As a teenager, my professional aspirations fluctuated: one day I imagined studying to become an ornithologist, geologist or paleontologist, on another I would be interested in languages, and at the beginning of upper-secondary school it was architecture. In my family visual art had always present in some way, right back to my great uncle Eetu Isto’s generation, and my earliest memories of our summer home in Vojakkala, in the municipality of Tornio, are of my great grandfather’s prints of masterpieces of Finnish and world art: as a child I could gaze at Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. Through my father, who was a master builder and teacher at vocational school, building, architecture and the environment also started to interest me.

In the1970s and 1980s, when the frenzy to tear down old buildings raged through the Oulu of my youth like an epidemic, I also began to photograph buildings and follow protection disputes more generally, and I collected press-cuttings of cases where buildings were protected or demolished. During one Christmas holiday, I asked my cousin, who worked as a museum director, what museums really did and what one needed to study in order to work there. The answer sounded interesting enough for art history and other ‘museum subjects’ to form a good option for the future alongside studying architecture. The architecture entrance examination was not a success for me – luckily in hindsight. Instead, the doors to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki opened to me at the first attempt. In the 1960s my family had moved from Tornio to Oulu partly because my father hoped for an academic career for all his four children, and there was a university in Oulu. Nevertheless, of the four children, only one remained there to study, the others’ paths led to Helsinki.

Studying at the University of Helsinki and the Department of Art History was motivating and inspiring in all respects, especially with the encouragement of legendary and unforgettable professors, docents, research associates and amanuenses. During my rather long period of study, I was able to study under the tutelage of the likes of Lars Pettersson, Aimo Reitala, Ritva Wäre and Riitta Nikula. Other inspiring figures were to be found at the department and from my minor subjects. From the very beginning of our studies, our age group had the opportunity to experience working life, for example as an intern or a museum guide in one of the Capital’s numerous museums or as an assistant in various kinds of projects. Through Eidos, the association of students of art history at the University of Helsinki, important networks were formed which are still strong to this day.