Extra activity for the ones who arrive in Helsinki already on Wednesday. Excursion in some museum.
10:00 Opening the seminar in the banquet hall of Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (eng. Finnish Literature Society. Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki.
10.30-11.45 Keynote. Marzia Varutti: Towards and Beyond Emotional Sustainability in Museums
12-13.30 Lunch (At one's own expense)
13.30-15 Session 1 (Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6)
15-15.30 Coffee break (In the lobby of Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6)
15.30-17 Session 2 (Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6)
17.30 Evening party (get-together), we serve light vegan menu (Topelia, Unioninkatu 38)
Keynote:
Marzia Varutti: Towards and Beyond Emotional Sustainability in Museums
What is emotional sustainability and in what ways is it relevant to/in museums? This talk will develop a theoretical reflection on the concept of emotional sustainability and its pertinence and significance in the realm of museums. The talk builds on the premise that emotional sustainability can only be offered to the public if and when it exists and is actively nurtured within the museum itself. This involves caring for the emotional sustainability and emotional well-being of museum workers. The talk will delve into a speculative discussion of what this might entail, and the challenges, dilemmas and opportunities engendered by placing emotional sustainability at the very heart of the museum institution. In a more thought-provoking key, the talk finally asks: is aiming for emotional sustainability enough? What might lie beyond it?
10:00 Opening the day two of the seminar in the banquet hall of Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (eng. Finnish Literature Society) (Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki)
10-11 Keynote. Angela Failler: Curating Difficult Knowledge and Emotional Sustainability in Museums: Towards Hope Without Consolation
~ 11-11.30 Coffee break (In the lobby of Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6)
11.30-13 Session 3 (Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6)
13-14.15 Lunch (At one's own expense)
14.15-15.15 Panel. Charlotte Engman, Áile Aikio & Riikka Haapalainen. Host: Johanna Turunen (Banquet hall of Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki)
15.15-15.30 Closing words
Keynote:
Angela Failler: Curating Difficult Knowledge and Emotional Sustainability in Museums: Towards Hope Without Consolation
This keynote takes up the prospective role of museums in cultivating emotional sustainability amid global, interconnected crises stemming from colonial and capitalist systems and the ongoing violence and disparities they engender. As these crises reverberate around the world, museums are being called to provide opportunities for public engagement and critical dialogue. Such calls raise unique challenges for museums themselves, including how to represent difficult and potentially polarizing subjects while caring for the experiences of visitors, museum workers, and affected communities. Where the priority or desire is for visitors to leave the museum feeling not only better informed but more open and curious, inspired, hopeful, and motivated to contribute to change (feelings often equated with “positive visitor experience”) a tension arises, for this desire may be at odds with what actually happens when we are confronted with and witness to the realities of the injustices and crises in our midst. Anger, fear, despair, defensiveness, denial, overwhelm, emotional volatility and/or shutdown may be even more appropriate or expected responses, particularly when our sense of security (or distance) is disrupted and/or what we thought we knew about the world, ourselves, and others is challenged– an experience educational theorists Deborah Britzman and Alice Pitt refer to as encountering “difficult knowledge.” What strategies do museums use to curate or care for difficult knowledge? What might emotional sustainability look like in these contexts? Drawing on examples from recent museum exhibits with particular attention to how affect, feelings, and/or emotion are navigated, this talk turns to the possibilities of what museum scholar Roger Simon calls “hope without consolation” as a framework for approaching difficult knowledge. This framework does not rely on managing negative feelings or eschewing emotional complexities but instead recognizes them as inherent to the work of fostering hope through critical and unsettling engagements with difficult knowledge as they emerge in times of polycrisis.
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Room 1: Cedercreutz (60) |
Room 2: Arokallio (25) |
Room 3: Borg (20) |
Room 4: Salokas (20) |
Room 5: SKS juhlasali |
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| Session 1 | A) Caring for and in the Museum (Chair: Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto) | B) Navigating Difficult Emotions (Chair: Johanna Turunen) | C) Multilayering Memories (Chair: Inkeri Hakamies & Pia Olsson) | D) Art and Emotional Sustainability (Chair: Anna-Kaisa Koski) |
Not in use. |
| Session 2 | E) Conceptualizing Emotional Sustainability (Chair: Heidi Kosonen) | F) Cultural policy, museum work and emotional resilience (Chair: Mari Viita-aho) | G) Dissonant Voices in(to) Museums (Chair: Johanna Pohtinen) | H) Experiencing and Mediating Heritage Spaces (Chair: Anna Talasniemi) |
Not in use. |
| Session 3 | Workshop 1: Rethinking Built Heritage Practices: Working with Dissonance and Difficult Emotions (Satu Kähkönen) | Workhop 2: Co‑Creating a Nordic Network for Inclusive Museum Research: Dialogue, Practice, and Future Directions (Cinthya Lana, Stefanie Steinbeck & Marie Wengle) |
Working groups:
A) Caring for and in the Museum (Chair: Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto)
B) Navigating Difficult Emotions (Chair: Johanna Turunen)
Johanna Turunen: Emotional thinking strategy: A tool for mapping emotional landscapes around race
C) Multilayering Memories (Chair: Inkeri Hakamies & Pia Olsson)
D) Art and Emotional Sustainability (Chair: Anna-Kaisa Koski)
E) Conceptualizing Emotional Sustainability (Chair: Heidi Kosonen)
F) Cultural policy, museum work and emotional resilience (Chair: Mari Viita-aho)
G) Dissonant Voices in(to) Museums (Chair: Johanna Pohtinen)
H) Experiencing and Mediating Heritage Spaces (Chair: Anna Talasniemi)
Workshops:
Workshop 1: Satu Kähkönen: Rethinking Heritage Practices: Working with Dissonance and Difficult Emotions
Workshop 2: Cinthya Lana, Stefanie Steinbeck & Marie Wengler: Co‑Creating a Nordic Network for Inclusive Museum Research: Dialogue, Practice, and Future Directions
A1: Agents of Care. How can museums sustain communities and build collective futures?
Hester Mauduit1, Marta Matera2
1University of the Arts London, London, United Kingdom. 2University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abstract
In recent years, scholars have diagnosed a crisis in the identity, mission, and future of museums as a result of the commodification and overproduction of culture (Balzer 2014, Janes 2024, Perry & Krasny 2023). This is a crisis of extraction of resources and depletion of minds and bodies, mirrored in climate, mental health, care, and the ongoing failure to meet societal needs and demands. Museums have always evolved in relation to the demands of society, as evidenced by the lively debate on the definition of a museum (Brulon Soares & Bonilla-Merchav 2025). Given this context, there has never been a more urgent or appropriate time for museums to embrace their social responsibilities. Museums must act as caring agents in society to sustain communities and build collective futures. They must implement caring curatorial approaches that provide emotional care and well-being by fostering hope, radical imagination, long-term thinking, and future-making. They must advocate for present and future generations, including more-than-human entities. Drawing on concepts of caring curating (Perry & Krasny 2023), museum activism (Janes & Sandell 2019), social responsibility (Coffee 2023), and holistic care (Morse 2020, Banzi 2023), this paper builds on scholars who question museum practice through the lenses of physical and emotional well-being. These scholars emphasise the privileged position of museums in society and the power of museum workers, reorienting museum practice away from capitalist logic. They suggest a curatorial practice which is proactive, intentional, and informed by a duty of care. In response, this paper presents a caring museum policy for emotional sustainability, situating museums in a more-than-human world. It aims to provide museum practitioners with tools to challenge the status quo and ultimately adopt a duty of care.
Keywords
Museums, care, emotional well-being, curatorial practice, more-than-human
Bio of the Authors
Hester Mauduit is a doctoral researcher at University of the Arts London and a research associate at the Barbican Art Gallery. Her practice-based research investigates sustainable curatorial approaches and climate action in fashion exhibitions. She has worked at the Fashion for Good Museum in Amsterdam, where she co-curated What Goes Around Comes Around (2024), and recently curated the exhibition Future Fashion Landscapes for the British Textile Biennial 2025.
Marta Matera is an independent researcher and curator specialised in sustainable practices in museums. With a background in art history and museum studies, her ongoing practice focuses on care approaches to curation, holistic interventions for visitors’ well-being, and considerations for more-then-human entities. She previously worked at the Fashion for Good Museum in Amsterdam, co-curating projects like What Goes Around Comes Around (2024) and Knowing Cotton Otherwise (2022-2023).
A2: Caring Museums: Transformation in the activities of museum work and the everyday lives of museum users
Adjunct prof., Project manager Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti
1Finnish Museums Association, Helsinki, Finland. 2University of Turku, Turku, Finland. 3Finnish Forest Museum Lusto, Punkaharju, Finland. 4University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
Planetary well-being requires socially influential and reliable actors with excellent understanding of cultural processes and historical and thematical backgrounds, such as museums. The paper focuses on the new science-based action project entitled ‘Towards eco-social all-round education. The Heritage Futures Network of Museums as a catalyzer for sustainability transformation’ that strengthens and accelerates the cultural sustainability transition of individuals, communities, and society as a whole by bringing together Finland’s 152 professional museums into a permanent, dynamic and proactive Heritage Futures Network for this work. The process of joint development between museums aims to create new museum strategies, tools and practices that accelerate the cultural transformation to sustainability. The presentation explores the museum’s ability to evoke empathy, manage climate anxiety, and foster a positive mindset by presenting practical methods that can be applied in various museums through collaborative work with museum visitors. We will explore how future-oriented work supports emotional sustainability.
