The city centre Ateneum Art Museum houses Finland's largest collection of art, including all the best-loved Finnish masterpieces, spanning more than 200 years to the 1960s. The international collection includes Western art from the late 19th century to the 1950s.
The collection follows the development of Finnish Art from 18th-century Rococo portraiture to the beginnings of the experimental art movements of the last century (until around 1960). From portraits and hunting scenes of the Romantic Period, the story continues through landscapes by artists of the Düsseldorf School, then turn-of-the-century Parisian influences, the beginnings of Realism, Symbolism and some of the most ambitious examples of the Golden Era.
International influences can be detected in Finnish Expressionism, Impressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. Sculptures, prints, drawings and paintings are also on display, with additional special exhibitions.
Just part of the Finnish National Gallery, the Ateneum is complemented by both the Museum of Contemporary Art (housed in the strikingly designed Kiasma building and displaying post-1960 up to post-post modern works) and the Sinebrychoff, specialising in old European art (after the bequest to the Finnish nation in 1921 of Fanny and Paul Sinebrychoff's art and artefact collection).