The Sara Hildén Art Museum focuses on international modernism and contemporary art. Research and preparation for our temporary exhibitions, publishing activities and community engagement that involves various visitor groups are the museum’s key priorities.
The museum, maintained by the City of Tampere, is the permanent home of the collection of the Sara Hildén Foundation, which was founded in 1962.
Mrs Sara Hildén (1905–1993) was a Tampere businesswoman who owned ladie’s fashion boutiques specialising in coats and dresses. Success in business gave Mrs Hildén an opportunity to devote her time to collecting art, which resulted in one of the largest and most important collections of modern art in Finland. In 1962 Mrs Hildén donated her private collection to a foundation which was named after her. The museum opened to public in 1979.
The artistic content of the Sara Hildén Museum’s collection expresses the modernist philosophy of art for art’s sake – that art has inherent aesthetic value. Art should be judged purely on its own merits, independent of external validations. To this day, aesthetic merit remains a high priority both in the museums’ acquisitions policy and collection-based exhibitions.
