The Museums of Lappeenranta organises various temporary exhibitions at the Lappeenranta Art Museum and the South Karelia Museum.

The temporary exhibitions of the South Karelia Museum feature Lappeenranta, everyday life in South Karelia and various topical culture and cultural history-related themes.

The Lappeenranta Art Museum’s exhibitions showcase visual art phenomena of diverse origins and nature. The main focus is on contemporary art and art from South-Eastern Finland. The museum’s own collections are on exhibit regularly.

 

Temporary exhibitions 2023-2024

 

South Karelia Museum

Kristiinankatu 15, The Fortress of Lappeenranta

 

25 November 2023 – 25 February 2024

The Nineties

The Nineties is an epoch exhibition that takes you on a time trip back to 1990s Finland, an era of deep recession and breadlines that ended in an economic and technological boom. In the mid-1990s, Finland won the Ice Hockey World Championship and joined the European Union, among other things. In the 1990s, Finnish society was shaped by new influences, although people from all around the country still gathered around their televisions to watch the same popular shows. The Nineties exhibition features an extensive collection of artefacts and photos. The exhibition dives deep into a decade of great changes and is a definite must-see, especially for those who grew up in the 90s. The exhibition is produced by the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas.

The Nineties, Phones. Photo: The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas.

 

9 March – 2 June 2024

At Your Service!

Produced by the Hotel and Restaurant Museum, At Your Service! leads you to the history of Finnish hotels and restaurants, from the first fashionable hotels to today's chain cafés. How did restaurants steer through the prohibition? Who stayed at hotels during wartime? And what is the origin of that Finnish favourite, the buffet table? The exhibition allows you to explore Finnish food and drinking culture and its development, make a journey to the history of accommodation and tourism, learn about the everyday life of employees, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and enjoy music, singing and dancing.

 

19 June – 22 September 2024

Forests of the North Wind

Forests of the North Wind portrays our northern coniferous forests that at their best sustain diverse life and are home to tens of thousands of organisms. One lives in an owl pellet, another at the base of a dry-standing ancient pine and some need miles of wilderness. For some a metre is a great distance and for others a century is too short, but all are linked to each other through complex networks of interactions.

The photographs in the exhibition were taken in conservation areas in Finnish natural forests, of which only a few per cent remain out of the country’s forest area. The majority of forests, mires and small bodies of water have become fundamentally different from what they would be in their natural state as the result of intensive forestry. Numerous species cannot survive in the new conditions.

We are so used to landscapes shaped by humans that we risk forgetting what a natural forest looks like. Forests of the North Wind is the final part of a forest trilogy by two photographers – Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo. The first two parts of the trilogy were Tree People (1997), an exploration into Finnish forest mythology, and Silvicultural Operations (2009), which highlighted the downsides of forestry.

 

12 October 2024 – 9 March 2025

The Railway Navvies

The Railway Navvies exhibition with its tipper wagons and work songs will arrive at the South Karelia Museum in the autumn of 2024. The exhibition tells about the relentless hard work of the railway builders and features historical photographs, tools, and stories from railway construction sites all over Finland. The exhibition’s activity areas offer both children and adults the opportunity to explore the fascinating history and technology of rail transport. Produced by The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, the exhibition is based on the dissertation of Kalle Kallio, Director of the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, on Finnish railway builders.

 

Lappeenranta Art Museum

Kristiinankatu 8-10, The Fortress of Lappeenranta

 

3 February – 12 May 2024

Power of Art – the story of one family

The Lappeenranta Art Museum’s exhibition presents Evald Okas (1915–2011), a painter, graphic artist and drawer who has been part of the history of Estonian art for more than 70 years. In addition to his own artistic creation, he started a strong Estonian dynasty of artists. The joint exhibition showcases the work of five artists of different generations: in addition to Evald Okas, paintings by his daughter Mari Roosvalt (b. 1945), drawings and paintings by Mari’s husband Uno Roosvalt (b. 1941), glass art by Evald’s daughter Kai Koppel (b. 1952) and paintings by Kai’s daughter Mara Ljutjuk (b. 1978). The Evald Okas Museum of the artist family is located in the city of Haapsalu. The museum has been organising exhibitions, art courses and workshops in the summer for 20 years. The exhibition in Lappeenranta will be held in cooperation with the Finnish-Estonian cultural society Tuglas.

 

1 June – 1 September 2024

Normal drinks and our daily bread

The theme of the exhibition is food and drink in the history of Finnish visual arts from the early 19th century to the present day. The exhibition illustrates various phenomena related to food and drink as viewed through Finnish visual arts. The themes of the works include the acquisition and production of ingredients, such as agriculture, hunting and fishing, and the food and drink themselves, which have traditionally been portrayed in various still lifes. Themes also include restaurants, cafés, culinary culture(s), food trends, and ethical issues related to food and drink, insofar as these themes have been dealt with in Finnish visual arts. The exhibition has been compiled of the museum’s own works, works borrowed from other museums and communities as well as artists.

The exhibition is linked to the Saimaa European Region of Gastronomy year, which will be celebrated throughout 2024. Three regions in eastern Finland form the Saimaa European Region of Gastronomy region. In the jubilee year, the region will be the centre of European food and cultural tourism, and the aim is to link food with art and culture in surprising and interesting ways. The official website of the jubilee year is available at www.tastesaimaa.fi.

 

14 December 2024 – 16 February 2025

Katri Kuparinen

“I use older, woodcut-based illustrations and, for example, news and advertising images of the paper versions of Time and Der Spiegel published in recent years as my source material. Roughly put, I mix new and old, fact and fiction in different ways in my works.” The exhibition of visual artist Katri Kuparinen (b. 1972) consists of large papercut collages. In her collages, she has combined material from different sources into a new whole so that the components retain something of their origins.

 

14 December 2024 – 16 February 2025

Tiina Marjeta

“In my opinion, the material binds the works to their time and tells about the time in which it is used. Materials are created and lost over time. They tell about the time in which the works were made. Not everything is meant to be permanent in life either.” The mixed-media works of visual artist Tiina Marjeta (b. 1970) consist of materials that have been reused in the artistic process.

 

14 December 2024 – 16 February 2025

Juan Kasari – Absence III

Absence III (2022) by Juan Kasari (b. 1974), acquired for the Lappeenranta Art Museum’s collection, is a four-channel video installation that will be installed in one of the art museum’s galleries. In his more recent works, such as Absence III, Juan Kasari uses several overlapping video projections that are in a state of constant change.