The Collection Displays of the Ateneum Art Museum in 1915, 1931 and 1959
The thesis is concerned with studying the display history of the Ateneum Art Museum’s collection. It utilises the photographic documentation of the collection displays from 1915, 1931 and 1959 as its primary source material. On each occasion the collection hang was renewed by a different Chief Curator. Thus, the images provide an overview of the approach that the three Chief Curators who managed the Ateneum Art Museum between the years 1914–59 each had towards the collection display. Besides the photographs from the Finnish National Gallery’s Picture Collection, the thesis makes use of other documents (such as annual reports, minutes, newspaper reviews, sketch books and notes for lectures or public presentations) in the Finnish National Gallery’s Archive Collections and Archive of the Fine Arts Academy of Finland. The thesis shows the main objectives that the Chief Curators Gustaf Strengell (1914–18), Torsten Stjernschantz (1919–52) and Aune Lindström (1952–69) aimed to achieve as they were rearranging the collection display according to the standards of their own time. By comparing their ambitions with the photographs that document each of the collection hangs, it also became apparent how the intentions were carried out in practice. These questions are answered in the three chapters that each focuses on one collection display by a different Chief Curator. By studying the different approaches of the three Chief Curators had towards modernising the collection display, the thesis reveals how the salon-style hang was displaced over the course of several decades by the modern ‘white cube’ that fully manifested itself at the Ateneum Art Museum by the 1950s. In doing so, the thesis utilises texts that analyse the space as a social construction in order to understand the latent connotations behind each display. The first ‘modern’ display that entailed mounting the artworks in one line against a white background had been introduced at the Ateneum Art Museum by Chief Curator Gustaf Strengell as early as 1915. The thesis shows that even if one gallery of the museum looked like the epiphany of the ‘white cube’, Strengell approached the collection display as a spatial entity and not as the arrangement of artworks within visually neutral space. His successor Chief Curator Torsten Stjernschantz took the concept of the ‘white cube’ further in 1930 by arranging artworks into chronological order while muting the surrounding space. The documentation images from 1931 show that Stjernschantz had arranged artworks tightly into two lines. Chief Curator Aune Lindström maintained the same chronological order that focused on a small number of artists but arranged the works into a single row with ample space around them. While the Chief Curators were aiming towards a collection display that would be less cluttered so that the audience could focus on enjoying the aesthetic qualities of the artworks, arranging the collection display according to the principles of the ‘white cube’, played a part in idolising certain artists and positing them as masters in the history of Finnish art. These artists became the representatives of the national values that the collection hang (re)produced and maintained.
white cube, collection display, collection display history, the Ateneum Art Museum, the Ateneum building, Torsten Stjernschantz, Gustaf Strengell, Aune Lindström.
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