Didrichsen – Home, art, history
10.6.–27.8.2023

The Didrichsen Art Foundation 60 years

The summer exhibition presents a wide range of works from the museum’s own collection. The exhibition celebrates the art foundation registered by Gunnar and Marie-Louise Didrichsen in 1963, the starting point for the museum itself two years later. 

The family home, the Viljo Revell-designed Villa Didrichsen (1958), was extended with a gallery wing (1964) to provide a display space for the growing art collection. With a passion for art, the idea of the foundation and further building, the Didrichsens’s art collecting took on a new dimension. The high quality of the collection was a prerequisite for the foundation.

 
The exhibition presents the development of the foundation’s art collection and its prominent themes. It spreads across the different spaces of the museum: the collector couple's preferred choice of displaying artworks is repeated in Villa Didrichsen, the 1960s, a period of dramatic growth in the collection, is presented as an intense surge of artworks. The cornerstone works in the collection reveal the new interests that were opened by travel and networks in the art world. Cultural and historical artefacts are brought face to face with modern sculpture. A section on Finnish art from the 1970s will showcase the long-standing links between the collectors and artists. The public´s favourites from the Didrichsen art collection and the museum’s Danish roots are also displayed.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the foundation, the 120th anniversary of Gunnar's (1903–1992) birth and the 110th anniversary of Marie-Louise's (1913–1988) birth. The couple will also be represented in the exhibition through material selected from the museum's archives.

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