HELSINKI.- In 2025, the Ateneum Art Museum will present two temporary exhibitions. From 7 March to 24 August 2025, Crossing Borders will, for the first time, bring together in one exhibition the work of travelling women artists from the 1800s. To be shown from 26 September 2025 to 1 February 2026, Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien will explore how Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s art developed in interaction with international modernists, such as Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser. Also on show will be the collection exhibition A Question of Time. The Gothic Modern exhibition, currently on display, will run until January 26, 2025.

Crossing Borders changes our understanding of the lives of women artists in the 1800s

Crossing Borders – Travelling Women Artists in the 1800s
7 March–24 August 2025

To get a better education, artists in the 1800s had to travel abroad, to cities such as Düsseldorf, Dresden, Munich, and Berlin in Germany. Women were only allowed to study as private students of male artists or in art schools men had established for women.

Travel was slow and sometimes dangerous, and it required special arrangements, as women were not allowed to travel alone. Travelling also influenced the subjects of the works: instead of landscapes, the more suitable subjects for women were flowers, still lifes and portraits. In accordance with the fashion of the time, women wore crinolines, so painting was easier indoors than outdoors in nature.

The artists featured in Crossing Borders worked at a time when women did not yet have the right to vote. Women had to choose between a career and a family: when they got married, they usually had to stop working as artists. Many of the courageous artists featured in the exhibition were role models for later women artists such as Helene Schjerfbeck and Ellen Thesleff.

An art-historically significant exhibition highlights previously completely unknown artists and their networks, and puts on display works never before seen in Finland. The exhibition continues the Ateneum’s work as a pioneer in research related to women artists, and it is curated by the Ateneum curator Anne-Maria Pennonen. It highlights the importance of Germany as an art nation and a travel destination over France, which has been studied much more.

All the artists of Crossing Borders from the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Germany and Poland studied and worked in Germany in the 1800s. The Finnish artists featured in the exhibition include Fanny Churberg, Alexandra Frosterus-Såltin, Ida Silfverberg and Victoria Åberg, while foreign artists include Jeanna Bauck, Mathilde Bonnevie-Dietrichson, Marie Ellenrieder, Julie Hagen-Schwarz, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, Magda Kröner, Amalia Lindegren, Emmy Lischke and Bertha Wegmann. The exhibition also features drawings by Finland’s first female scientific illustrator, Hilda Olson, from the collection of the Finnish Museum of Natural History. In all, the exhibits include paintings, sculptures and drawings by more than 50 artists, all of whom are women.

The partner of the international exhibition and one of the lenders of the artworks is the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, which will stage a second version of the exhibition in the autumn of 2025, after the showing at the Ateneum. There is a wide representation of exhibits from the Finnish National Gallery collection, and works are also on loan from, for example, the Alte Nationalgalerie (Germany), the Nationalmuseum (Sweden), the Gothenburg Museum of Art, the National Museum (Norway), the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Denmark) and the National Gallery of Denmark, and the Art Museum of Estonia.

The exhibition is complemented by the publication of an exhibition catalogue in Finnish, Swedish and English. The editors-in-chief of the publication are Anne-Maria Pennonen and Hanne Selkokari. The publication features a total of 18 articles by international researchers.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela and the Secessionists met in early 20th-century Vienna: an exhibition to bring Gustav Klimt’s works to Finland for the first time

Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien
26 September 2025–1 February 2026

The young artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wanted to make a radical break away from old art ideals and move towards a new, freer conception of art. The most famous example of such a departure is the Vienna Secession, which was founded in 1897 under the direction of Gustav Klimt.

The Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien exhibition is about the Secessionists with whom Akseli Gallen-Kallela collaborated and in whose exhibitions he participated. The pulsating art scene of 20th-century Vienna and the integration of various international influences in the form of ideas and styles are highlighted in this exhibition, which features both modern art and modern design. At the same time, the exhibition marks the first showing of Klimt’s works in Finland.

The main goal of the Secessionists was the equality of all art forms. Visual art, architecture, crafts, design and fashion were to represent a changed and modern world. The Secessionists were united by the development of a new identity and way of life, as well as an interest in monumentalism and the depiction of beauty. Secessionism was not a unified art movement, but it rather incorporated a broad array of styles, such as art nouveau, symbolism and impressionism. Women could not become official members of the Vienna Secession, but they participated in exhibitions and played a significant role as reformists.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela focused on Finnish subject matter, but he developed his expression in close interaction with international modernists. One of these was Koloman Moser, who shared Gallen-Kallela’s interest in ‘total work of art’ (Gesamtkunstwerk) and the idea of equality between different art forms. Gallen-Kallela worked in Central Europe from 1895 to 1908, and participated in exhibitions presenting works by Secession groups in several cities in Germany, and twice in Vienna, in 1901 and 1904.

In addition to visual art, the exhibition includes photography and plenty of design: everyday objects, jewellery and fashion, such as a reform dress by the fashion designer Emilie Flöge. The new shape of the reform dress freed women from the ideal of the wasp waist and the tightness of corsets. Flöge (1874–1952) was an Austrian fashion designer and businesswoman, and the life companion of Gustav Klimt.

The exhibition features works, for example, by the following artists and designers: Emilie Flöge, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Ferdinand Hodler, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Broncia Koller-Pinell, Max Kurzweil, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Koloman Moser, and Edvard Munch.

The Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Belvedere Museum, Vienna. The exhibition is curated by the chief curator at the Ateneum, Anu Utriainen in cooperation with Arnika Groenewald-Schmidt, PhD (Belvedere Museum). The exhibition catalogue is published in Finnish, Swedish and English.