Amos Rex

Amos Rex opened in 2018 in and under the Lasipalatsi, a functionalist building of 1936 with a surviving cinema, and the solution to fitting a museum onto a constrained site was to go down: the galleries are excavated beneath the square, and their ceilings rise into the square as a set of domes topped with round skylights. The result is a public space that has become a landscape of concrete mounds children climb and skateboarders use, with the museum invisible below it. The programme runs to changing exhibitions of contemporary art, digital and immersive work, and older material, drawing on a collection built around the newspaper publisher Amos Anderson.

History

The museum grew out of Föreningen Konstsamfundet, the arts foundation set up in 1940 by the publisher and patron Amos Anderson; after his death in 1961 the foundation opened the Amos Anderson Art Museum in his former home and offices at Yrjönkatu 27 in 1965, and in the 1960s and 1970s it was one of only two major Finnish museums devoted mainly to contemporary art. Pressed for space by the early 2010s, it announced in 2013 an underground annex beneath the Lasipalatsi square, costing an estimated 50 million euros, approved unanimously by the Helsinki City Council in May 2014. The old museum closed on 3 September 2017, and Amos Rex opened beneath the square in 2018, drawing more than 10,000 visitors in a matter of weeks; its name was chosen to recall both Anderson and the Rex cinema of Lasipalatsi (Wikipedia, Amos Rex).

What to look for

• Domes rising into the square - the gallery roofs as public landscape.
• Round skylights over the galleries - daylight brought underground.
• The 1936 Lasipalatsi and its cinema - the functionalist building above.
• Changing contemporary exhibitions - the programme the museum runs on.

When to go

Year round. Two hours. Closed Tuesdays. Popular exhibitions sell timed tickets that go quickly; book online. The square above is free and always open.

Practical notes

There is no permanent collection on show, so the visit depends entirely on the current exhibition. Popular shows are crowded and timed entry is enforced. The galleries are windowless. Tickets are not cheap.

Nearby

Kiasma is east; the central station lies beyond it.

Key facts