Kirsti Karvonen takes care of practical arrangements for Finnish artists

print this

By Jukka Yli-Lassila
     
      "Let's save this for Kirsti", said a Finnish sculptor last autumn when he got a receipt for a fluorescent tube that he had bought at an electrical goods store.
      As a journalist on assignment, I raised my ears: "Kirsti who?"
      She is, of course, Kirsti Karvonen, 55. Karvonen, who runs her own Ex-Professo Arts Management office, is a key background figure and organiser in the Finnish art world - a true grey eminence.
     
Karvonen's company takes care of the tax returns and accounting of many top-line painters. Her company's website mentions how Karvonen also deals with "difficult" tax issues. What might these be?
      "Many artists, when confronting the jargon of the taxman, can forget to submit a tax return. Then we work together to arrange things."
      "Some sensitive artist types are too afraid to call the tax office, because they are afraid that they will lose their temper", Kirsti Karvonen says.
     
There are not many key figures or institutions in the field of art in Finland, for whom Karvonen would not have worked. Her repertoire includes - among many other activities - arranging exhibitions and cultural travel, the production of art publications, and the design of websites.
      As agent for the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Ars Fennica Art Foundation, Karvonen has taken care of practical arrangements for numerous Ars Fennica exhibitions.
      One might imagine that arranging an exhibition that carries the name of a respected art prize would be easy in a Finnish museum, but this is not the case.
      "In one art museum we set up the Ars Fennica exhibition in a room where the old wall was extremely brittle. We had to put a chipboard partition wall in front of it", Karvonen recalls.
      "The director of the museum complained that the wall would be expensive, and that its construction would take two weeks!"
      "I said that it will take two days and that I will pay. Ultimately it took even less time than that."
     
Karvonen is experienced in taking Finnish art abroad. Practical arrangements vary considerably in different parts of the world.
      "Lofty talk about exporting culture does not count for much in that", she says.
      "I have sworn that I will never again bring art to Russia. It seems that after the early 1990s, things have got steadily worse there."
      Even the most prestigious Russian museums charge arbitrary fees for individual services.
      "The services are even worse than they were, and everything costs ridiculous amounts."
      Karvonen has quite different experiences from countries like Brazil and Spain. In those countries, large banks often act as significant patrons of the arts. They operate extensive exhibition activities with the help of a professional staff.
      "I was afraid that in a place as far away as Brazil, everything would be difficult and bureaucratic, but it all turned out to be very easy."
      On the other hand, Finns also have much to learn about the attitudes of others. For instance, it is not a good idea to go into Eastern Europe to present Finnish art with an air of superiority.
      "In the wake of the cultural exchanges of the socialist era, many still think that people in Eastern Europe are automatically enthusiastic about Finnish art. In reality, they are much more interested in German, French, and American art."
     
The attitude works in the other direction as well. If, for instance, a group of Latvian painters comes to Finland, Karvonen says that it is "charity" on their part.
      "In reality, they would like to have their exhibitions in Berlin, for instance. Finland is not the first, and not even the third on their wish list."
      Many exhibitions put on by Karvonen are linked closely with Finnish everyday life. In the summer, for the second time, she will bring an exhibition called Töölönlahti in Sculptures to the centre of Helsinki.
      "We should get enough large works there so that they might stand out. The works must also withstand vandalism, because the park is, basically, unguarded", Karvonen says, listing the realities of an urban art event.
     
Taking art into public spaces does not always bring the joy that is imagined. Karvonen's experiences in setting up a sculpture exhibition at a housing fair with hundreds of thousands of people attending were not particularly encouraging.
      "As far as the number of people seeing the exhibition, they were the most popular art events, but the fate of the works was to be mainly one of serving as ornamentation for the fair, or a sweets marquee might suddenly be put up right in front of a sculpture."
     
Karvonen is confident that she can get along with different types of people, having once studied social policy.
      "If I had finished my studies in political science, I would probably be in some municipal office telling people the same things that my artist clients and I get to hear every day: ‘No, it won't work, we have our instructions...'"
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.2.2006

More on this subject:
 Karvonen started her career at Akseli-Gallen-Kallela Museum

Helsingin Sanomat