HAM Helsinki Art Museum

Helsinki’s collection, indoors and out

HAM looks after art owned by the people of Helsinki, including works in streets, parks and public buildings. The museum in the Tennis Palace gives that civic collection an indoor home and adds changing exhibitions.

It is a good choice when you want to connect art with the city around you.

Tove Jansson is a particularly strong reason to choose it. Her place here extends well beyond the Moomin stories: HAM presents an artist who painted public spaces, designed images for reproduction and worked among a family of image-makers.

The two parties

Jansson’s Party in the City and Party in the Countryside were commissioned in 1947 for Helsinki City Hall’s restaurant. Their social scenes were made to accompany people eating and gathering, rather than to begin life in a silent museum.

The city scene includes Jansson herself, Vivica Bandler and people from their circle. Small Moomin-like figures are tucked among the flowers in both works.

Those details reward close looking, but the larger interest is how Jansson gives the gatherings their own rhythm through figures, gestures and movement across the wall.

A fresco that could move

The paintings combine work on wet and dry plaster. Jansson was advised to construct them in flat metal frames, allowing them to be detached if necessary.

That practical decision later made it possible for the works to leave the restaurant and eventually reach HAM.

Their journey is a reminder that public art does not always stay in the place for which it was made. Compare the intimacy of the people in the paintings with the scale required for a restaurant wall.

HAM states that both frescoes are permanently displayed; surrounding Jansson material changes.

The artist family

The first presentation in the expanded three-room Tove Jansson Gallery, Artist Family Jansson, runs through 10 January 2027. It includes work by Tove, her parents and her brothers, using drawings, sculpture, illustration, photography and books to describe a household in which making images was everyday work.

Tools and materials give the display a concrete appeal. The museum invites visitors to handle selected sculptural materials and try caricature drawing.

These activities belong to the current exhibition, rather than being a blanket invitation to touch the artworks.

Notice the museum before the galleries

HAM occupies two upper levels of the Tennis Palace. At the Eteläinen Rautatiekatu escalator, Kari Cavén’s UHO, made from steel bowls, introduces art before the ticket desk.

Even the toilets have an artistic commission: Tuula Lehtinen’s mosaic installation uses thousands of individually painted ceramic pieces.

After the Jansson rooms, choose from the temporary programme rather than expecting a complete permanent survey of Finnish art. For that broader historical overview, compare the Ateneum.

HAM works particularly well as a focused Jansson visit with one additional exhibition.