The Guggenheim Foundation's global network of museums

What does Helsinki need? Bread and circuses, yes, but at what cost the latter?

In January – after a study that cost the Finns a couple of million euros – the Salomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (est. 1937) indicated that it was favourably inclined toward the construction of a new art museum, bearing its name, in Helsinki. The leaders of Helsinki city council are aiming to make a positive decision as soon as possible.

The cost of the building, whose site adjoins the Presidential Palace in central Helsinki, is estimated at 130–140 million euros, with design costs of about 11 million euros. Unlike in the case of Berlin, no existing building is considered suitable; instead, an architectural dream must be realised, with plenty of wow-factor.

Its mere maintenance costs will be around 14.5 million euros a year. It has been estimated that the Helsinki Guggenheim’s income could be 7.7 million a year. In addition, a 20-year Guggenheim licence costs 24.6 million euros.

The project has provoked widely differing reactions. Proponents of the project believe that the Guggenheim brand would bring thousands of new visitors to Helsinki and that half a million people would visit it each year. Opponents doubt this, speak of a ‘Guggenburger’ franchising concept and of the fact that not even the existing art museums of Helsinki are particularly crowded.

The odd thing is, however, that the basic demographic differences between Helsinki and, say, Bilbao – where the Guggenheim museum has been a big success – are constantly ignored in the discussions: the population of Spain is almost 50 million and another 50 million visitors go there every year, while the corresponding figures for this most northerly part of Europe are five million inhabitants and visitors.

In Bilbao, moreover, there was no museum of contemporary art before the advent of the Guggenheim; Helsinki, on the other hand, opened Kiasma, a new museum of contemporary art (165,000 visitors in 2010) in 1998 and the neighbouring city of Espoo its Emma museum of modern art (82,000 visitors in 2010) in 2006.

Economic prospects on any level now offer little hope. The Finnish government, in the shape of the ministry of culture, has just cut grants to state-aided museums by three  million euros – the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki, for example, is closing its doors, and some 40 of the museum staff elsewhere will be sacked. The government is not promising any money to the Guggenheim.

How, then, to fund an annual deficit of 7 million euros? Finland does not have a great supply of art-minded millionaire sponsors, and no one has so far made any concrete offers on how to fund this project.

The Guggenheim Foundation itself is not taking any financial risks with this project. Neither has it announced in any detail what sort of art will feature in the museum’s temporary exhibitions.

People who live in the city are more preoccupied with, for example, the shortcomings of the health services: there are waiting lists for everything, often of many weeks, and the old university children’s hospital has outgrown its present space. There are cuts and shrinkages yet to come in the spending structure of  the country as a whole and of Helsinki – civil servants themselves estimate that the city’s budget is not sufficient to cover even the upkeep of basic services.

To judge by the public debate, the deep ranks of Helsinki taxpayers do not want a new monument, one for which it will be necessary to pay – in addition to maintenance – more than a million euros a year to an American brand for the mere use of its name, for more than 20 years.

Do the people of Helsinki wish to begin to pay additional taxes for the revival, yet again, of the age-old dream of guaranteeing Finland ‘a place on the world map’, in a situation where economic difficulties are a matter of everyday life for increasing numbers of them? (We believe, incidentally, that Finland already has an appropriate place on the world map.) Will their opinion be asked, or heard?

Vakauden kaipuu. Kylmän sodan loppu ja Suomi

From Finland’s perspective, the termination of the Cold War era encompassed three significant processes: the Soviet Union’s policy of perestroika, or reform, and the disintegration of its empire; the end of the international arms race and the rise of joint security as a policy aim of the superpowers; and increasing European integration. This book devotes individual chapters to two phases of Finnish foreign policy – interpretation of the Paris Peace Treaty and Finland’s withdrawal from the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, which it had signed with the Soviet Union in 1948. The second part of the book focuses on the years 1992–94, when Finland applied to become a member of the European Union and forged relations with the new Russia. Finland’s position in those years was defined by Mauno Koivisto, a cautious president, whose memoirs have served as a key source of material for Blomberg. The negotiations surrounding the region of Karelia, which was ceded to the Soviet Union after the war, are illuminated further here. As a Finnish ambassador, Blomberg served in key roles within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs from the late 1980s to the early 21st century.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Ice, lava & quality life for women: Iceland. Photo: Soila Lehtonen

In Iceland.

