Museum A-Ö » Art and artists » Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art

The Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art offers a cross section of the history of newer art, reaching all the way from international modernists to Finnish contemporary artists. The basic exhibition, which is founded on the art collection of Simo Kuntsi from Vaasa, is one of the most important collections of modern art in Finland.

The museum’s alternating exhibitions raise current themes and trends of the art world. The Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art was opened for the audience in February 2007 in the former customs warehouse in the inner harbour of Vaasa. The customs warehouse was designed by architect Ernst Theodor Granstead in 1875. The Kuntsi foundation was established in 1970 by consul Simo Kuntsi, who brought his growing collection of 121 artworks to his former hometown Vaasa. The operating principal of the foundation has been from the beginning to offer the audiences in Vaasa contemporary art, and to collect and display new and recent phenomena of the art world.
The museum has pop art, kinetic and community art, informalism, surrealism, neo-expressionism and postmodernism. The art collection consists of over 900 Finnish and foreign works. Above all it is a significant classic assemblage of Finnish modern art, which displays Finnish visual arts from the 1950s onwards. The foundation’s collection is also one of the most important collections of art focusing on Finnish contemporary art from the 1960s and 1970s onwards.

Guidances and events are an essential part of the museum’s function. You can for example explore the world of colours together with children in the popular Colour Bath for Babies activity, which is targeted for babies, toddlers and their parents. Café Simo serves during the opening hours of the museum and has in its assortment in addition to coffee and pastries also light lunches.