Current | Exhibitions in 2025 | Past Exhibitions
Exhibitions in 2025

Manifest of Stillness
Ulla Karttunen, Jukka Korkeila, Anni Löppönen, Ville Löppönen and Henry Wuorila-Stenberg
21 March – 18 May 2025
Silence is often narrowly understood as the lack of speech or noise. Silence can, however, open a door to areas of inner hearing and seeing, to an experience where there is potential for an encounter with, the presence of and connection with the Other. Silence is startling, because it only opens up after confronting restlessness and inner clamor. Silence is current.
Manifest of Stillness is a group of artists that began from artist Ville Löppönen’s study of silence. Löppönen has gathered five artists whose practices center on silence. Silence is an invitation to the unarticulated, to the permeability of inner visions and experiences. Ulla Karttunen, Jukka Korkeila, Anni Löppönen, Ville Löppönen and Henry Wuorila-Stenberg invite us to experience the silence they encounter in their work. Within that silence, a miracle takes place and is given shape in the resulting work of art.

Aino Vihervä-Muukka, Landscape from Lapland, 1940s, oil on canvas, 50,3 x 61,2 cm, Mikkelin kaupungin taidekokoelma / City of Mikkeli Art Collection. Photo: Harri Heinonen. ©The artist’s estate.
Artist Couple Aino and Yrjö Muukka
7 June – 21 September 2025
Artists Aino Vihervä-Muukka and Yrjö S. Muukka held a significant place in Mikkeli’s art scene. They persistently worked to enrich the local scene as artists, art teachers as well as founding members of Mikkelin Taideyhdistys, Mikkeli’s art society. Even though they actively took part in exhibitions nationwide, they’ve received little recognition in the Finnish art field. However, their art and careers as artists cannot be omitted in the story of art in Mikkeli and Southern Savonia.
The exhibition at Mikkeli Art Museum is the first extensive look into Aino and Yrjö’s artistic production. The exhibition is curated by the Mikkeli City Museums curator Paula Hyvönen, with the couple’s work in the municipality’s own art collection as the starting point. Most of the exhibited works have been loaned from private collections. The exhibition includes nearly a hundred works.
In addition to their day jobs, Aino and Yrjö Muukka were profilic painters whose central motifs included country and forest landscapes, the rocky shores of their summer home in Haaparanta, the fells of Lapland as well as the city views of Paris.

Harri Pälviranta, Douglas, Arizona, USA, From the series Wall Tourist.
Harri Pälviranta
10 October 2025 – 15 February 2026
Harri Pälviranta (born 1971, Tampere) is a photographic artist, freelance researcher and teacher based in Helsinki. His work has been a part of over 150 exhibitions, in over 30 countries. Pälviranta has published articles in Finnish and international publications, held lectures and workshops in Finland and overseas, and worked as an independent curator.
At the core of Pälviranta’s artistic curiosity are societal questions, often about violence and use of power, as well as contemplation on masculinity. These points of departure are combined in many of his projects. His approach tends to be post-documentary: even though his practice partially intersects with social documentation, he also borrows, recycles and alters materials produced by others, works in the studio and utilizes text and writing. Experimentation and play are also a part of his work.
The exhibition at Mikkeli Museum of Art includes photographic works and installations.
Current Exhibition

Hanging image from the Tumpkin’s Time exhibition at Päivälehti Museum (now The Media Museum and Archives Merkki), 2022. Photo: © Ida Pimenoff.
Tumpkin’s Time
12 October 2024 – 2 March 2025
2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kirsi Kunnas (1924–2021), a beloved poet, children’s author, translator and academician. Artist Alexander Reichstein has created the three-dimensional exhibition Tumpkin’s Time based on Kunnas’ nursery rhymes, bringing the captivating characters to Mikkeli Art Museum. In the exhibition, the main characters of her poems take visitors on an adventure under the canopy of the Wonder Tree full of surprises and hidden details from Kunnas’s poems. The original illustrations deepen the exhibition experience. Different generation can recognize their eras in them.
When it was first published in 1956, Tiitiäisen satupuu (Tumpkin’s Wonder Tree) book of nursery rhymes reformed Finnish children’s poetry and rhymes. The poems, which focus on the world of children, inspired the poet to continue working on the subject until 2020, when she published a collection of poems entitled Tiitiäisen metsä (Tumpkin’s Forest). The poems brimming with humour, playfulness and verbal revelry are accompanied by illustrations of some of the best Finnish illustrators of their time – Maija Karma, Julia Vuori, Kristiina Louhi, Christel Rönns, Pia Westerholm and Silja-Maria Wihersaari.
The Tumpkin’s Time exhibition was originally produced by Päivälehti Museum (now known as Merkki, the Media Museum and Archives). The exhibition has also been displayed in the Moomin Museum. The collection of illustrations, first presented there was curated by producer Minna Honkasalo.
Past exhibitions
2024

Heikki Willamo, Näätä, 2022, digital inkjet print. Photo: Heikki Willamo, © Kuvasto 2024.
Heikki Willamo – In the Arms of the Forest
8 June – 22 September 2024
The photographic artist, nature photographer and writer Heikki Willamo’s work focuses on nature, especially forests and its animals. In Willamo’s photographs, nature reveals itself as diverse and ancient, even mythical. Willamo has held numerous exhibitions in Finland and abroad and published many books.
Heikki Willamo has photographed forests for more than three decades. In that time, many old forests have been lost forever. The importance of nature images in evoking the relationship between nature and humans is more relevant now than ever. Willamo is looking for new forms of sustainable coexistence through photographic art. Nature photography often carries the burden of documentary photography, but in Willamo’s expression, the almost dreamlike and stylised presentation of forests and its inhabitants conveys lived experience. His artworks show what we will lose if we do not take action.
The exhibition at Mikkeli Art Museum will feature the artist’s new and older works as well as artworks based on moving image. The exhibition is curated by photo graphic artists Marko Hämäläinen and Harri Heinonen.

Kari Juutilainen, Näkymä, 2022, acrylic on canvas. Photo: Kari Juutilainen, © Kuvasto.
Discover – Kari Juutilainen
10 February – 26 May 2024
Kuopio-based Kari Juutilainen’s acrylic paintings from the last five years. The exhibition highlights the importance of the painting process in the creation of an artwork.
”Making art begins when an idea starts to take shape, grow and develop into an artwork. When portraying an invisible world which is hard to describe, visual thinking offers access to an area that words may not reach.” The Discover exhibition features mainly Juutilainen’s new work which is characterised by organic and geometric layered structures and the interplay of chaos and order.
Kari Juutilainen, originally from Pieksämäki, is a prolific and versatile visual artist who has held over 30 solo and more than 100 group exhibitions during his 40-year career. His work includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, music, videos, performances as well as spatial audio productions. Juutilainen is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Union, the Kuopio Artists’ Association, Dimensio ry and the Finnish Critics’ Association.