Keywords
heritage futures; network of museums, eco-social all-round education; sustainability transformation
Bio of the Authors
Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti is an Adjunct professor (University of Turku) specialized in cultural heritage. She works both as a Senior Researcher in the Culture at Work -project (European Ethnology) and in the Finnish Museums Association as a Project Manager in the 'Towards eco-social all-round education. The Heritage Futures Network of Museums as a catalyzer for sustainability transformation’ science-based action project.
Leena Paaskoski is a Professor of Practice in Museology in the University of Jyväskylä, Adjunct professor in Ethnology and a Development Director in the Finnish Forest Museum Lusto in Punkaharju. She has long experience in museum development, e.g., developed a concept of 'a dynamic museum' and planned the 'Towards eco-social all-round education. The Heritage Futures Network of Museums as a catalyzer for sustainability transformation’ science-based action project together with Pauliina Latvala-Harvilahti.
A3: Empathy and Care Creating Transformation in Museums: Examples of Participatory Activities for Young People and Children
Associate Professor Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto
1University of Turku, Turku, Finland. 2South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Mikkeli, Finland
Abstract
In the era of the ecological crisis, museums are perceived as having a particular opportunity to exert influence. Through exhibitions, museums can present interdisciplinary and complex forms of knowledge that draw on the perspectives of multiple actors, disciplines, and institutions, for example in relation to overconsumption or climate change and its impacts. In their public engagement activities and events, museums can promote the participation of citizens of different ages and diverse groups. Such a transformative and future-focused mission further emphasizes the importance of audience engagement and participation within the institutional practices of museums.
In recent discussion of the role of museum pedagogy in the context of the ecological crisis and the related era of the Anthropocene, particular attention has been paid to the inclusion and participation of children and young people. Scholars of future heritage have emphasized that, rather than conceiving heritage in a vague sense as something intended for future generations, greater attention should be given to the perspectives and participation of children and young people, as well as to a more careful consideration of their agency (e.g Harrison 2020; Holtorf and Högberg 2021; Edberg & Storm 2025). In this vein, in our paper we introduce examples of participatory activities to children and young people in Finnish museums and discuss the encounters created within museum spaces. The examples represent initiatives directed at children and young people that can encourage critical reflection on everyday life and consumption, ecological issues and multispecies engagements. We argue that the key to critical reflection and transformation lies in raising empathy among the participants and a sense of caring not only for the fellow human but also for the non-human entities around us.
Keywords
participation, children, young people, empathy, transformation
Bio of the Authors
Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto works as an Assocatiate Professor of Ethnology at the University of Turku.
Kristiina Korjonen-Kuusipuro works as a Senior Researcher at the Youth Research and Development Unit Juvenia at the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences.
A4: Disclaimed facts in art conservation – the resilience in sculpture and public art, the viewers and the practice
Visiting researcher Päivi Kyllönen-Kunnas
Department of Art and Media, The School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
Abstract
Contemporary visual art conservation forms a strategy of communicative properties, for discrete care of the artwork but also for the aim-oriented ethical statements in collections. The deterioration of an artwork is a challenging topic of interpreting in emotionally sustainable qualified manner.
The change on the representation of the art object, the artistic creation, is considered a surprisingly difficult issue for the actors. While forming the mental image of the display, the entity of the artwork is to remain, cited in Caple & Williams (2023), its values vested in objects that are not static. Whether it is public art or sculpture-not-on-display, the actors in consideration are the artists, and art conservators, working with curatorial personnel.
The methods, the recognition of the artwork and the authority, place the challenge for the professionals in acting conservation. The signs of deterioration, graffiti, loss of hue, or overall despair of the object are classified, interpreted and documented by the art conservators. Strengthening the individual and collective resilience in describing the artistic processes create value over the individual significances in artworks.
Culture heritage professionals are claimed for strategic responsibility in with discretionary powers to act for artworks´ preventive actions, care and display. The sensitive and emotional information over the works, is navigated, documented and cured by documentation done by the museum professionals. The impact of the emotional directiveness on the visual art conservation change the comprehensive position of the viewer, when working with the artefacts, like sculpture and art installations. Furthermore, the conservation profession implements the steadiness, kind of tolerate insight over the artworks.
It might be expected that the work of art reveals its properties and shiny surfaces for decades unchanged. The frayed communication culture with disappearing significances over the artistic properties and processes are discussed in the context of the philosophical tradition in contemporary art conservation and artistic research.
Keywords
contemporary art conservation, individual resilience, artistic practice, relational materiality,
authority
Bio of the Authors
The concepts, research questions and methods issued in the presentation will be produced to have discrete but not a direct thematic foundation in the contemporary art conservation theory dissertation research. The thesis has been issued to final review, pre-examination in the department of Art and Media, the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University.
The author is a professional contemporary art conservator working in Finland, in Oulu Museum and Science Center, Oulu Art Museum.
Article writer and commentator. Researcher in visual heritage themes.
B1: Killjoy Museums and Emotional Sustainability: Perspectives from Animal Production Controversies
Dr. Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
In times of ecological and sociopolitical crisis, museums are increasingly expected to contribute to emotional sustainability. This ongoing capacity fosters individual and collective well-being by nurturing empathy, resilience, and dialogue. However, as museums engage with contested political questions, they often generate discomfort, conflict, and institutional strain. Therefore, emotional sustainability requires navigating difficult emotions, ethical tensions, and public controversy.
This paper draws on my doctoral research into politicised art exhibitions. It proposes the figure of the killjoy, as theorised by Sara Ahmed—a person or institution disrupting cultural consensus—as a theoretical lens and practical tool for museums facing controversial issues. The paper illustrates this using the controversy surrounding Pigs (2021), a contemporary art exhibition by the duo Gustafsson&Haapoja at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, which addressed the ethical and ecological consequences of industrial animal production in a region tied to pig farming.
The exhibition disrupted what Ahmed (2010) calls the "promise of happiness" linked to animal production as a source of prosperity, regional identity, and continuity. Opposing affective communities—groups bonded by shared emotional responses—framed the exhibition as an attack on farmers and local livelihoods. This redirected attention from the structural injustices of animal production. At the same, the artworks mediated the agency of pigs as nonhuman subjects, challenged their invisibility in dominant production systems, and positioned the museum as a spokesperson for more-than-human perspectives.
I argue that positioning museums as societal killjoys provides a clear and robust framework for emotional sustainability. Rather than resolving emotional tensions prematurely, this approach enables museums to withstand backlash, support internal emotional labour, and foster spaces where difficult emotions catalyse ethical reflection and public debate. In times of polycrisis, embracing the role of the killjoy is vital for museums seeking to advance radical justice.
Keywords
museums; killjoy; affect; emotional sustainability; more-than-human politics
Bio of the Authors
Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen (D.Soc.Sc.) is a researcher and curator specialising in cultural studies, critical animal studies, and cultural policy, with a focus on the societal influence of museums and art institutions. Her work investigates nuanced societal challenges and emotional responses concerning ecological sustainability and human-animal relationships. Her doctoral dissertation (2026) analysed critical perspectives on industrial animal production in contemporary art through the lens of the exhibition institution's agency. She is currently launching her postdoctoral research at the University of Jyväskylä and presides as Chair of the Society for Cultural Policy Research in Finland.
B2: Emotional thinking strategy: A tool for mapping emotional landscapes around race
Johanna Turunen, University of Jyväskylä
johanna.k.turunen[at]jyu.fi
Abstract
Notions of race and racial identities are engrained in Western culture. The idea of race is deeply affective. It grinds uncomfortably against Western values and cultural norms. Regardless of our own identity, discussions around race often raise powerful emotions in us all. As such, different meanings, values and emotions attached to the idea of race have the power to move us – whether we want them to or not. In this presentation, we examine what kind of emotional landscapes emerge around race in a museum space by focusing on the visitor experiences in Invisible race exhibition at the Finnish Museum of Photography, (19.9.2025-8.3.2026). The exhibition sought to critically assess the meanings of Whiteness, as “an ideal against which all other races are compared and which we all have internalized” (museum website). The artworks dealt with race from varied different perspectives; some working from the perspectives of Black, Muslim or Asian communities, while others challenged Whiteness from within, looking at toxic Whiteness and masculinity. Through data collected via emotional thinking strategy, a short interview method developed by the Uncomfortable museum project, we examine different feelings associated with race and the ways museum visitors negotiate between their own feelings, the experiences prompted by the exhibition and the influences of racialized norms and values of Finnish society.
