The Tikanoja Art Museum
Hovioikeudenpuistikko 4
65100 Vaasa Finland
Phone +358 6 325 3916
Fax +358 6 325 3918
Closed on Mondays
Tuesday—Saturday:
11 AM to 4 PM
Sunday: 12 AM — 5 PM
Welcome!
Tikanoja Art Museum is the previous home of Mr. Frithjof Tikanoja (1877-1964), a well known businessman in Vaasa. Mr. Tikanoja had fallen in love with fine arts in the late 1910s and immediately started collecting paintings and drawings. The art museum was founded when Mr. Tikanoja donated his art collection to the city in 1951.
The Tikanoja collection is especially famous for its international section containing works e.g. by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The collection also includes Finnish art from the 19th and 20th centuries. Traditional masters, such as Albert Edelfelt, Axel Gallen-Kallela, Maria Wiik and Tyko Sallinen are included in the collection as well as younger artists.
Mr. Tikanoja also acted as a patron for the painter Eemu Myntti. His art in the 1920s was against the traditional and widely accepted Finnish art policy because he enjoyed working in the French expressionistic style.
The Tikanoja Art Museum arranges several exhibitions annually, based on both national and international themes of interest. The Art Museum is also the location for chamber concerts.
Upcoming exhibitions 2010:
Helena Westermarck (1857-1938)
December 12 2009 - January 24 2010
Finnish artist Helena Westermarck's paintings, literary oeuvre and social conscience indicate a rare gift. Few have paved the way for women in the late 1880s in Finland with such versatility and steadfastness than Westermarck through her life's work. As a painter she was radical for her time: depicting maids and servants naturalistically, to the utter dismay of some. Helena Westermarck was faced with the dilemma of having to choose between painting and writing. As time passed, the writer in her took the upper hand. Her considerable literary production encompasses art historical essays as well as women's rights and other social issues.
Westermarck is not as well-known as her closest colleagues the so-called "painter sisters" – e.g. Helene Schjerfbeck or Maria Wiik – who studied art at home and in Paris in the 1880s. For many, Westermarck is better known as an author and advocate for women's rights. Most of her works belong to private collections and are thus seldom exhibited rarities.
Some thirty of her oil and water colour paintings will be displayed, among them her most polemical painting An Important question (later known as the Ironers). The exhibition also presents paintings by her contemporaries, e.g. Gunnar Berndtson and Albert Edelfelt who painted subject-matter related to Westermarck´s Ironers. Her relation to the so-called "painter sisters" is elucidated with paintings from Brittany and Paris by Helene Schjerfbeck and Maria Wiik and others.
Commedia dell'Arte - Couture Edition
Haute Couture in Porcelain
Februari 13 - April 11 2010
To celebrate its 260th anniversary, Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg launched a limited edition of the world-famous Commedia dell'Arte figures by the rococo sculptor, Franz Anton Bustelli in 1759/60. Sixteen fashion designers of the highest acclaim were invited to design "new clothes" as a new décor for the figure of their choice.