'A Helsinki Guggenheim,” says Petra Havu of the Association of Finnish Artists, “is not a project for taxpayers’ money.”

“It represents a supreme lack of imagination,” adds Jörn Donner, the veteran Finnish politician, actor, director and producer who wonFinland’s only Oscar for his work with Ingmar Bergman on Fanny and Alexander. “It is part of an insecure, provincial view of the world.”

As you might gather, the announcement made in Venice at the beginning of this month of an international competition for the design of a new Guggenheim museum for the Finnish capital is already raising hackles in Helsinki.

What adds fuel to such critics’ fire is that Helsinki has been here before all too recently, expensively and for no gain. In early 2011, the city’s mayor, Jussi Pajunen, committed £1.6 million of public funds to a feasibility study for a Guggenheim Museum on Helsinki’s South Harbour, a site overlooked by some of Europe’s finest neoclassical, National Romantic and Modern architecture.

“It was quite astonishing,” says Havu. “The Finnish taxpayer was subsidising the Guggenheim Foundation in New York so they could sell us a… Guggenheim.”

“Incredible,” says Tiina Erkintalo, executive director of Checkpoint Helsinki, a new commissioning body for contemporary art. “Not only would we use public money at a time of economic hardship and cuts in arts spending to finance the Americans, but we would then have to pay the Guggenheim a substantial annual sum each year to lease their 'brand’.”

For the Finns, this was rather like writing a large cheque to Pepsi to set up a soft-drink plant in Helsinki. Even worse, the slavish attitude towards the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation by the, mostly, conservative Finnish politicians in search of what they like to call “world-class brands” felt like a kick in the face for a city and a country that has, despite a very small population, performed with real character and influence on the international stage.

“We want to develop a museum of the future,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim Foundation, at the time the project was launched. “Being on the cutting edge would, of course, benefit both Helsinki and the Guggenheim network.” In earlier years, and while the first Finnish Guggenheim was on the drawing board, Helsinki had exported design to the United States, notably in the stunning architecture of Eero Saarinen, including the legendary TWA terminal at New York’s JFK airport. The tables have clearly been turned....Continue Reading