The Daily Beast – the online home of Newsweek Magazine – has compiled the rankings of the best and worst countries for women to live in. 165 countries were analysed by using five factors – justice, health, education, economics and politics – and awarding scores of 0 to 100.

Each category included between four and ten data points, depending on the reliable data points available. The results, published last month, show that for a woman Iceland is the best place: overall score was 100.0. Second was Sweden (99.2), third Canada (96.6), fourth Denmark (95.3) and fifth Finland (92.8). The next five were Switzerland, Norway, USA, Australia and the Netherlands.

The final ranking is based on how much better or worse a country is for women when measured against the average level of women’s rights for all 165 countries – of which the worst three are Yemen, Afghanistan and Chad.

Some progress seems to have been going on in the world lately; in politics women have become more visible. They will now even be allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia. (But there women are still not able to leave the country or work without a permission from a male relative – or drive a car.)

Iceland’s current prime minister is Johanna Sigurdardottir; the country’s score points for politics is 92.8, whereas Finland’s is 100.0.

However, justice and economics do not score as high in Finland as in Iceland. ‘Prevalence of intimate partner physical and sexual violence’ may cause the loss of points in the former case, and ‘women’s wages as a percentage of men’s’ in the latter.

Finland is the only country on the list with 100.0 points in politics: currently the president, 84 of the 200 members of the parliament and nine ministers out of 19 are women. So, it might be quite possible that women will make Finland climb up towards the top of the mountain – or rather, volcano?

Yrjö Kallisen elämä ja totuus

Counsellor of Education Yrjö Kallinen (1886–1976) was a Social Democrat politician, a passionate speaker and a pacifist who served for one parliamentary term as an MP and for two years as a cabinet minister. Kallinen was a working-class man who independently acquired a broad general education. His life and thought contain many paradoxes and contradictions. In the Civil War (1918) he received four death sentences, though he tried to act as a peace-broker between the Whites and the Reds. Kallinen avoided the death penalty but suffered a long prison sentence. After the Second World War he became Minister of Defence, though in spite of holding the post he did not abandon his pacifism. Kallinen was also strongly influenced by oriental religions and theosophy, and he is known as an early advocate of vegetarianism. The most important sources for this biography are Yrjö Kallinen’s own writings, many of which have never been published before, and his recently discovered correspondence. The summaries of Kallinen’s interviews for foreign newspapers open up interesting perspectives on recent Finnish political history.
Translated by David McDuff

Språk och politisk mobilisering. Finlandssvenskar i publikdemokrati

Under the Finnish Constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the country’s national languages. The status of Swedish is currently the subject of debate: on the one hand there is concern about the adequacy of Swedish-language services, while on the other there is a strong opposition among the Finnish-speaking majority to the mandatory study of Swedish. This book discusses, for example, the basis on which Finland’s 5.5 per cent Swedish-speaking minority elects its party and its candidates in national elections, and the importance of the Swedish language in this choice. Research suggests that Svenska Folkpartiet, the Swedish People’s Party, would gain increased backing if it were to emphasise the language question and seeking support for Swedish-speaking districts, rather than by targeting Finnish-speakers and bilingual citizens with an interest in minority issues. The book also contains a summary of the results of the Svensk politik i Finland (Politics in Swedish-speaking Finland) research project; Kimmo Grönlund – also director of research at Åbo Akademi – was head of the project.
Translated by David McDuff

Tuhansien aatteiden maa. Ääriajattelua Nyky-Suomessa

There are a number of extremist ideologies with a foothold in Finland. Even though most such groups are very small, religious and political extremism have experienced growth and do not always remain on the margins. The authors of this book have chosen to include only those ideologies whose efforts are clearly directed against particular groups or that would result in an erosion of democracy if they were to gain some real power. Topics receiving the greatest amount of attention in the media have been immigration and the polarisation within the Finnish Lutheran Church. According to some reports, the Church is being split over the issues of female clergy and homosexuality. This book also covers Finnish-born Islamists who support Sharia law, Communists who distort history and venerate the Soviet Union, honour killings carried out in Finland, and NRA Finland, a hard-line pro-gun lobbying organisation. The authors also discuss how these zealots, having gained more support, have also begun to influence the positions of mainstream political parties.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Illustration: Joonas Väänänen

Should a journalist show his hand? Columnist Jyrki Lehtola ponders the pros and cons of showing one’s true political colours

What’s the best way to present an initiative that would get the cynical, lazy news media to take an interest in the outside world?

