Marja Sakari slated to be next director of Kiasma

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Dr. Marja Sakari (b. 1956), is likely to be the next director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.
      On Monday, the directors of the Finnish National Gallery said in a statement to the Ministry of Education that Sakari, who is currently the head of the Finland Institute in Paris, was the best of the applicants for the post.
      The final decision is in the hands of the Minister of culture and Sports, Stefan Wallin (Swedish People’s Party). Sakari’s appointment might not be formally sealed until March, as Wallin is currently at the Vancouver Olympics, after which he goes on holiday.
     
Marja Sakari currently works in Paris, where she was born. She moved to Finland at the age of three, when her parents returned to their home country.
      She is familiar with the Kiasma collection; before taking up her job in Paris, she worked for five years as the chief curator of the museum’s collections. She planned exhibitions, and was a member of the museum’s acquisitions board.
      Sakari has also taught at the University of Helsinki, and her doctoral dissertation in 2000 on the ethics of conceptual art was the first Finnish thesis on Finnish contemporary art in the field of art history.
      The new director is to take up her post in April.
     
Sakari will replace acting director Pirkko Siitari who rose to the post after the previous director Bernd Arell unexpectedly resigned from the post in the midst of his term, to take on the post of director of the Swedish-language art foundation Konstsamfundet.
     
Among the 12 applicants for the post was Nicolaous Shafhausen, a German, who criticised Kiasma as a dead museum in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat in late January.
      Shafhausen sought the post even though he knew that he was not eligible for the job, because he does not speak Finnish.
      Shafhausen’s statement nevertheless sparked vibrant debate in cultural circles on Kiasma and the state of contemporary art in Finland.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Outgoing Kiasma director: success in Finnish art determined by inner circle (22.11.2009)

Links:
  Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Helsingin Sanomat