim Museum in 1994–1998 and a museum lecturer in the
Helsinki City Museum in 1998–1999. Her interests include languages, cultural
history, biographical history and the history of ideas, as well as protocol and
organising study trips for various groups. Ranki graduated from the National
Defence Course nr 227 in 2018. Her work at the Mannerheim Museum consists
of modernising the former home of Marshal Mannerheim into a professional
museum. Since 2013, she has created fifteen historical exhibitions, numerous
seminars and other projects. In 2017, she conducted the 150th commemoration
year of Gustaf Mannerheim with activities in Helsinki, St Petersburg and Warsaw.

Nina Robbins worked as a University Lecturer at the University of Helsinki

where she taught MA-level museology in 2018–2021. She received her doctorate
in 2016, her subject being disposals in Finnish art museums. She also holds a
higher degree (YAMK) in art conservation. During her career as curator of collec-
tions, conservator and university lecturer she has developed a wide perspective
in the field of cultural heritage. She is also Adjunct Professor in Museology at
the University of Jyväskylä. In her teaching she has placed great importance in
passing on to her university students, not only theoretical knowledge, but also
its corresponding practical knowledge. She feels that the field of museology
offers an enduring bridge between the various fields of heritage management.
Beneficially integrating the forces from these different fields will become ever
more important in a world where financial resources are increasingly scrutinized.

Erja Salo is the Head of Learning and Public Programmes in The Finnish Mu-
seum of Photography. She is responsible for the development and delivery of a
wide range of learning, interpretation and audience development programmes.
Her interests lie in visual culture, media education, participatory practices and
artist-led programmes. She has been managing several learning and audience
Section VI – Biographies  553

engagement projects, most recently SNAP – The Photography Festival for

Children and Young People, Vuosaari 21 (cultural and regional work in the
Vuosaari suburb of Helsinki), the Kuva ois kiva podcast series, Permission to
Wonder – Visual Thinking Strategies and Guess Image (a playful approach to
the museum’s collections). She is also a founding member of, and the 2011–2013
President of The Finnish Association for Museum Education, Pedaali.

Minna Sarantola-Weiss is Head of Research at Helsinki City Museum and

responsible for the museum’s collections policy process. Her interests include
collections development, value assessment and contemporary collecting. Saran-
tola-Weiss was the Chair of the national network for collections management
and contemporary documentation (Finnish acronym TAKO) in 2009–2013 and
board member of the ICOM international committee for collecting COMCOL in
2010–2013, as well as ICOM Finland in 2014–2018. At present, she is a board
member of the Finnish Literature Society (SKS) and the Chair of the Finnish
working committee of Nordisk Museumsförbund (Nordic Museums Association).
Sarantola-Weiss is also Adjunct Professor in Cultural History at the University
of Helsinki. Her research interests include the history of material culture, as
well as the history of the post-war consumer society.

Kerstin Smeds is a historian from Helsinki, Professor (since 2003, Emer-

ita since 2018) of museology at the Department of Media & Communications
Sciences, Umeå University, Sweden. Her PhD was on how national identity is
mirrored in World Exhibitions in the 19th century, with Finland as the focus. Her
production encompasses World Exhibitions as well as other kinds of national
manifestations such as Statuomania, design history and industrial history. In
1998–2000 she led the project Material & Ideal at the Finnish Academy and in
2001–2003 she was Head of Exhibitions at the Museum of National Antiquities
in Stockholm. Her research interests in museology are our relations to things,
time and preservation, museums and exhibitions from a phenomenological and
existential perspective, amateur museums as a genre in their own right, exhibition
history, theory and practice, heritage production and conservation strategies
and trash as heritage (Smeds 2000, 2007a, 2007b, 2015, 2018, 2019). Smeds
has been a member of the board of the International Committee for Museology
(ICOFOM) in 2013–2019.