Keywords: race, emotions, emotional thinking strategy, museum exhibition
Bio of the Authors
Johanna Turunen works as a senior grant researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. She holds a doctorate in contemporary culture studies and a title of docent in critical heritage studies. Her research focuses on the societal agency of museums and the intersection of difficult heritage, emotions and transformative learning. She is currently leading the Uncomfortable Museum: Towards Safe, Brave Spaces research project funded by the Kone Foundation.
Participatory pedagogy through Difficult Heritage
Dr Inés Matres
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
This talk resumes experiences from two courses aimed to involve students in museum work via digital and participatory methods. The connecting thread was “difficult heritage”, defined as significant events of the past that are incompatible with contemporary notions of social justice [1]. Teaching subjects that deal with atrocities, or shameful pasts requires sensitive approaches, but are of great value to help students recognise the root of imbalances that they can observe, experience, or unconsciously avoid in their daily lives. In turn, real project settings prepare them to address these in public-facing activities.
The first case was embedded in the Helsinki digital humanities hackathon [2]. This intensive course brings humanities and data science students to collaborate. Guided by researchers, students work with large datasets and must decide in groups a humanities-relevant inquiry, deploying digital methods. Last year, for the first time, Holocaust testimonials were used. Based on a subset of ten oral interviews, they proposed a workflow to analyse emotion on all signals: the transcript, facial expressions and audio signal; testing the limits of computer models and keeping digital-aided analysis side-by-side with the original material. The sensitive nature of the interviews inspired valuable discussions about data integrity, human verification, ethics, and critical adoption of emerging technologies.
The second case originated in the international project “Museum Unveiling” that aims to raise awareness about the scientific achievements and difficult pasts connected to most university collections [3]. One of the digital exhibitions, presents strategies to engage staff and students in acknowledging burdensome scientific practices e.g. propagating social inequality and racism or accumulating artifacts from colonial exploit. In a subsequent course students made proposals for an onsite exhibition. Approaching difficult heritage with an exhibition in mind, introduced students to essential museum tasks such as object selection, sensitive contextualization of difficult subjects, storytelling and accessibility.
Keywords
museum studies, difficult heritage, exhibtion making, oral history, participatory methods
Bio of the Authors
My main research interest is cultural heritage in the digital age. My dissertation examined the pedagogic use and other affordances of digital libraries, the digital paraphernalia in classrooms, and youth's expressions of their own cultures as forms of past presencing and heritage making in school during the "digital leap". I have a background in media studies and my strengths as researcher and teacher include, uses and creation of digital cultural heritage, museum documentation and the practice of ethnography; particularly in situations involving minors or learning. I am currently affiliated to digital humanities and the DARIAH-FI research infrastructure Network.
References:
1. Macdonald, S. (2015). Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still ‘Difficult’?: Why Public Acknowledgment of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities. Museum International, 67(1–4), 6–22.
2.
3.
B4: Play as Emotional Infrastructure in Museums
Dr. Stefanie Steinbeck ORCID iD, Dr. Katrine Dalum Hesseldahl
National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Play is increasingly adopted in museums as a strategy for engagement and co creation (Holdgaard and Olesen 2025), but its affective implications remain understudied. This paper explores play as a form of emotional infrastructure in museums, understood as a relational and affective capacity that can support visitors in navigating discomfort, ambiguity and vulnerability in meaningful ways.
The analysis focuses on The Doctors Clinic, a role playing game developed at the National Museum of Denmark as part of the research -and development programme Moving Museums Through Play. Insights from the co-creation process with young adults between the ages of 25 and 35 showed that a meaningful playful experience for this group involved moral dilemmas, the grotesque, humour and negotiations of shifting social roles. Prototype testing and workshop reflections further indicated that these elements produced affective dynamics such as hesitation, awkwardness, transgressive pleasure and embodied improvisation. These insights shape the design of the final experience and guide our audience research, which will take place in May and June 2026. The audience study, comprised of focus groups and participant observation investigates whether and how visitors use humour, hesitation, embodied improvisation or moments of awkwardness or transgression to make sense of taboo themes such as bodily exposure, responsibility and care.
The paper draws on Miguel Sicart’s work on play as relational, appropriative and ethically exploratory (Sicart 2014; Sicart 2025), combined with affect theory from humanities and psychology that examines how emotions circulate and intensify in social and spatial encounters (Keltner, Horberg and Oveis 2006; Anderson 2009). The contribution is both design oriented and theoretical. First, it demonstrates how co creation and prototyping can identify affective affordances that support emotional sustainability. Second, it proposes play as an emotional infrastructure that enables reflective engagement with morally sensitive topics in contemporary museum practice.
Keywords
Playful museum practice, Emotional Infrastructure, Embodied visitor experience, Roleplay, Game-based experience
Bio of the Authors
Stefanie Steinbeck is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark and hold a Ph.D. in Organisational Anthropology from Copenhagen Business School. Their work examines peoples embodied and affective interactions in cultural settings, with particular attention to the perspectives of children. They work in the intersection of research and practice to bring a critical lens to how cultural institutions shape visitor experiences.
Katrine Dalum Hesseldahl is co-designer at the National Museum of Denmark and hold a Ph.D. in Sustainable Design and Material Science from Royal College of Art. Katrine has a background as an industrial designer, with previous work on exhibition design at Wellcome Collection. As co-designer Katrine leads the development of play-experiences on Moving Museums Through Play.
C1: Remembering (De)industrialization: Stabilizing Moral Emotions in Textile and Chocolate Museums in Lithuania and Poland
Dr Rimantė Jaugaitė
Center for Research on Social Memory, Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
The process of (de)industrialisation remains a subject of controversy due to the dissolution of the socialist systems in Poland and Lithuania. Rather than engaging with its complexities, dominant national narratives in both countries tend to emphasise a break with socialism, paying little attention to those who experienced the transition as loss rather than liberation. For example, the post-1990 experiences of industrial workers remain largely invisible in dominant memory cultures. In a time of polycrisis – where post-socialist transformations intersect with global ecological and economic upheaval – such silences pose challenges not only to historical memory, but also to the emotional sustainability of post-industrial communities.
The textile and chocolate industries are directly tied to everyday life, physicality, and sensory experience, yet their histories are embedded in global supply chains relying on raw materials sourced from distant parts of the world. These entanglements carry significant colonial, ecological, and economic costs – from deforestation and contested labour practices linked to cocoa farming to industrial pollution in textile production – situating local (de)industrialisation within a wider context of environmental and economic crisis. Yet the slow memory of these crises rarely surfaces in official narratives – it lingers instead in everyday objects, embodied practices, and affective spaces such as museums. Focusing on specific cases of chocolate and textile museums, this paper investigates whether alternative narratives exist outside these dominant framings and what emotional registers they produce.
As sites where slow memory resurfaces, chocolate and textile museums can draw on relatable connections to consumer goods that comfort audiences and evoke positive emotions, creating a safe space for sharing experiences of disappointment that often remain backstage. This paper explores these alternative narratives through materiality and stabilising moral emotions – particularly pride – and examines how they attempt to restore agency and dignity to post-industrial communities, fostering their emotional sustainability and collective resilience.
Keywords
Post-socialist transformation; slow memory of crisis; industrial memory; global entanglements; stabilising moral emotions.
Bio of the Authors
Rimantė Jaugaitė is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Warsaw, where she is part of the MEPOST project, researching industrial heritage sites in Lithuania and Poland.
She graduated from the PhD program in Global Histories, Cultures, and Politics at the University of Bologna in March 2025. During her PhD studies, Rimantė was also a visiting researcher at the ZRC SAZU Institute of Culture and Memory Studies in Ljubljana. Her doctoral dissertation examined the artistic use of coffee rituals as a mnemonic device for commemorating the Srebrenica genocide in BiH and beyond.
She is drawn to alternative memory practices, counter-narratives and memory activism, nationalism and its impact on memory and identity, including hybrid and fluid identities. While most of her research has focused on the Balkans, Rimantė is also interested in the wider Eastern European region and holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES, University of Bologna).
C2: Hiroshima as a City of Museums: Memory, Identity, and Emotional Sustainability
Dr Galia Petkova
Eikei University, Hiroshima, Japan
Abstract
The A-Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum have long been established as the city’s defining symbols. This memorial site plays a central role in shaping Hiroshima’s identity as a city that dearly commemorates the victims of the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945, and carefully preserves the memory of its tragic destruction and the horrors of war in general, while strongly advocating for world peace. Founded in 1955, the museum is one of the most visited in Japan, consistently attracting over one million—and in recent years more than two million—visitors annually.
Yet the city’s identity should not be reduced to a single memorial landscape centered on loss and peace. This paper explores Hiroshima as a “city of museums,” in which multiple cultural institutions were deliberately established in order to contribute to the construction of memory, identity, and emotional engagement. It focuses on three remarkable art museums that remain insufficiently promoted and relatively under-visited: the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum (1968), which houses over 5,000 works by prominent Japanese and Western artists, including Salvador Dalí; the Hiroshima Museum of Art (1978), with a collection of approximately 300 works of Western modern painting by artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso, alongside Japanese modern art; and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1989), Japan’s first public museum dedicated to contemporary art, focusing on post-1945 works.
