Ateneum Art Museum
Neo-Renaissance home of Finland's oldest and largest art collection, facing the main railway station.
The Ateneum stands opposite Helsinki's main railway station in a Neo-Renaissance palace designed by Theodor Höijer and completed in 1887. It was built to house both the Finnish Art Society's collections and the schools of art and applied art, an arrangement reflected in the allegorical sculpture and portrait medallions of Raphael, Bramante and Phidias on the main façade. Today it is one of the three museums of the Finnish National Gallery, alongside Kiasma and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum.
Its collection is the largest of classical art in Finland, covering roughly the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. The Golden Age of Finnish art is strongly represented through Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck, Albert Edelfelt, Hugo Simberg and Eero Järnefelt, and there are works by van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and Modigliani among the international holdings. The collection display is rehung periodically around new themes, and the museum also mounts large temporary exhibitions and smaller Modern Classics presentations.
Highlights
- Theodor Höijer's 1887 Neo-Renaissance building facing the railway station
- Finland's largest collection of classical art, from the 1700s onwards
- Golden Age works by Gallen-Kallela, Schjerfbeck, Edelfelt and Simberg
- International paintings including van Gogh, Cézanne and Gauguin