The easiest way is to make a proposal in which the outside world is actually defined as the news media itself.

This is exactly what Matti Apunen did early this autumn: Apunen, a long-time journalist and the former editor-in-chief of the Aamulehti newspaper, had just left the paper to lobby for Finnish industry and trade interests as director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA.

He presented the Finnish media with a straw poll, following the Swedish model, in which reporters would anonymously answer questions about their political leanings.

The media immediately began grumbling, feeling that their illusory freedom was being threatened again in some vague way.

In the best traditions of Finnish discourse, they began with ad hominem attacks. Then they panned the idea by using themselves as counterexamples: I don’t know about everyone else, but I for one have voted for different parties in different elections.

Even though the discussion remained at that level, it continued for months in the Finnish media, because, according to journalistic logic, the public defense of a journalist’s integrity nicely underscores the presumed integrity of all.

Finland is the promised land not only for non-profit organisations but also for political parties. According to the most recent counts, we have around 1,480 parties, of which eight are represented in parliament.

Things are different in the civilised world. Out there, not every malady or personal problem requires the establishment of a political party; but rather, the established parties take up those problems and maladies in their own agendas. For example, in Great Britain, a land of two-and-a-half political parties, a study on the party leanings of reporters would be pointless: their political views are expressed clearly enough either by the articles they write, how those articles are headlined, or by where the reporter’s employer has situated itself on the media’s liberal/conservative axis.

And besides, more and more often a rough determination of political affinity can be made based on the reporter’s age instead of having to resort to a survey. People have a tendency to become more conservative with increases in age, income and indebtedness.

A reporter’s fumbling political leanings may not have much significance in his or her choice of perspective on a news story, but other criteria do. One still finds bias in reporters’ stories, but instead of party affiliation, it is determined by hundreds of contextual factors and dependencies from the reporter’s own personal life. It would be a good idea to highlight these contextual factors sometimes in a disclaimer at the end of the article, if it weren’t for the fact that they would take up just as much space as the article itself.

Relevant factors in addition to party affinity include sexual orientation, location of residence, size of mortgage, marital status, spouse’s profession, children’s ages and stages in schooling, degree of alcoholism, circle of friends, circle of enemies and those numerous youthful desires and dreams that went unfulfilled, somehow leaving a bitter taste in the mouth.

When the government is considering removing the mortgage interest tax deduction, the reporter’s attitude is not determined by party, but rather by the size of his or her mortgage and by how much this interest deduction means to the reporter.

Another significant influence on a paper’s relationship with the world is its editor-in-chief. It still isn’t a question of who the editor votes for in elections, but rather what his or her social and cultural networks look like.

Is the editor-in-chief an arts person or a sports person? What interest group bigwigs are represented at his dinner parties and with whom does he just have lunch? Who has been wining and dining the editor-in-chief in Lapland, and who is cross enough with him not to invite him to important networking events out of spite.

Over the past few decades, the media has changed, giving reporters more power over what attitudes news stories are coloured with. There are altogether too many regular columns and editorials in the papers, giving reporters the opportunity to tell us what we should think about each piece of news. In some situations it would be appropriate for the reporter to present the reasons related to his personal life why he thinks about a certain thing a certain way.

But more often than not this would be pointless: reporters aren’t so good at writing that the reader can’t tell from the sidebar that, ‘Aha, this writer has a mortgage, an alcohol problem, a marriage in crisis and two kids between the ages of nine and fourteen in comprehensive school’.

Translated by Owen Witesman

Kuoleman listat. Suomalaisten salainen apu Chilen vainotuille

The 1973 Chilean coup that ousted President Salvador Allende, and the subsequent persecution of dissidents, forced Allende’s supporters to seek asylum in foreign embassies. A number of refugees climbed over the wall of the Santiago home of Finland’s chargé d’affaires, Tapani Brotherus. As the Finnish official line of neutrality was to avoid interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, Brotherus was taking a great personal risk, by allowing this, and keeping it secret from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With the help of the embassy’s undersecretary and the East German diplomat Arnold Voigt, he and his wife succeeded in helping some 2, 200 people to leave Chile. Brotherus also helped 182 political refugees to obtain asylum in Finland. Heikki Hiilamo, who is now Research Professor at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, describes the background of the Chilean dictatorship and the development of the broad-based solidarity movement, which has been characterised as one of the central formative experiences of the generation that grew up in 1970s Finland. The movement’s activists included future Finnish presidents Mauno Koivisto and Tarja Halonen, as well as the future Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila.