The paper argues that these institutions provide valuable complementary spaces in which local historical trauma is refracted through cross-cultural aesthetic experience and processes of cultural renewal. Together, they enable a more sustainable mode of engaging with the past, shaping a more diverse identity for Hiroshima – not only as a site of loss, but also as a dynamic cultural center within contemporary global artistic landscape.
Keywords
Hiroshima, collective memory, cultural identity, emotional sustainability, art museums
Bio of the Authors
Galia Petkova is a Professor at Eikei University of Hiroshima. Her background is in Japanese studies, gender studies, and performance studies. Originally from Bulgaria, she has over 25 years of experience teaching and researching Japanese and Asian traditional performance culture, cross-cultural studies, and cultural heritage at universities in Europe, Canada, Indonesia, and Japan. She earned her PhD in Japanese Studies from SOAS, University of London. Her recent work engages with questions of cultural sustainability, embodiment, and the role of performance in shaping emotional and collective memory.
C3: The relevancy of a house museum in growing resilience and hope
Researcher, conservator Liisa Oikari
The Mannerheim Museum, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
The Mannerheim Museum in Helsinki opened its doors to the public in 1951 and turns 75 years in 2026. The museum has been continuously open to the public and relied on the attractiveness of the historical figure the museum represents, Gustaf Mannerheim. However, the more time passes between Mannerheim and today, less relevant he might appear. The museum has very recently taken on this challenge by renewing its identity and operating concept. The museum, as well as the Mannerheim Foundation, are eager to take part in societal discussions and pursue more agency in the Finnish society.
The museum’s new vision states that the museum has high level of expertise on the life and legacy of Gustaf Mannerheim, reflects on the turning points in Finnish history, advocates for social peace, and promotes education and culture. The museum vision and mission are implemented with three active roles; promoter of education and culture, interpreter of evolving patriotism and Finnishness, and supporter of resilience. A bridge between the museum’s mission and Gustaf Mannerheim’s intentions and legacy is always present. With that bridge and the strong presence of Mannerheim, the museum is able to reach its audiences and provide tools for members of society to grow resilience and hope, individually as well as within communities. The museum aims to increase emotional sustainability and societal cohesion by providing a platform even for difficult discussions, thus decreasing polarity.
As the world faces global conflicts and sociopolitical challenges, Gustaf Mannerheim seems relevant once more as he is seen as an interface between the similarities of historical events and today. As global power dynamics shift, the museum is willing to follow the footsteps of Gustaf Mannerheim by speaking up for diplomacy and preventing military conflicts.
Keywords
resilience, nationality, mission, agency, personal history
Bio of the Authors
Liisa Oikari is a researcher at The Mannerheim Museum. She holds an MA in ethnology from the University of Helsinki and a BA in conservation of cultural historical objects from EVTEK University of Applied Sciences. She has been active in the museum field for over a decade and has a strong focus on museum collection management. Her interests include material culture studies, biographical history and societal impact of museums.
C4: Museum-Parks of a Difficult Past as Spaces of Emotional Sustainability in Post-Communist Europe.
Petra Hudek
Vilnius University & Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania
Abstract
In the post-1989 transition, several Central and Eastern European states faced an acute challenge: what to do with the monumental heritage of socialist regimes? Rather than systematic demolition, a specific institutional solution emerged in the form of the museum-park, a curated outdoor museum repository that provides a setting for the potential recontextualization of displaced monuments as objects of historical reflection. From Grūtas Park in Lithuania to Memento Park in Hungary, from the Maarjamäe sculpture park in Estonia to the Museum of Socialist Art in Bulgaria, these sites translate the affective charge of political sculpture into managed encounters with difficult pasts.
This paper examines socialist monument repositories as institutional strategies for emotional sustainability in post-authoritarian societies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted across four post-communist museum-parks, it interrogates how these sites negotiate affective polarization. As new waves of removal have intensified since 2022, museum-parks have regained visibility both as potential destinations for displaced objects and as models for managing dissonant heritage under conditions of ongoing wars and crises. The paper argues that museum-parks function not as neutral storage spaces but as active sites that shape how societies encounter unwanted heritage, navigating the tensions between commemorative sensitivity, political pressure, and societal demand, though what this process ultimately produces remains deeply contested.
Keywords
dissonant heritage, museum-parks, post-communist memory, emotional sustainability, monument removal
Bio of the Authors
Petra Hudek is a researcher at the Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and a postdoctoral fellow at Vilnius University. Her current research focuses on the management of dissonant heritage in post-communist contexts, museum and memory studies and the politics of public space in Central and Eastern Europe.
D1: Emotional spaces in art museums
Museum educator Elina Toppari1, Head of education and public programs Unnur Leifsdóttir2, Professor Mimmu Rankanen
1HAM, Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland. 2Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland. 3Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
In a time of global polycrisis, many people are also dealing with overlapping emotional challenges related to burnout, illness, and social pressure. Thus, there is a growing need for spaces that support emotional sustainability. This paper looks at how art museums can offer such spaces through art therapy-informed practices and create space for meeting others as equals, outside of formal roles or labels.
Art museums can function as low threshold therapeutic spaces, offering accessible and non-clinical environments where people are invited into experiences of presence, creativity, and connection. Art therapists can contribute to emotionally safe space, where participants can engage with themselves, with others and art in meaningful ways, supported by the containing atmosphere of the museum. Art therapists in museums can create conditions where people may also explore emotionally evoking art in a tolerable way. Creative expression can become a way of making sense of personal experiences and emotions while also connecting to wider shared realities.
The paper presents two different cases. A 10-week open art therapy group at Hafnarborg Museum developed in collaboration with Oslo Metropolitan University Norway and Stendur rehabilitation Center in Iceland. The program is offered for individuals on a sick leave from work. It is led by art therapist and combines looking at art, simple creative work, and voluntary reflections and sharing. The emphasis is always on creating an accepting space where participants can take part in their own way and at their own pace.
The other case is a 5-week art therapeutic group for neurodivergent young people in Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Finland during ARS-22 exhibition. The aim was to explore how art therapeutic approaches and emotional exploration can be applied in an art museum setting. Visual communication, predictable structuring and social story were central throughout the process supporting accessibility and participation.
Keywords
Emotion, art therapy, art museum, containing space, accessible
Bio of the Authors
Elina Toppari is a museum educator, art therapist and art teacher. Her current position is in HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Her practice focuses on inclusive museum work and the connections between art, wellbeing, and art education. She has collaborated extensively with organizations supporting people with intellectual disabilities and neurodivergent individuals, including Kehitysvammatuki 57 and the Autism Foundation Finland. Elina has particularly developed accessible museum experiences for neurodivergent audiences, with a focus on visual communication methods within museum contexts.
Unnur Mjöll S. Leifsdóttir is Head of education and public engagement at Hafnarborg, the Hafnarfjörður Centre of Culture and Fine Art in Iceland. She is a visual artist, museum educator, and MA student in Art Therapy at OsloMet in Oslo. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the Iceland University of the Arts and an MA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, as well as a teaching qualification from The university on Iceland. In her work at Hafnarborg, Unnur develops educational and participatory programs with the aim of making art accessible, meaningful, and relevant to diverse audiences. She has led a wide range of museumbased initiatives, including workshops, guided engagement, and collaborative projects that create dialogue between artists and the public. Her current work focuses on the development of art therapy informed practices within museum settings, considering how creative processes can support wellbeing, emotional engagement, and social participation.
Mimmu Rankanen is the professor of art therapy and the program coordinator of the art therapy master's program at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). She is the Chair of the Research Committee of European Federation of Art Therapy and a member of International Art Therapy Neuroscience Collective. Her research interests include participants experiences of art therapy, perceived experiences of therapeutic change, and interdisciplinary research on transformation of emotional pain through different art therapeutic approaches and handling of different art materials.
D2: How can an art exhibition strengthen empathy? The art museum as a builder of emotional resilience and dialogue – an exhibition at Vantaa Art Museum Artsi
Vantaa Art Museum Artsi / Empathy exhibition
Curator Emilia Laine
Abstract
The Empathy exhibition at Vantaa Art Museum Artsi explores empathy both as an emotion and as a learnable skill that profoundly shapes our relationships with other people, communities, and the nature. The exhibition approaches empathy as a phenomenon that is not only an individual experience but also a socially and culturally constructed capacity. It influences how we understand differences, vulnerability, and interdependence. Through empathy, questions emerge that touch both everyday encounters and broader societal and global issues.
The exhibition highlights the personal, cultural, and ecological dimensions of empathy. On the individual level, it examines how empathy is formed and how individuals can develop and practice their ability to put themselves in another’s position. From a cultural perspective, it considers how we define the boundaries and possibilities of empathy, and how these are connected to prevailing values and moral frameworks. These values are manifested in practices, interpersonal relationships, and social roles, becoming visible through the ways in which they guide the direction and extent of empathy.
