Future’s National Museum of Finland

The National Museum of Finland is on the verge of the biggest change in its history. The historical main building, completed in 1910, will be accompanied by an impressive new annex that will bring a great deal of more space for the quickly growing museum operations.The museum’s public areas will be expanded by half, the museum’s courtyard park will be opened up to the public in a whole new way, and the museum will become more accessible. The future National Museum of Finland will offer visitors even more experiences from major exhibitions to various events.

How do you envision the National Museum of 2030?

In the space next to the museum shop, you can see our plans and join in envisioning the future. The illustrations on display show the architects’ visual vision of the future museum complex. In the interactive work by Tanja Bastamow and Aku Meriläinen, people’s thoughts about the National Museum of the future are combined with archival images with the help of artificial intelligence. You can use the keyboard to write down things that are important to you, or your wishes for the museum. The AI will try to interpret your message and, based on its interpretation, will pick out images from the collections of the National Museum of Finland and the Finnish Heritage Agency and incorporate them into the work together with the messages.

The result is a visual collage, a living entity in a state of constant change, created by visitors to the space together with the AI.

The exhibition also showcases items related to recent phenomena that have been included in the National Museum of Finland’s collections. In the National Museum of the future, we can see and experience our national collections more extensively and even in surprising ways.

The space is open to all and free of charge. You can spend time there, and it will also be used to host events in the future.

We want to invite everyone to help create the National Museum of the future with us. By working together and through open dialogue we can continue to carry out and even improve our work as the most notable museum of cultural history in Finland – as a museum that belongs to us all.

Follow the project online (in Finnish) at uusikansallinen.fi and on social media with the hashtag #uusikansallinen

Image: Samuli Miettinen / JKMM Architects