The centenary of Finnish independence will be celebrated next year at Design Museum with both domestic and foreign exhibitions. In the spring, the museum will open its completely renewed collections exhibition together with an extensive overview of contemporary Finnish design. The summer season will feature Danish design and in the autumn there will be an exhibition on design in California produced by Design Museum of London, which has recently opened.
Utopia Now – The Story of Finnish Design, opening on 28 January 2017
In honour of the centenary of Finnish independence in 2017, Design Museum will open its completely renewed collections exhibition. This exhibition presents the integral role of design in the evolution of the Finnish welfare state. It has five themes illustrating the history of design through living stories. The exhibition’s digital applications permit the display of materials that have not been shown before and can provide amounts of information many times greater than previously. They will also enhance and deepen the exhibition experience by taking into account the museum’s different groups of users, from tourists to schoolchildren.
Enter and Encounter – 24 March –24 September 2017
Enter and Encounter is a joint exhibition produced by Design Museum and the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo and displaying contemporary Finnish design after Helsinki’s Design Capital Year of 2012. This optimistic exhibition focuses on the future, asking how design challenges the present and shapes things to come. Its works, projects and initiatives are responses to change or the need for change. They create phenomena, offer perspectives and lay the basis for new attitudes and practice in a global context. The title of the exhibition invites visitors to encounter changes in design and society with an open mind and in a positive spirit. KURAATTORILISTA
California, 10 November 2017 – 4 March 2018
Produced by Design Museum of London, California is a touring exhibition presenting design created in California and the significant impact of this area on global design culture. California’s importance as rich soil for world-changing innovations is due to the tension between the internal liberation of the individual and a strong ethos of community. The chronological span of the exhibition encompasses Californian Modernism, the alternative movements of the 1960s and the tech culture of Silicon Valley. California offers a broad perspective on object, graphic and digital design and cultural phenomena from Ray and Charles Eames to the Google car, and from hippie communes to digital networks like Facebook. The curator of the exhibition is Justin McGuirk, chief curator of Design Museum of London.
Gallery exhibitions in 2017
Pauliina Pöllänen
Half Full
27 January – 12 March 2017
100 Objects from Finland, 24 March – 29 May 2017
Margrethe Odgaard, 9 June – 27 August 2017
One Billion Scissors Sold – One Billion Stories Told
50 Years of Fiskars Scissors, 7 September–29 October 2017
Design Museum’s touring exhibitions in 2017
The Eero Aarnio exhibition, which was held at Design Museum in 2016, will be on display at Nationalmuseum Design at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern in Stockholm from 8 February to 24 April 2017.
The Marimekko exhibition of materials from Design Museum’s collections will open in Tokyo, Japan in the middle of December 2016. Produced in association with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan, the exhibition will go on tour from Tokyo to three other cities during 2017.
The Finnish Design Exhibition, based on the collections of Design Museum and curated by Curators Inc of Japan in association with Design Museum will also tour Japan in the coming year. Presenting the history of Finnish design, the exhibition consists 172 objects from the beginning of the 20th century to the 2000s. It features the work of designers Louis Sparre, Alfred William Finch, Kaj Franck, Maija Isola, Vuokko Nurmesniemi, Timo Sarpaneva, Tapio Wirkkala, Ilmari Tapiovaara and Oiva Toikka, among others. The exhibition venues will be the Fukuoka City Museum the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, the Fukui City Museum, the Fuchu Art Museum and the Miyagi Museum of Art.
In 2017, Helsinki Art Museum HAM celebrates the 100th anniversary of Finnish independence by widely and evocatively showcasing Finnish modernism in an international context. Opening in March 2017, the exhibition will boldly take over the arched halls of Tennispalatsi. HAM is producing the exhibition in cooperation with the Alvar Aalto Foundation, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Design Museum and the Finnish Museum of Photography.
Photo: Ragamuf, the exhibition Enter and Encounter. Photographer: Timo Junttila.