The ecological perspective extends empathy to other species and the natural environment, inviting museum visitors to reflect on their relationship with other living beings as coexisting rather than hierarchical. In this context, art acts as an enabler: through it, one can imagine alternative ways of being and realities, and reconsider relationships between humans and other forms of life in more reciprocal and entangled ways.
At the same time, the exhibition invites reflection on what empathy means in a time characterized by rapid change, overlapping crises, and social fragmentation. Through art, it becomes possible to examine the significance of empathy for humanity and the ethical questions it raises. Rather than offering definitive answers, the exhibition creates space for reflection, dialogue, and experiential learning.
The Empathy exhibition positions the art museum as an active agent in fostering emotional resilience and ethical agency. It emphasizes the art museum as a platform where knowledge, emotion, and experience intertwine, supporting visitors in their ability to understand others and act responsibly. In this framework, the exhibition not only examines empathy as a phenomenon but also challenges museum visitors to reflect on their own role in its formation.
Keywords
Empathy, Emotional sustainability, Art museums, Emotional resilience, Museum agency
Bio of the Authors
I work as an exhibition curator at the Vantaa Art Museum Artsi which is a contemporary art museum located in Myyrmäki.
Artsi presents temporary exhibitions of contemporary art and works from Vantaa's extensive art collection. In addition to contemporary art, Artsi highlights street, graffiti and performance art. Through its exhibitions, Artsi builds a world where people can listen and be heard. Admission to Artsi is free for everyone.
D3: Living one’s life in the era of climate crisis – Perspectives from the arts
MA Anna-Kaisa Koski
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
It’s not surprising that living a life threatened by extinction through an overheating climate can cause distress. While popularized narratives push for individuals to solve climate change in their everyday lives, fossil fuel industries and spiraling geopolitics are simultaneously accelerating the climate crisis. Living environmentally-friendly is guided by an ethical binary of either doing or not-doing ”something” for the environment, despite the systemic impossibility of making meaningful change. One's actions are emotionally grounded in the looming fear of lacking actual agency. These diagnostics offer an intriguing, ambivalent ground for the arts to explore what it means to be a person living one’s life in the era of climate crisis.
In this paper I discuss how recent artworks by Finnish artists have approached this question. Through Heather Davis’s concept of ’petro-time’ and Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking on living with catastrophes, I consider the potential of art to narrate, and explore climate change as part of people’s lived experience. I will discuss artworks from the fields of clowning, contemporary dance, opera, and video art, more specifically by clowning artist Emma Castrén, choreographer Janina Rajakangas, composer Sebastian Fagerlund & librettist Gunilla Hemming, and artist Nastja Rönkkö.
Art has been invited to provide solutions to the climate crisis, but I suggest the works invigorate the task of art as creating complexity, instead of providing clear answers, or plans for a better future. Art has the capacity to understand and narrate people who are often led by their emotions instead of reason, who often act inconsistently with their values, whose actions are limited by their position in the world, and who as individuals differ from each other. The diverse people created by, and represented in these artworks act as a reminder to not rely on universalizing ideas of a (destructive) human species.
Keywords
climate crisis, the arts, everyday life, emotional complexity, avoidance
Bio of the Authors
Anna-Kaisa Koski conducts doctoral research on contemporary art and energy cultures at The Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Her dissertation focuses on energizing cultural theory, aesthetics of energy, and the ways artworks can recreate or reinterpret normative energy aesthetics. Her background is in research of art, and curatorial studies. Koski has previously worked with curating, participation, and cultural heritage in museums, as well as with climate advocacy work with a focus on energy production. She has had a joint role as a curator and a researcher in the arts and research project Whose Climate, Whose Futures? (2021–2024). The project combined commissioning artworks focusing on climate justice, and research on the role of art in sustainability transformations.
D4: Gen Z rewrites resilience: Research on how young people are building the emotional strength needed for an unpredictable future, from mini-challenges to digital breaks and pop- culture role models — and what we can learn from them
Senior Expert Iia Palovaara1, Senior Strategist Iida Korpiniitty2, Head of Research Linda Sivander2
1Amos Rex, Helsinki, Finland. 2Noren, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
Research by Amos Rex and Noren into the everyday lives of 16–18-year-olds reveals how young people intentionally build resilience to cope with an increasingly unpredictable world. The ethnographic research followed five diverse friend groups in the capital region, combining interviews, museum and gallery visits, and collaborative analysis.
Rather than relying on a single life path, young people actively create strategies to navigate uncertainty. Despite different backgrounds and resources, four similar strategies emerged. Young people actively cultivate skills, attitudes, and turn external challenges into exercises for self-development. As part of their resilience-building, young people used digital environments to seek information, follow empowering role models, cultivate relationships, and express creativity. However, they expressed concern about excessive use, perceived “brain-rotting” effects, and difficulty disconnecting despite their efforts.
In an increasingly aggressive discussion culture, young people limit exposure to emotionally charged or controversial topics to protect themselves. They turn to confidential circles of friends and family for discussions about politics or values and carefully curate their social media presence. Young people emphasize recovery and renewal, as they feel pressure to spend their free time on “empowering” activities, and many report feeling stressed or burnt out.
Running as a red thread through the above strategies is creativity, which allows for emotional processing and self-exploration. For young people, creativity is a broad spectrum: it can be anything from playing games or music to applying make-up or having a deep conversation with a friend.
Museums and art exhibitions are felt to foster insight, connection, and inspiration. However, many feel that institutionalised art is distant and difficult to understand. Additional barriers were uncertainty about rules and feeling surveilled. Young people actively seek challenges, empowerment, and a counterweight to phone scrolling. To unlock inspiration and intellectual reward, museums need to enable deeper engagement and foster inclusion.
Keywords
Youth, Generation Z, Museums, Resilience, Creativity
Bio of the Authors
Iia Palovaara (iia.palovaara[at]amosrex.fi) is an art historian (M.Sc) working as Senior Expert at Amos Rex. She leads youth research and develops programming for the museum's public spaces, including the iconic mounds at Lasipalatsi, and serves as editor of exhibition texts. She has extensive experience in the museum sector in communications, including serving as head of communications at Amos Rex. She served as a board member of the Finnish Museums Association, bringing experience in strategic communications, institutional development and understanding young audiences.
Linda Sivander (linda.sivander[at]noren.fi) leads strategy consultancy Noren’s research practice and develops its research methodology. Trained as an anthropologist (M.Soc.Sci), she brings an ethnographic and cultural lens to understanding how people and communities relate to organisations and institutions. She has conducted research across sectors from energy to housing to the labour market, helping organisations understand their target groups and their changing needs.
Iida Korpiniitty (iida.korpiniitty[at]noren.fi) is an anthropologist (M.Soc.Sci) working in strategy consulting at Noren. Besides working as a strategy consultant and researcher, she leads Noren’s brand and communications. She has years of experience in applied qualitative research, strategic development, product and service innovation, and also has a strong pedagogical background. She has conducted several research projects on the experiences of young people.
E1: Feeling rules and cultural heritage work in times of change
Dr Anna Woodham1, Dr Jennie Morgan2
1King's College London, London, United Kingdom. 2University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom
Abstract
Since Arlie Hochschild’s influential 1983 work on “emotional labour,” cross-disciplinary scholarship has examined how emotions are experienced, managed, and expressed in workplace and organisational contexts. Her related concepts of ‘emotion work,’ ‘display rules,’ and ‘feeling rules’ have been central to this research. Yet, despite the increasingly emotionally demanding and complex nature of cultural heritage work situated within rapidly changing global contexts, and the broader emotional skill sets this arguably requires, there has been little application of Hochschild’s ideas to this sector. In this paper, we begin to address this omission by critically interrogating the value of “feeling rules” concepts for understanding current shifts in cultural heritage work toward more emotionally charged forms of practice. First, we will outline what we see to be the possibilities for applying ‘feeling rules’ thinking to the cultural heritage sector to explore the emotionally laden work of staff. Next, drawing on a survey, emotion diary, and interviews with professionals intended, partly, to explore ‘feeling rules’ in cultural heritage work, we will reflect on emerging findings, such as the acceptability (or not) of specific emotions in the contemporary cultural heritage workplace, and the intersection of gender and feeling rules. Finally, we will reflect on limitations of this concept for exploring the internal emotional dynamics of these workplaces with distinctive professional cultures, missions, and operational contexts. Overall, our paper argues that while “feeling rules” is a productive lens, it will require further adaptation to reflect the unique realities of cultural heritage organisations working in ever more complex circumstances. A context which differs significantly from the service and commercial settings on which Hochschild focused.
Keywords
Emotional Labour, Feeling Rules, Cultural Heritage, Museum, Workforce
Bio of the Authors
Dr Jennie Morgan is a Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Programme Director of the MSc Heritage at the University of Stirling. She co-led (with Woodham) a recent Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded project New Futures of Care: Investigating emotionally laden work in museums. Jennie's wider research focuses on museological change and professional identity, collections management, and museum curation, exploring interests as diverse as collections’ significance and value; curating profusion and sustainability; and object collections in heritage organisations focused on the built historic environment. As a trained anthropologist (PhD Manchester), she holds expertise in short-term, sensory, and auto-ethnographic methods, also advocating for creative and collaborative methodologies (Bartolini and Morgan 2024, Morgan and Castle 2023). Jennie's work is published in a wide-range of journals, including the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Museum and Society, Qualitative Inquiry, Journal of Material Culture, and she co-authored the Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices book (Harrison et al. 2020). Having previously worked as a museum curator in New Zealand, Jennie is motivated by exploring and generating intersections between theoretical and applied impact.