Illustration: Joonas Väänänen

When the Finnish media developed a crush on the country’s foreign minister, writes Jyrki Lehtola, no one could foresee the consequences. Especially if the object of their affections might begin to believe what they say about him…

It is a generally accepted truth that the spiteful media only raise people up in order to cast them down again a moment later.

Generally accepted truths are often not the case, although the media’s amorous relationships are, as a general rule, of short duration.

The Finnish media loves its hockey coaches until they make a mistake. The media made Martti Ahtisaari a president so that it could mock him for the next four years. Reality TV shows produce disposable stars that we follow in order to ask, the next moment, why we should have to pay attention to nobodies like that.

The love story between the media and a subject usually lasts about six months, after which a period of mutual battering begins. The subject makes a small mistake, which the media blows out of all proportion, as a result of which the subject begins to sulk, as a result of which the media begins to criticise the subject for sulking, as a result of which the subject opens his mouth and criticises the media for going on a witch-hunt.

Uh-oh. Mistake. The media bears nothing so poorly as criticism aimed at itself. Luckily for the media, that criticism generally comes from such a bitter direction and in such an inflamed form that it cannot be taken very seriously, and by his criticism of the media the subject only succeeds in appearing in an even more laughable and unbalanced light.

Something odd has occurred in the past year. The media has found an enduring love, or at least a love that has lasted for a year.

The object of that love is the Finnish foreign minister, Alexander Stubb.

Stubb is called a politician for a new age, a superman, because he is a normal person, that is, like a person is supposed to be if he has listened properly to his parents’ lectures: a man polite in manner, competent, positive, and cultured, who speaks several languages fluently and is able to engage in small talk beyond ‘it rained yesterday, the sun is shining today, a beer sure would hit the spot’.

The hero narrative built up around Stubb doesn’t really tell as much about Stubb himself as it does about Finland, which is so in the tank for its own wannabe internationality that it only requires one properly pronounced English word to convince us that we are an integral part of Europe rather than part of the stammering periphery somewhere in the north.

Alexander Stubb is also a new kind of politician in relation to the media.

The Finnish political discourse has always required keeping one’s mouth shut, with the occasional autistic grunt intended to make one seem prestigious. Stubb has, instead, voluntarily entered into a merry sort of small talk conversation with the world.

Stubb began regularly updating his diligent, some might say hysterical, blog long before other Finnish politicians. There are five Alexander Stubb Facebook groups to be found at the moment.

Stubb began his media work back in his days in the European Parliament, diligently drawing current and future opinion leaders to his office in Brussels. The groups were made up primarily of 30-40 year old media decision-makers, who have done their own part in making sure that the love story between Stubb and the media has lasted so long.

Most of these media decision-makers also assembled for Stubb’s 40th birthday party, where as the foreign minister walked by they chanted ‘Alex! Alex!’ like a flock of giddy fans; it’s possible that even Stubb found it irritating.

All would be well, but now Stubb the superman has begun to believe the worship of the media. Stubb is becoming a man for whom nothing is enough: like an ADHD child who has been pumped full of cocaine.

He has become a man who doesn’t know how to say ‘no’, because it would be rude to the Stubb fans. Stubb lends his face to advertisements and campaigns, running from one interview to the next, in his down-time writing a book that tells us how we should exercise and eat so that our body fat percentages can be in the same range as Stubb’s.

In his blog Stubb reported a normal Tuesday. It included a visit with Elizabeth Rehn, a visit to a Marimekko factory, an interview for the Swedish daily paper  Dagens Nyheter, a meeting with the executive secretary of IGAD, Mahboub Maalim, a meeting with the ambassadors from India and Pakistan, some of the regular work of a foreign minister, participating in an EU seminar and finally ‘knocking off’ a triathlon.

Stubb still had enough energy to tell about all of this at the end of the day in a long blog entry, which culminated with this information: ‘I improved my time from last year by a full 4 minutes and 35 seconds. Total time was 1:11:45 at a distance of 750 m swimming, 20 km riding and 5.5 km running. The swim went nearly three minutes faster than last year. It felt good. Training towards my main goal of the season continues.’

The love story between Stubb and the media contains a lesson.

Long-lasting love stories between the media and a subject are not necessarily good for the subject. It is healthy to receive some undeserved criticism now and then. Otherwise you start to believe the hero narrative created by the media, which can hardly be good for one’s health.

Translated by Owen Witesman