Suzie Thomas joined the University of Helsinki as University Lecturer in Mu-

seology in 2014. Until August 2021 she worked as Associate Professor of Cultural
Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki, and has written on museological
themes such as issues of representing difficult themes in museum exhibitions,
and on teaching museum studies in a university setting. She completed her
PhD in Cultural Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, UK, in 2009 and has
worked as a museum professional in several museums in England. Since Sep-
tember 2021 she has worked as Professor of Heritage Studies at the University of
Antwerp, Belgium, focusing on participatory methods of heritage management
and heritage education.
554 Section VI – Biographies

Leena Tokila is Director of Training and Development for the Finnish Museums
Association (FMA) and is responsible for the association’s training and develop-
ment services. FMA provides training for museum professionals nationwide each
year through seminars, workshops and courses (face-to-face and online). The
Association runs several development projects, and she is a long-term member of
the steering or advisory groups for several nationwide projects. Tokila is in charge
of association’s international development projects and has delivered lectures
and workshops, e.g., in Pakistan and Namibia. Tokila has master’s degrees in
education and ethnology, and holds a vocational teacher’s diploma. She was a
member of the board of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) Finland
in 2009–2014. She has been a member of the ICOM International Committee
for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) since 1991, a member of the ICTOP board
since 2013 and chair since 2019.

Minna Tuominen is an art historian and received her PhD from the Helsinki
University in 2015. She has specialised in seventeenth-century Dutch art. She
has wide curatorial experience in Finnish museums and is working currently
in the Tuusula Art Museum as Chief Curator. In her work Tuominen leads an
exhibition group, collection management and a public art steering committee
in Tuusula. Tuominen has been an active lecturer in the Open University at the
University of Helsinki.  

Mari Viita-aho is a doctoral candidate in the programme of History and Cultural

Heritage, the University of Helsinki. Her research is based on several exhibition
case studies from the years 1972–2020 and archival materials, such as muse-
um policy programmes in Finland. The focus is on the ways social issues are
exhibited and approached in museums. In her dissertation, she examined the
opportunities and limitations for museums as public institutions that aim for
societal objectives. Besides research, Viita-aho lead a participatory development
project in 2018–2022, Timemachines and Utopias, in collaboration with three
Finnish artist house museums.

Janne Vilkuna studied archaeology/prehistory, ethnology, Finnish history

and art history at Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä. After his MA (1979) he
worked 1980–1989 at the regional Museum of Central Finland, Jyväskylä, as Sen-
ior Curator. When studies of museology began in Finland, first at the University
of Jyväskylä in 1983, he was one of the teachers, and when the office of lecturer
was established in 1989, he was nominated. He became PhD in ethnology 1992.
When the office of lecturer was 1998 changed to (the first Nordic) professorship
of museology, Vilkuna was nominated in 1999. In addition to his professorship,
Vilkuna was a director of the Jyväskylä University Museum in 1993–2016. He has
published about 400 scientific and popular articles on the subjects of museology,
prehistory, history and ethnology. His main interest in museological research is
the history of Finnish museums. He has, e.g., published (1998, in Finnish) the
history of the Finnish Museums Association 1923–1998 and an article on the
Finnish museum history (2010, in Finnish) about the organisation of Finnish
museums 1945–2009. Vilkuna has been and is a member of several museum
Section VI – Biographies  555

boards and state committees. He became a member of the editorial board (and
the Finnish editor) of the journal Nordic Museology in 1993 and has been since
2003 a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Anna Wessman has a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Helsinki.

Her PhD thesis (2010) dealt with death and burial during the Late Iron Age.
She has worked as a museum professional in several museums in Finland and
was the acting lecturer in Museum studies at the University of Helsinki be-
tween 2015–2017. After that she has been working in different research projects
involving avocational metal-detecting, citizen science and digital humanities.
Since February 2021 she is Associate Professor in Iron Age Archaeology at the
University Museum of Bergen, Norway. She is also Adjunct Professor at the
University of Turku and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Chester.