Dr Anna Woodham is Senior Lecturer: Museum and Heritage Studies, Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London. Her current research examines the use of emotions by cultural heritage practitioners. In 2024-25 she was co-lead on the Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded project New Futures of Care, project (with Morgan). Anna’s research has also focused on collections development, care, and management. She has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on several AHRC-funded projects, including: Integrating Forms of Care: Building Communities of Practice around Reserve Collections, Enduring Connections: Heritage, Sustainable Development and Climate Change in Kiribati, and Who Cares? which led to the edited volume Exploring Emotion, Care and Enthusiasm in “Unloved” Collections. With a background in policy and practice, Anna has held posts at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the British Dental Association Museum.
E2: Emotional Landscapes of Museums: Conceptualizing the Term
Doctor of Sociology, Docent in Landscape Studies Oleksandra Nenko
1University of Turku, Turku/Pori, Finland. 2University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
Museums, among other public institutions, contribute to the emotional sustainability of the society they address; however, for their employees, they constitute an everyday emotional reality of the workplace. While approaches to managing audience emotions are actively investigated in museum studies, the emotional regimes of the institutions themselves, unfolding in offices and corridors, receive only fragmentary attention. At the same time, our fieldwork observations and background knowledge of museums in Finland and internationally suggest that sometimes emotional registers of museum employees and administration or across different groups of museum workers mismatch, affecting programming and implementation of museum activities. Addressing these gaps, we focus on analysis of emotional life of museums suggesting the conceptual lens of “emotional landscape.”
The aim of the paper is to develop the concept of “emotional landscape” as a theoretical framework for the systematic understanding of different scales of emotional and affect-driven interactions within and across art institutions. Our conceptualization draws on an interdisciplinary composition of ideas from emotional geography, neo-institutional studies, and sociology of emotions. In particular, we review the concepts of “feeling rules” (Arlie Hochschild), “embodied space” (Setha Low), “dwelling perspective” (Tim Ingold), and “affective atmospheres” (Ben Anderson), among others.
According to our definition, an emotional landscape of a museum contains several layers of affective interactions. On the one hand, an extrainstitutional emotional landscape is shaped by emotional “halos” formed around and between art institutions. On the other hand, an intrainstitutional emotional landscape establishes an interconnected system of impulses, affective interactions, and emotionally-informed decisions within a museum.
The emotional landscape lens enables a systematic view on emotions, feelings, and affects in professional museum work, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of institutional dynamics. It also establishes a foundation for future empirical research and practical applications, supporting a broader understanding of emotional sustainability within and beyond museums.
Keywords
emotional landscape, museums, contemporary art institutions, affective interactions, emotional sustainability
Bio of the Authors
Oleksandra Nenko, Doctor of Sociology, is a Collegium Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), University of Turku, and a Visiting Researcher in the ExoSound project at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She holds the title of Docent in Landscape Studies, especially in placemaking and urban sustainability, at the University of Turku. Oleksandra has led research projects on urban vernacularity, the emotional perception of urban landscapes, grassroots circular practices, and the intersections of art, war, and displacement. She has also served as a curator for various urban culture projects. Oleksandra is a board member of the European Sociological Association’s Research Networks 37 (Urban Sociology) and 02 (Sociology of the Arts).
Adel Kim is a doctoral researcher at the University of Turku. Her research, “How Artistic Institutions Feel: The Emotional Landscape of Contemporary Art Organizations and Its Role in Decision-Making,” is an interdisciplinary study conducted within the Doctoral Programme in History, Culture and Arts Studies (JUNO), with a major in Landscape Studies, under the supervision of Professor Maunu Häyrynen, PhD, and Oleksandra Nenko, PhD. She holds an MA in Cultural Management from the University of Manchester and the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (2020), as well as an MA in Art Theory from Hongik University (2018). She has extensive experience in curating, organizing, and writing about contemporary art, with a particular focus on artist residencies, sustainability, and institutional relationships.
E3: Reframing Affective Engagements: The Role of Flat Emotions in Fostering Emotional (and Environmental) Sustainability
Tilde Strandbygaard Jessen
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
In this paper, I examine how visitors engage with interpretative practices addressing the climate impact of contemporary construction at the Open Air Museum in Denmark, and what such engagements imply for the role of history museums in fostering emotional sustainability.
Drawing inspiration from critical heritage scholar Laurajane Smith’s work on emotional heritage, the analysis shows that visitors’ responses are shaped not only by what Smith calls authorised heritage discourses, but also by broader value-based concerns, including contemporary cultural change, political values, and moral reasoning.
The study further demonstrates that affect need not be intense to have consequences. What Smith refers to as ‘flat’ forms of emotion – that is, seemingly unremarkable feelings such as comfort and calm - and the desire to maintain these states play a significant role in shaping the meanings visitors derive from their visits and, consequently, how open-air museums can effectively promote climate resilience. The same applies to flat emotions of a more negative character, such as uncertainty or indifference.
Contrary to what one might expect, considering ongoing affective and political polarisation, attention to subtler emotions appears, then, to be key to understanding, navigating, and cultivating museum visitors’ reflective and emotional resilience in a time of polycrisis.
Keywords
Sustainability communication, Open Air Museums, Visitors, Flat emotions, impact
Bio of the Authors
Tilde Strandbygaard Jessen, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, is a critical heritage scholar researching museum’s engagement with contemporary societal challenges and the ways in which visitors and the broader public understand and respond to such interventions.
E4: Museology & Posthuman Anxiety: An Ethics of Reparative Care for Public Pedagogy in the Polycrisis
Dr. Nicole Ritchie
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
Abstract
This presentation will offer a glimpse into my forthcoming book The Psychoanalytic Culture of the Anthropocene: Posthuman Anxiety & Narration of Crisis (Routledge, 2027). This text proposes the concept of posthuman anxiety, which is conceived through bringing Kleinian psychoanalysis in dialogue with posthumanist theory. I focus on how the contemporary anthropogenic crisis in foundational posthumanist theorizing becomes a story of anxieties – the way crisis gains its affective position and demands forms of intervention, i.e., modes of care or caretaking. Throughout, I turn to the political genealogy of the museum and its shifting interpretative ideologies as an exemplary realm for elucidating the ethical implications of public pedagogy and its potentiality for mobilizing collective care in the Anthropocene.
In this presentation, I will focus on how Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic concept of reparation offers insight for “emotional sustainability” as well as its ethical implications for the narration of crisis in museums. I will first offer a synopsis of Klein’s pendulum swing of development, which posits reparation as a capacity to cope through the integration of life and death’s ambivalence. This sketch will politicize her framework for our contemporary moment and its literalization in the polycrisis, particularly in navigating not merely the fear of our own annihilation, of being potentially inconsequential to the futurity of one’s world, but also the fear of our unavoidable humanity, of always being of consequence in contributing to such crisis. I will then place the concept of reparation in dialogue with Puig de la Bellacasa’s concept of matters of care, exploring how ethical obligations of reparative care enrich the meaning of emotional sustainability within the context of the anthropogenic crisis. In conclusion, I will speculate on an ethics of reparative care for collective storytelling in museology and prospective routes for future research to mobilize this theoretical framework in practice.
Keywords
posthumanities; psychoanalysis; critical museology; anxiety; reparative care
Bio of the Authors
Dr. Nicole Ritchie is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Thought and a Master of Museum Studies. From 2017-22, Ritchie worked as a Research Associate with Dr. Angela Failler, Canada Research Chair in Culture & Public Memory, within the Thinking through the Museum research network. Her research was published in a 2022 special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society on “Trauma & Repair in the Museum” and her first solo-authored manuscript is forthcoming (2027) with Routledge in the More-than-Human Humanities book series.
F1: Concern for Collections: Museums and Cultural Policy Change
Doctoral researcher Pinja Haukkavaara
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
My dissertation examines the impact of cultural policy cuts and intensification on Finnish contemporary museums. A central focus is the numerous relocations and new construction projects currently shaping the Finnish museum sector, reflecting broader transformations within the field. The wave of museum construction across Finland mirrors the ongoing cultural policy change and the shifting values, needs and roles (Viita-Aho 2025) of museums. At the same time, large-scale international “super-museums” (Murtoniemi 2024) are being built. Museum construction projects not only materialize political ideologies but also actively shape and negotiate new values and worldviews through architecture (Lohtaja 2022).
While cultural policy change affects museum environments and construction, it also influences the status and future of museum collections. My extensive interview data shows that both museum professionals and members of the public participating in the research articulate their thoughts and concerns about shifting cultural policy values. Remarkably, nearly every interviewee reflects on the significance of collections amid ongoing transformations.
