Finnish art can be easily found using in the increasingly popular Finna.fi service

Date published

Finna.fi is home to cultural and scientific material in Finland. The number of visits to Finna, which provides access to thousands of works of art, has been at a record high this spring: visits to the service have increased by more than 25 per cent. More than 1.2 million visits have been made to the service this year.

The service is highly popular partly thanks to Finna’s new material. For example, the new high-resolution images published by the National Board of Antiquities in December and the art material published by the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (EMMA) in April have further increased the number of visits to Finna.

In Finna, you can tailor your own art experience every time you visit the service. You can enjoy art a museum, an artist, or an art form at a time. It is easy to immerse yourself in the tens of thousands of works of art, but be warned: several hours can fly by without you even noticing it! Below, there are some tips on how to use the service.

Choose an art form

Are you fascinated by sculptures? Do you enjoy admiring paintings? You can choose the works of art you want to see by art form. On the search results page, you can narrow your search using the filter on the left and selecting the content types of your choice, e.g. photograph, graphic or art industry.

Works of art in Finna

Edit, interpret, and create

A significant part of older works of art, in particular, have the CC BY 4.0 license in Finna. This makes it possible to share and edit them. You can use this type of visual material to create new works of art with the help of image editing software or analogue tools, for example. You can search for works that can be edited using the Permissible uses filter. Finna also includes material subject to copyright. This material cannot be edited. In addition to the filters, you can also find the material usage rights under each image.

Works of art that can be freely edited for other than commercial purposes

One museum at a time

A significant proportion of Finnish art museums introduce their material via the Finna service. Now you can explore art one museum at a time and use the organisation filter to select the works of art of any of the museums being part of the Finna service. Finna includes works from the collections of the Ateneum Art Museum, EMMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

A retrospective of the young artists of the year

The Young Artist of the Year award aims to support Finnish artists who are under 35 years old and have an international appeal. Previously, the award has been given to Nanna Susi, Kim Simonsson and Anna Tuori, for example. You can take a look at young artists’ works of art by visiting the collections of the Tampere Art Museum.

Get to know your favourite artist’s lifework

Many people remember the main works of art created during the Golden Age of Finnish art, but it is possible to see an artist’s work and career from a different perspective if you get to know their less-known pieces of art. Run a search with the name of an artist. If you are lucky, you will find dozens of works of art from different stages of their career. Finna has abundant collections from Ilja Repin, Ellen Thesleff and Kari Suomalainen, for example.