Helsinki has more than 80 local museums. In order to promote their presence in the city in a dense form, we propose the idea of MUUSA, or the Helsinki Museum Summer Festival. This will be a festival during the summer months, taking place at a specific open space of the city, different each year. It aims at bringing together various museums of Helsinki and promoting their existence and activities under a common theme: The Child, Domestic Life in the middle Ages, Transportation, Smuggling in the Baltic Sea, Independence and Occupation etc. The idea of a concentrated structure, that brings together the various activities of the different museums at the same time and place, can act as the meeting place of all the museums. This ‘implosion’ of Helsinki museums can create a spot of enormous energy for the city. MUUSA, as a soft, context-sensitive and flamboyant cultural structure promotes a counter-paradigm to the dominant culture space of international franchises like Guggenheim
Helsinki has already over 80 local museums. These cover a wide range of subjects and provide a vast knowledge about most aspects of the life of the city, its past, its present production as well as its possibilities for the future. They are part of the local identity and form the local character of the city. The big number of museums, one of the biggest among the Baltic cities, renders Helsinki a ‘museum city’, however without that being very obvious to the visitor. The numerous museums are scat
Each museum of Helsinki will have a part of its building dedicated to the Festival: The ‘P’ space. This space will host part of this collection, workshops, events, talks and any kind of activity that can relate to the Festival. Due to its spontaneous and changing character this shared space will be the most vivid part of each museum in the Helsinki. During the Festival period, and through the whole year, the ‘P’ space of each museum will be the anchor that connects the different localities of th
The space of the Festival consists of 16 boxes 10x10 meters each. Each box hosts the exhibits of each participant museum, creating a distinct ‘environment’. Each environment can favour activities, provide knowledge, host workshops, talks etc. The boxes put together in a rectangular grid that creates a tight structure. Interruptions in the boundaries of the boxes create possibilities for moving within the structure from one box to the other with multiple ways.
The MUUSA Summer Festival can be built around a chosen common subject that collect objects, activities, exhibits from various museums in Helsinki. The chosen subjects should be specific enough to address a historical, scientific, social or political matter that enhances knowledge, is up-to-date, and serves the local community as well as the visitors of the city as attraction during the summer months. At the same time the themes should also be wide enough in order to invite participation by as m
The participating museums will provide a number of exhibits to the Festival that relates to the current subject. These exhibits come from the space ‘P’ of each museum and can have many possible forms, like objects, paintings, devices and even activities, workshops, plays, installations. Possible participatory museums at the MUUSA exhibition, ‘The Child’ can include among other: The Finnish Museum of Photography, the Design Museum, the Kindergarten Museum, the Military Museum, the KIASMA Museum