The earlier paradigm shift from object-centric to experience-centric museums (e.g. Hein 2000) gains a new and challenging dimension when cultural policy cuts reduce the resources allocated to collection work. This may lead to a more superficial understanding of collections and of the choices, research and reinterpretations connected to them. Interviewees also highlighted another dimension of material cultural heritage: people’s emotional attachment to museum buildings and their importance as anchors of cultural memory.
In conclusion, the position of material cultural heritage within the current cultural policy transformation raises concerns among museum people. The presentation will examine these concerns and discuss emerging approaches to exhibiting collections, including pop-up events and open storages with study centres, which offer alternative means of sustaining the visibility and relevance of collections.
Keywords
budget cuts, cultural policy, collections, museum buildings, material heritage
Bio of the Authors
MA, BSocSc Pinja Maria Haukkavaara is pursuing a doctoral dissertation in ethnology and museology at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on the recent role changes of museums and the intensification of cultural policy, as well as museum relocations and new constructions. She has worked in four different museums and cultural heritage environments.
F2: Employee Motivation in a Company-Based Museum: A Case Study of the Finnish Music Hall of Fame
Doctoral researcher Helena Laukkoski
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
This presentation examines museum work and emotional sustainability in a for-profit organisational context. The Finnish Music Hall of Fame (Music Museum Fame) was opened in October 2019. The museum was established as a limited company, giving it a for-profit legal status. This was exceptional because, in the Finnish museum field, most professional museums are operated by the state, municipalities, or non-profit foundations. The museum had a promising start but was forced to close for several months due to the COVID-19 restrictions. In late 2023, the museum was transformed into a non-profit limited company. The company operating Music Museum Fame filed for bankruptcy at the end of April 2024, and the museum closed its doors in early May 2024 because it did not receive enough visitors to generate revenue sufficient to cover the museum’s costs.
Drawing on semi-structured, thematic key-informant interviews with the museum management and staff, I explore how the for-profit organisational form shaped work practices and employee motivation within the museum. The analysis indicates that the employee motivation was influenced by engagement with music-related topics, opportunities for professional development, and collaborative teamwork. The motivational factors and challenges reflect emotional sustainability in a museum organisation. By examining what motivates employees in their work, we can develop the working environment to better respond to the challenges caused by budget cuts and a changing operational environment.
Keywords
emotional sustainability; for-profit museums; museum work; museum professionals; organisational form
Bio of the Authors
Helena Laukkoski (M.A.) is a doctoral researcher in cultural policy at the University of Jyväskylä. Her dissertation, which combines cultural policy and museology, is a qualitative case study of the Music Museum Fame and the impact of a company-based model on the museum’s operations.
F3: The University of the Philippines Manila – Museum of a History of Ideas: Building Emotional Sustainability and Pride of Place
Dr. Prof. Honey Libertine Achanzar-Labor
University of the Philippines Manila, Manila, Philippines
Abstract
Amid ongoing socio-political and ecological crises, the University of the Philippines Manila - Museum of a History of Ideas opened in October 2014 with an exhibit designed to prompt visitors to reflect on the societal role and agency of Filipinos from the establishment of the university during American Rule and into the present. Instead of the initial plan of focusing on medical artifacts, the museum’s seven curated galleries are dedicated to evoking memory, promoting emotional sustainability, and restoring pride of place within a community deeply affected by war, as well as natural and human disasters.
A thematic approach was employed, selecting objects and archival documents that best illustrated key moments in the university’s involvement in nation-building and resistance to both colonial influence and social upheavals. Selection criteria included the item's potential to trigger personal or collective memory, relevance to community histories, and capacity to spark dialogue about identity and resilience. Whenever possible, narratives were developed around artifacts to reveal stories behind the materials and objects on display.
Through the critical selection of museum objects and archival documents that emphasize the University of the Philippines’ intellectual contributions to nation building, the UP Manila - Museum of a History of Ideas seeks to address affective polarization among 1) the residents of pre-World War II Ermita and their ancestral homes, 2) the Archdiocesan Shrine of the Nuestra Senora de Guia and its parishioners, and 3) the constituent units of the university system.
The museum also aims to foster both individual and collective resilience and deepen pride of place among Ermita community members, as well as encourage reflection on the wider societal significance of emotional sustainability.
Keywords
Emotional Sustainability, Pride of Place, Biocultural Heritage, Heritage Building, Ermita
Bio of the Authors
Dr. Honey Libertine Achanzar-Labor is a professor and museum director at the University of the Philippines Manila. She works on conservation issues through interdisciplinary research, teaching, and multi-media knowledge transfer and praxis. As Special Assistant to the UP Manila Chancellor for the Museum of the History of Ideas, she has been tasked to manage its collection.
Dr. Achanzar-Labor received her degrees in BA Humanities (Pre-Med), Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy (Philippines Studies) from the University of the Philippines Diliman, with Anthropology of Art as a research discipline. She was conferred the title of University Artist under the Arts Productivity Program of the University of the Philippines System for two consecutive terms, for her research, publication, and promotion of cultural heritage. She has also been awarded the Emmanuel Soriano Professorial Chair Award and is a 3-time recipient of the One U.P. Professorial Chair Award.
Her research interests include Heritage Conservation, Southeast Asian Art, Anthropology of Art, and Medical Anthropology. Her most recent publication, Heritage Negotiations in Manila and Pampanga: The Use of Toponyms in the Study of Two Biocultural Landscapes in the Philippines, is a chapter in the Ramamoorthy, S., Buot Jr., I.E., Rajasekaran, C. (eds) Plant Diversity in Biocultural Landscapes, published this year (in 2023) by Springer, Singapore. Among her other publications are a chapter in the book Religious Tourism in Asia: Tradition and Change Through Case Studies, published by CABI, Oxford, in 2018, and an article, “The Ibaloi of Benguet as Active Agents in Health Negotiations” in the Philippine Journal of Health Research and Development. She also writes for a column in the Davao Catholic Herald.
Dr. Achanzar-Labor is a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). She is also the Founding Executive Director of The Faura Project, a vibrant organization that promotes heritage conservation in Manila. She is also the convenor of the annual Flores de May Festivals and Conferences, as well as the International Symposium for Cultural Tourism and Heritage Studies.
F4: The Qasr Garden Museum: Conservation and the Polarization of Collective Memory
Sara Sabet
University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Abstract
Rebuilt in 2012, the Qasr Garden Museum in Tehran shows how a single place can hold many layers of history and how difficult it is to preserve them all. Originally a royal garden from the Qajar era, the site later became a modern prison in the early 20th century and was reshaped again after the 1979 Revolution. Each transformation reflects different political and social moments, making its conservation both complex and contested.
A central challenge in the project was deciding whether to protect the site as a public cultural space or redevelop it for commercial purposes. In the end, public preservation was chosen. The garden was restored, and the former prison buildings were turned into a museum. However, this process raised deeper questions about which parts of the past should be remembered and which could be left out.
Based on ethnographic observations, interviews with former prisoners and design professionals, and document analysis, this study reveals that the experiences of political prisoners were pushed aside. Their stories and physical traces were only partially included or remained unspoken, emphasizing increasing political polarization in and through the museum. Experts frequently justified these gaps by citing aesthetic concerns, notions of authenticity, practical limitations, or the complexity of conflicting narratives.
As a result, the museum offers a selective and simplified version of history. The Qasr case highlights how conservation can shape, and sometimes deepen, divided understandings of the past, even as overlooked voices continue to find ways to be remembered.
Keywords
Collective Memory; Qasr Garden Museum; Architectural Conservation
Bio of the Authors
Sara Sabet is a PhD student in Architecture at the University of Oulu, focusing on collective memory, and supported by the Kone Foundation. She began by studying socio-spatial segregation during her master’s degree, then expanded into collective design. She is interested in socio-cultural themes in architecture and urban design.
G1: Encountering Loss, Relearning Heritage: Difficult Emotions and Emotional Sustainability in Sámi Heritage Contexts
Dr. Áile Aikio
University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
Abstract
This paper interrogates the emotional regimes that structure contemporary discourses on Indigenous repatriation and collaboration between museums and Indigenous communities. Public and institutional narratives often emphasize positive affects such as joy, gratitude, and reconciliation. This study asks what forms of emotional expression these narratives enable or foreclose. It focuses particularly on the marginalization of difficult emotions, including grief, loss, anger, and disappointment, and considers the implications of this affective framing for emotional sustainability.
Focusing on Sámi contexts, the paper develops two interrelated perspectives. First, it examines how encounters with Indigenous cultural heritage in museum collections, together with the ongoing realities of museum governance over such heritage and access to it, generate complex and often conflicting emotional responses. What does it mean to engage with ancestral belongings that remain under institutional ownership? How are individuals and communities expected to process the emotional weight of historical violence alongside its present-day continuities? What capacities do museums have to recognize and ethically respond to these affective demands, particularly when such encounters may trigger intergenerational trauma?
