Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art

Profil

The Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art was opened to the public in February 2007. The new museum is situated in a former customs warehouse in the Inner Harbour of Vaasa. The building has 2,000 m² of space, which has been planned exclusively for museum activities.

Thanks to the new museum, both national and international exhibitions of modern and contemporary art are now a permanent feature of Vaasa's artistic life.

The Kuntsi Foundation, founded by Consul Simo Kuntsi (1913-1984), has had the clear intention from beginning to provide the public with different aspects of contemporary art as well as to collect and present art phenomena from the art world's recent history. This mission is now continued by the new museum.

In 1971 Consul Simo Kuntsi brought his growing art collection to his former hometown with the ambition of expanding the already fine supply of art in Vaasa. He also made an agreement with the City of Vaasa, whereby the city promised to keep the collection in Vaasa as well as to organize space in the form of a museum for it. The premises of the Vaasa Commercial School provided a suitable solution for presenting the collection in the 1970s and 1980s. However, in the 1990s, the space available at the school was no longer enough to satisfy the demands of the modern art museum, and the search for new appropriate space for the art collection began. In 2000 the Vaasa City Council eventually made a decision to build a new museum for modern art based around Kuntsi Art Collection. Vaasa City planned and renovated the former customs warehouse to make it a suitable location for an art museum.

The base collection in the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art is the Kuntsi Foundation's art collection - one of the most important classic collections of contemporary art in Finland covering pop art, kinetic art as well as committed art, informalism, surrealism, new expressionism, postmodernism… The more than 900 works forming the collection are a cross section of modern art history, from international modern ists to the Finnish artists of today. But most of all, it is the classic collection of Finnish contemporary art created in the 1950s and onward.

The Kuntsi Collection is constantly growing and other nationally remarkable private collections are both deposited and donated in connection with it. Donations and depositions continue the work started by Consul Simo Kuntsi, and increase the importance of Vaasa in the modern and contemporary art world. Regular cooperation with other museums, artists and collectors in Finland and abroad further expands the new museum's operation as well as the exhibition offerings of the most topical art.

Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art is also a forum for inter-artistic collaboration: music, literature, dance and theatre form a self-evident part in the museum's operation. The new museum functions also as a teacher in art education. Different advised activities, guided tours, art clubs, workshops and lectures are organized in the museum. And an atelier called Studio has been especially designed for younger visitors. The Simo Museum Café, a museum shop and an art library are also available for visitors' use in the museum.