Design Museums new exhibition Collectors and Collections (25 October 2019 – 15 March 2020) features choice items from valuable private design collections. The exhibition will include several events where the public can see coveted classics of Finnish design, meet Finnish collectors and explore the exciting world of design. We have listed on this page the most important events to be held in association with Collectors and Collections. Mark them in your calendar and come and have a look.
Lunch Talk
Friday, 25 October
1 p.m. – 2 p.m.
Entrance with museum ticket
Design Museum’s Lunch Talks reveal more about the main themes of our newest exhibitions already on their opening day. On Friday 25 October there will be a talk on collecting and how the museum’s new Collectors and Collections exhibition came about. Exhibition curator Harry Kivilinna and curator Susanna Thiel of Design Museum will tell about preparing the exhibition and how the individual pieces, works and collections were selected from the treasure troves of the collectors and Design Museum’s collections.
Collectors and Collections (25 October 2019–15 March 2020) presents for the first time design collections that are normally not seen by the public. With reference to these collections, the exhibition seeks answers to the questions of how design is collected, how collectors have created their collections, and why some design objects become sought-after collectibles. The exhibits include valuable collections of design and a large assortment of utility objects. The material on show consists mostly of modern Finnish design.
Design Evening with Collectors and Collections
Tuesday, 29 October
4 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Free admission
This Design Evening event explores the world of collecting and Finnish design. There will be guided visits for the public to the new Collectors and Collections exhibition and a decoration workshop open to all visitors. There will also be a talk about the oeuvre of Tapio Wirkkala by Marja-Terttu Kivirinta, who has written a book about Wirkkala. Kivirinta will be interviewed by Johanna Korhonen. Design Evening will also include a visit to Design Attic with its recently opened exhibit of work by Margareta Ahlstedt-Willandt. Educational Curator, Head of Learning Leena Svinhufvud of Design Museum will give a talk about women textile designers who wove their works.
Design Treats Talk by Mitchell Owens
Wednesday, 20 November
4 p.m.–6 p.m.
Free admission
We are very excited to welcome the renowned journalist and Decorative Arts Editor of Architectural Digest (AD) Mitchell Owens to Helsinki. He will be speaking at Design Museum on Wednesday, 20 November. Owens is an editor, reporter, curator and scholar whose subjects range from architecture and design to social history and popular culture. In his talk, he will address his relationship with Finnish design and architecture, and how it has impacted him over the years.
Scandinavian design has been a passion of Owens’s for many years. The very first piece he ever owned was Alvar Aalto’s Savoy vase, which he describes as ‘brilliant, yet so very very modest design’.
In his lecture Amateur, Autodidact, and Beginner’s Luck: The Making of an Aesthete Owens also talks about his career, of how he became interested in design and became a design writer.
Read more
Design Day 2.0
Saturday, 8 February 2020
11 a.m. –6 p.m.
Design Evening with Collectors and Collections
Tuesday, 25 February 2020
4 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Free admission
