Tuija Wahlroos
Humanist of the day

Tuija Wahlroos

The Gallen-Kallela Museum and the painter Aksel Gallen-Kallela form the core of Tuija Wahlroos’s professional identity. Although focusing on the life’s work of one individual may sound limited, Wahlroos finds her work extremely rich.

Tuija Wahlroos

Born June 16, 1968, Kajaani

Master of Arts (art history) 1996, University of Helsinki

Museum Director 2005–, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
Acting Museum Director 2003–05, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
Exhibitions Manager 1998-2003, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
Acting Museum Director 1997–98, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
Exhibitions and project Manager 1995–97, the Gallen-Kallela Museum
Exhibitions secretary 1995, City of Karkkila
Employers during her student years, 1988–94: City of Helsinki, the Design Museum, the Gallen-Kallela Museum, the Retretti Art Centre, Galleria Kateriina, Kainuun Sanomat

Board member 2008–, the Kalevala Society
Board member 2008–,the Union of Academic Museum Employees in Finland

Photo: Markus Wahlroos
Written by Tuija Wahlroos (Riitta-Hurmerinta, ed.)
Translated by Matthew Billington

My first work experience at the Gallen-Kallela Museum was a summer job in 1991. Ever since then the museum and Akseli Gallen-Kallela have formed a core part of my professional identity – first alongside my studies, later as a full-time job. Being centred on the life’s work of a single person might sound limited. But the world of Gallen-Kallela is a rich environment and a fertile field to work in.

Read more

In 2012 we began to assemble an exhibition with a bohemian theme. Our focus was Akseli Gallen-Kallela's studies in Paris 1884–89. This period had already been the subject of numerous papers and exhibitions. But this time our interest lay in his previously neglected friendship with the Norwegian artist Carl Dørnberger. A true bohemian, party animal, and brawler, Dørnberger was a near-tragic figure, who had also been marginalised in the art history of his native country. But now the time was ripe for a closer reading of this friendship, and working with Kuvataiteen keskusarkisto, the central archive of the Finnish National Gallery, we resolved jointly to produce a publication on the correspondence between the two artists held in the collections of our two institutions.

Read more