I have already written and spoken about art for a living for over 40 years, but nevertheless it still doesn’t feel natural to talk about my research as a ‘profession,’ let alone a ‘career.’ It is easier to account for the other sides of work. I have always wanted to write, and assignments, either of my own invention or from elsewhere have offered themselves more or less by chance.

After upper-secondary school I was attracted to the idea of quickly becoming independent, and that required a proper profession; there were no study grants in the 1960s. My family encouraged me, gave financial support and mental chutzpah, which, thinking about it seriously in my old age, meant that I was allowed to retain my child’s mind. Perhaps this was something that laid the foundations for my growing into a researcher without my ever realising it at the time.

I transferred from the University of Turku to the University of Helsinki. After school, university was like a funfair and a candy land. Impressive figures lectured on whatever subject imaginable, and university libraries offered unprecedented delights. After two years of study, I got a place as a summer journalist at the newspaper Ilta Sanomat and then as a part-time theatre journalist. Life began to feel adult, writing ever more fascinating. Press journalism was a tough school; I learnt a succinct style and the conception of deadlines like the back of my hand.

As museum experience was desirable in order to get a distinction in art history, I applied to the Museum of Finnish Architecture as an archive intern. Collection of the massively inflated body of research material for my Master’s thesis led me once and for all into the magic circle of research. The buildings register led to city plans, blueprints and buildings to cityscape problems and the international research found in libraries guided the formulation of my research questions. I noticed that there were things about which I was insatiably curious. A good journalist condenses everything into a succinct article and is then ready for a new subject. I got stuck fast on one and the same topic. At best my questions began to spawn new questions. I realised my curiosity was of too slow a kind for me to be a journalist and I remained at the museum.

Post-graduate studies began to attract me while I was expecting my first child. In 1970, there were only a couple of months of maternity leave on offer, and it was not even worth dreaming about municipal day care when you were healthy, educated and married. I resigned from the museum and decided to become a student mother who would earn something as a freelancer. My licentiate thesis was only just beginning to take shape when the post of amanuensis opened up at the University of Helsinki’s Department of Art History. I got the job, and my salary paid for a childminder.

I took care of the image archive for five years and I got a feel for the masterpieces of the canon of art history. Then followed six years as a research associate. I was able to teach the introductory art history course, then the general course, with all its museum visits and excursions, as was then the custom. My doctoral dissertation, Yhtenäinen kaupunkikuva 1900 – 1930. Suomalaisen kaupunkirakentamisen ihanteista ja päämääristä, esimerkkeinä Helsingin Etu-Töölö ja Uusi Vallila (‘The uniform cityscape 1900–1930. The Ideals and objectives of Finnish urban development, the example of the Helsinki districts of Etu-Töölö and Uusi Vallila’) was written during evenings, weekends and summers. In time management and housework I learnt to be strictly rational, and I was an absentminded mother to all my three sons. Research work and a potpourri of environmental writing had gradually become a way of life. The kinaesthetic experiences of walking and cyclinghave always been more dear to me than the hours spent in archives. In libraries more time is spent with other research. This is still difficult to admit. Alongside more earnest researchers I feel like a journalist. For me research is above all a never-ending discussion between nations and eras to which each person brings their own important observations, justifying them as well as possible.

It was only after completing my doctorate that I became a full-time researcher: I got the post of junior research fellow at the Academy of Finland. I was unable to complete my sixth year there, as the Museum of Finnish Architecture needed a head of research. From this position, I was unexpectedly chosen for the post of professor of art history at the University of Helsinki in 1994.

Salme Sarajas-Korte, in her wisdom, once divided the jobs in the world into two groups: those which someone would do in any case, and those which no one would do unless you did them yourself. I have always tried to concentrate on the latter, but I have often been forced to compromise. My dream profession remains that of a full-time researcher and writer.

This text is an abridged version of an article by Riitta Nikula in the book Tiedenaisia (‘Women of science’), which was published in 2000.

Read more on the subject:

• Riitta Nikula: Hitaasta ja nopeasta uteliaisuudesta (‘Slow and fast curiosity’). In the book Tiedenaisia. Suomalaisia tiedenaisia eilen ja tänään (‘Women of science. Female Finnish academics yesterday and today’). Helsinki University Library. Helsinki: University Press 2000, 21–24.
• Riitta Nikula: Taide, aika ja ihminen (Art, time and the person). In the book Ihmistä tutkimassa ajassa, maailmalla, ajatuksessa (‘Studying the person in time, the world and in thought’) Sirkka Ahonen ed. Helsinki: Otava 1996, 9–17.