Kuopio Art Museum

Kuopio Art Museum is the regional art museum of North Savonia. The museum is responsible for visual art services, including exhibitions, research and documentation of visual arts in the area. Art education plays a central role in the museum activities.

The art collections include primarily Finnish art from the end of the 19th century to the present. The art museum continuously displays special exhibitions, mainly Finnish contemporary art: paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs and media art. The main themes of the museum’s collections and exhibitions are landscape and nature, as well as the human–environment relationship.

Kuopio Art Museum is the throbbing heart of art in the centre of Kuopio, only a short distance from the Market Place. Kuopio Art Museum has operated since 1980 in an Art Nouveau building originally built as a bank in 1904.

Opening hours

Monday closed, Tuesday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Wednesday 10.a.m.-7 p.m., from Thursday to Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Admission fee

10€ / 6€, free admission for persons under 18.

Exhibitions

Spirit of the Can 12.5.-27.8.2023

The smell of fresh paint, hiss of the can, and rattle of skateboards take over the Kuopio Art Museum in summer 2023 with the opening of a graffiti- and street art exhibition. Spirit of the Can is a unique exhibition that displays the diversity of urban art. The exhibition features a wide range of works, from text-based graffiti painted on the art museum walls to large street art works and sculptures, and documentary material by Urbaani that demonstrates the graffiti scene of Kuopio. Spirit of the Can is a collaborative exhibition by Kuopio Art Museum and Street Art Association Urbaani Ry.

The Artist’s View

The Kuopio Ar Museum’s collections exhibition celebrates the museum’s anniversary year. It tells of the history of art in Finland, and of the collections of over 7,000 works managed by the museum. A significant portion of the works are donations from art collectors and organisations. People have collected works of art as a culturally focused pastime, for the love of art, and to support Finnish art. There are also collections that were originally created for the founding of the Kuopio art Museum, which took place in 1980 after decades of planning.

Audio guides

The audio guides provide background information of the paintings exhibited in the collection exhibition called Artist’s view. You may listen to them in the exhibition or separately.

Pekka Halonen: Sandy Shore, 1896