Kunsthalle | Taidehalli Helsinki

Kunsthalle Helsinki has been a central place for changing exhibitions since 1928. The neoclassical building was designed by the architects Jarl Eklund (1876-1962) and Hilding Ekelund (1893-1984). It was created because there were artists who needed a place to arrange changing contemporary art exhibitions in the Finnish capital. It was recorded back then that Kunsthalle Helsinki should provide space for both domestic and foreign visual arts as well as industrial art and architecture.

The art life of Helsinki has gone through major changes in eighty years, but Kunsthalle Helsinki has maintained its position as the place where young artists can make their breakthroughs and recognized masters can have comprehensive retrospective exhibitions. Kunsthalle Helsinki has become a home for living art, a place where artists, researchers, and art-lovers meet each other.

The first director of Kunsthalle Helsinki was Bertel Hintze (1901-1969), an art critic and a researcher, up until 1968. Since then, Kunsthalle Helsinki has been led by Seppo Niinivaara in 1968-1994, Timo Valjakka in 1994-2001, Maija Tanninen-Mattila in 2001-2006, and by the current director Maija Koskinen since 2006.