An Yle survey of Helsinki city councillors appears to identify growing resistance to public money going towards the construction of a new Guggenheim art gallery in the city centre.
Out of 68 councillors responding to the question "Should a Guggenheim be built in Helsinki?", 25 said they do not believe the divisive scheme should receive any public funding, but that they would back the project if it was wholly privately funded.
A further 14 respondents said they opposed the new gallery altogether.
The results suggest a marked hardening of attitudes compared to a few years ago, when many local decision makers freely expressed enthusiasm for the iconic project.
Not surprising
The Guggenheim Helsinki Supporting Foundation, who are currently running an architectural competition to find a design for the proposed art museum, insisted they were not concerned by the findings.
”The economic situation is difficult across Finland, including in Helsinki. In that sense people have to be critical. But we are in the extremely early stages of this project. There is no museum yet, nor has the funding model been finalised. It’s too soon to draw too many conclusions from this,” the foundation’s director, Ari Lahti, said.
Lahti also warned that the whole scheme could collapse entirely if councillors in the capital opposed public funding for the project.
”With private funding alone this museum would be unlikely to be completed on time. It’s fairly common for this sort of cultural project to receive public money in Finland. That is the reality here,” Lahti said. He added that a Guggenheim in Helsinki would generate investment both for the city of Helsinki and for the Finnish state.
Bad questions
In June last year the head of the Solomon R. Guggenheim foundation, Richard Armstrong, stormed out of an Yle interview when asked during a visit to Finland what would happen to the scheme if politicians decided not to invest taxpayers' money in the scheme.
"I'm not not liking this interview,” Armstrong said, getting up to leave, adding: "These are typical bad questions." Armstrong later agreed to resume the interview.
Workers' rights concerns
The Guggenheim architectural competition is scheduled to announce a winning design in June this year.
Meanwhile a parallel competition, run by opponents of the Guggenheim scheme, is inviting applicants to suggest alternative uses for the South Harbour site in central Helsinki reserved for the proposed art museum. The Next Helsinki competition is the brainchild of art organisation Checkpoint Helsinki, and two US groups who are campaigning for the rights of migrant workers in Abu Dhabi, the site for an unfinished Guggenheim art museum whose construction has long been on hold.
Edit: final paragraph amended to reflect that the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim is not currently under construction.
