A Finnish museum is launching an ambitious new model of artist support that goes far beyond the standard exhibition schedule to encompass financial, practical and institutional backing.
“I want to break with the cycles of announcing a year’s programme, working with three-month shows and giving artists a symbolic fee of €10,000 when you know they’re working their asses off practically full-time,” says Krist Gruijthuijsen, the new director of Finland’s largest art museum, Espoo Museum of Modern Art (Emma).
The museum has committed to supporting four artists over the next several years—P. Staff, Tarik Kiswanson, Jenna Sutela and Eglė Budvytytė—in four distinct ways: acquiring their work throughout the period; financially supporting external production; providing a part-time stipend for a year to alleviate financial pressure; and covering health insurance for a year. Three of the artists, for instance, are showing at the Venice Biennale with support from Emma.
The programme will culminate in mid-career survey exhibitions at the museum in 2029 and 2030, which it plans to tour with partner institutions. “With each of these artists there is a real commitment,” Gruijthuijsen says. “And we as a museum also have a real commitment to them.”
Each of the four artists is already highly visible, but success today does not guarantee a viable career. Institutional and critical recognition bears little relation to financial reality. Museum and biennale shows are expensive to produce and pay poorly. The market has become increasingly conservative, largely sidestepping practices that do not centre painting. Globalisation of the art industry means artists are travelling more to make ends meet, presenting their work in different contexts but rarely given opportunities to take risks.
Krist Gruijthuijsen, director of the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Finland
© Paula Virta/EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art
The four selected artists, who each have a relationship to the Nordic-Baltic region, are also all approaching mid-career, which Gruijthuijsen calls “the most fascinating moment in an artist’s life. It’s a very complicated place, emotionally and artistically, to navigate.”
It is a stage when artists often need greater support, says Sutela, one of the four beneficiaries. “The mid-career moment is very underrepresented in terms of projects like this,” she says. “It’s also a difficult moment because it often coincides with a lot of life—peak demand on your time, and through that, peak costs.”
Reinventing the support system
For Gruijthuijsen, the point is to rethink what a museum is for. “It’s really very much about the support system to a person, not just to the artwork,” he says. “I want it to be something where the artist truly feels there is time and support to develop this major exhibition.”
The artist-centric programme is a response to widespread institutional timidity, Gruijthuijsen says. “Radicality left the building long ago. Everything is done under the umbrella of survival mode,” he says.
“The pressure from boards and audiences is to have generic programming you see literally across the world — very safe, riskless programmes that bring in the numbers.” Financial and political pressures have led to “dull museums”, Gruijthuijsen says. The programme is financed by the Saastamoinen Foundation, the city of Espoo and the state, and through the museum’s own fundraising. Exhibitions will be partly financed by touring.
For Sutela, who is representing Finland at the Venice Biennale, the programme’s appeal lies in its offer of time and continuity. “The art world is quite fast-paced and there are very few moments for reflection,” she says. “Time is of the essence—to be able to consider where the work has been and where it’s going. That’s what sounds really good about Emma’s initiative: it’s a long-term project.”
P. Staff, who is showing in Venice in a group show curated by Alessandro Rabottini for the Fondazione In Between Art Film, says many museum models are failing to keep pace with artists’ lives.
“I always feel that an institution’s idea of how they support artists is stuck in the 90s,” P. Staff says. “Or even the 70s. I’m not sure an institution can really understand what artists actually need now. We are a generation who are like emerging artists for life—we’re not emerging in the sense of exposure or cultural capital, but in the sense of a perpetual state of juvenile life. You still have roommates in your forties because there is no true economic stability.”
Emma’s initiative proposes a more responsive form of institutional support. “It feels very precious,” Sutela says.
