I just returned from a weekend in Helsinki. It was my first visit to Finland and I had a great time: went to a couple of museums, took a day trip to Tallinn (capital of Estonia) and spent many hours in various stores and supermarkets checking out beauty brands and products. Stay tuned for more articles about retail and art in Helsinki/Tallinn! The first installment is a bit off-topic: whilst waiting at Helsinki-Vantaa airport for my return flight to Berlin, I came across a Moomin Museum pop-up exhibition.
You might be familiar with Finnish children’s book author and illustrator Tove Jansson (1914-2001) and her Moomin trolls; they are famous across the world. In Germany the Moomin books are very popular and I practically grew up with them. I still own a complete set of books, actually.
As a dyed-in-the-wool Moomin fan I simply had to check out the exhibition; it’s in Terminal 2 (after security) above the Iittala shop. The exhibition was organised by the Moomin Museum in Tampere, a city in South Western Finland.
In 1986, Tove Jansson had donated her collection of more than 2,000 Moomin artworks and illustrations to the Tampere Art Museum. And for the last three decades, the Tampere Art Museum has shown a small part of the Moomin collection in the Moominvalley section on the ground floor of the Art Museum.
In 2017, however, the collection will be moving to a new home: Tampere Hall, the largest congress and culture centre in Scandinavia. It will also be renamed Moomin Museum: the new premises are three times larger than the previous Moominvalley location – Moomin Museum will comprise some 1,000 sq m of Moomin space! This also means that many additional Jansson artworks can be displayed, with a much more modern and interactive exhibition structure. I really would love to see it.
Anyhow, the pop-up exhibition in Helsinki-Vantaa airport was sort of a first taste of the new Moomin experience. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Enjoy!
TRENDS. TRAVELS. AND BERLIN 