Second, the paper explores the emotional dimensions of relearning disrupted or lost Indigenous knowledge and practices. In some cases, such knowledge has been displaced from communities and survives primarily in museum collections. How does it feel to relearn traditions that were not transmitted across generations? What kinds of emotional responses emerge when absence, interruption, and inherited loss become part of the learning process? Relearning Sámi duodji traditions in this context is not only a process of revitalization but also an affective encounter with these conditions. These experiences can challenge dominant narratives of empowerment by foregrounding vulnerability, ambivalence, and pain.
By foregrounding socially constrained emotions, the paper argues that emotionally sustainable museum practices must move beyond celebratory narratives and create space for a broader spectrum of affective experiences.
Keywords
repatriation, emotions, Sámi people, Indigenous Peoples, duodji
Bio of the Authors
Áile Aikio (she/her) is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Finland. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and a MA in Ethnology. Her research interests include Sámi cultural heritage and art, decolonization and indigenization of heritage practices, and most recently multibeing coexistence. Currently Aikio is working in the MultiBEING Centre of Excellence funded by the Research Council of Finland.
G2: "Closed doors and conditional keys": the village museum as affective boundary object in a multi-ethnic Transylvanian village
Andrea Kis
Independent, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abstract
The village museum in Marossárpatak is a beautiful white building with a dark brown fence and a Szekler gate. It is also closed. Its key is held in the mayor's office, and access depends on who asks. When I visit it the first time with the village's public notary, an ethnic Hungarian whose family items are on display, the door eventually opens and we walk through unsupervised. When I visit it again with the local Roma adviser, who tells me on the way that he has never seen the museum and wants to know "what kind of Roma thing is in there," the keys are conditional: we may look, but we may not photograph. A municipal worker is sent to follow us in, stand in the room making loud phone calls.
Drawing on decolonial feminist methodology (Cueva et al. 2024; Nagar 2002) and Haraway's situated knowledges (1988), this paper theorises the village museum as what I term an "affective boundary object": an institution whose primary work is not curation but the differential management of emotional access. Building on Verdery's work (2018) on post-socialist memory politics and critical museology's attention to silences, I argue that the museum's absence of Roma presence (despite two centuries of community history) constitutes "archival violence" (Fuentes 2016): the systematic erasure that produces Hungarian belonging through Roma exclusion. Reading the two visits alongside parallel memory practices reveals how emotional sustainability operates as racialised infrastructure: producing affective security for some visitors while enforcing what I call "memorial dispossession" for others. This analysis contributes to feminist critiques of institutional emotional labour by centering how affective commons are constructed through the active production of emotional harm, particularly under conditions of polycrisis where marginalised communities face intensified pressures of cultural erasure.
Keywords: decolonial feminism, archival violence, post-socialist Transylvania, Roma communities, emotional labour
Bio: Andrea Kis is a researcher based in Amsterdam. She holds a Research Master in Social Sciences (Interpretative Methods) from the University of Amsterdam and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from VU Amsterdam. Her research centres on ethnic boundary-making, belonging, and feminist methodology in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, with dissertation fieldwork conducted in a multi-ethnic Transylvanian village. Her writing has appeared in Eurozine and Allegra Lab.
G3: Case study: Resilience and agency in museum space and beyond
Director Latif Fayez1, Museum Director Ilona Niinikangas2
1Hazara Culture House in Finland, Helsinki, Finland. 2Helinä Rautavaara Museum, Espoo, Finland
Abstract
This case study examines the ways diaspora community and cultural institution can cultivate social and emotional sustainability and strengthen resilience in the society.
The study is based on the collaborate heritage work in the form of exhibition. The exhibition Roots and reflections. Living traditions of the Hazara people was curated by Hazara Culture House in Finland and displayed in Helinä Rautavaara Museum in 2026. The exhibition showed how cultural heritage is maintained in diaspora and highlighted resilience and agency as living heritage.
Since the 1890s, the Hazara community has been one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Although religiously diverse, Hazaras consist of Shia, Sunni, and Ismaili Muslims, but the majority are Shia Muslims, whom the Taliban in particular consider heretics. In spite of long and complex history of persecution, marginalization and forceful displacement, the Hazara people have developed a distinctive cultural identity shaped by their language, artistic traditions, social practices, and collective historical experiences.
The case study is linked to the growing body of research on migrant and minority community participation in museum practice.
Keywords
Community participation, inclusion, resilience, social sustainability, diaspora communities
Bio of the Authors
Latif Fayaz is currently the Director of the Hazara Culture House in Finland, Deputy board member of Moniheli and Co-researcher in Hazara community case study political participation in Overcoming Barriers to Democratic Participation with Minoritized and Marginalized Groups (OBaMA) project. Fayaz has earlier worked for NATO and UN in Afghanistan. He holds MA in International Relations.
Ilona Niinikangas is a museum director of Helinä Rautavaara Museum. She cherishes collaborate heritage work and museum activisms and believes that museums are great places to make quiet changes in the society. She has previously worked in non governmental sector. She holds MA in cultural anthropology.
G4: Missing objects and affective fragments: Reparative curating of queer heritage
Johanna Pohtinen
Abstract
In this presentation, I discuss how affective strategies can be employed to produce an exhibition centred on the cultural heritage of a marginalized group, and how this approach can be reparative. I explore this in the context of an exhibition at the Helsinki City Museum called M/S Baltic Queers – Experiences of LGBTQAI+ Migration. There is a pressing need for history among queer individuals, yet the material available is often fragmented due to systemic oppression. I apply the concept of ‘reparative curating’ to demonstrate how fragmented heritage can be ‘patched up’ and mapped through affective means. The act of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the marginalised experience is an ethico-political choice that can affect the surrounding society but also gives an understanding of a shared past as well as a sense of belonging and continuity to the members of the marginalised community.
Keywords
affective strategies, fragments, museum exhibition, queer heritage, reparative curating
Bio of the Authors
Johanna Pohtinen, PhD, is a post doc researcher interested in the affectivity of museum experiences and collections, the relationship of museum audiences to collections, and queer cultural heritage. In their previous research, Pohtinen has explored the kink community from the perspectives of everyday life, identity, and affect.
H1: From Saunas to Museums: Heritage Spaces as Sites for Dialogue and Imagination
Doctoral researcher Anna Talasniemi
Jyväskylä University, Jyväskylä, Finland
Abstract
What kind of public spaces can museums be for dialogue? In this presentation, I combine insights from my sauna‑related doctoral research and my Fulbright project conducted in the United States. Both share an interest in heritage spaces as sites for dialogue, imagination and social transformation.
As part of my Fulbright Mid‑Career Professional Development project, Museums for the Future: Museums as Sites for Societal and Ethical Discussion and Change (spring 2025), I engaged with museums and memorial initiatives in the United States through visits, interviews, coursework, and professional exchange. My focus was particularly on dialogical and future‑oriented museum practices, and on how museums can function as public spaces that hold emotional complexity rather than seek closure or consensus.
Drawing on examples such as the Public Housing Museum (Chicago), the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial (Chicago), the Tenement Museum (New York), and the activities of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, I explore how museums have facilitated and facilitate dialogue through care‑oriented and community‑based practices. These practices resonate with my doctoral research on saunas as heritage spaces that enable embodied experience, emotional processing, and imagination — qualities that I argue are equally relevant to museums.
Keywords
dialogue, care, museums, public space, critical heritage studies
Bio of the Authors
Anna Talasniemi is a Finnish arts and culture professional and a doctoral researcher in Art Education at the University of Jyväskylä. Her dissertation, Sauna Dialogues: Sauna as a Site for Making Heritage Futures, critically examines Finnish sauna culture through methodologies drawing from dialogical aesthetics and futures studies. In spring 2025, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) through the ASLA–Fulbright Mid‑Career Professional Development Program. Her Fulbright project, Museums for the Future: Museums as Sites for Societal and Ethical Discussion and Change, focused on dialogical, inclusive, and future‑oriented museum practices in the United States.
H2: Happy patients, happy families: Kellokoski hospital museum as a space for building the affective performance of museum visiting
BA Sofia Saarinen
University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
Abstract
This year Finland has once again been named the happiest country in the world. But it hasn’t always been that way, and the history of mental health care is partly very dark and even disturbing to some. The Kellokoski hospital museum is one of only a handful of hospital museums in Finland and one of two specifically focusing on the history of mental illness. Therefore, it holds the power to construct a narrative to the public of how Finnish people have treated and understood mental illnesses and the people affected by them throughout the years. Located in a former mental hospital, the Kellokoski hospital museum is a space that has the potential to unlock various different emotions and affects in visitors. Providing them the tools with which they can accept and move through the possible affective and emotional experiences that arise during a visit to a former mental hospital is an important way of ensuring the emotional sustainability that hospital museums have the potential to build.
Using the theoretical framework of affect studies and the concept of controlled and entangled spaces, I will discuss the potential of hospital museums as evokers of empathy and spaces for catharsis. With the Kellokoski hospital museum as a case study, I will argue that the specific performance of museum visiting enacted by visitors in the museum is constructed between the visitors existing relationship to issues of mental health and the space and objects within it. I am hopeful that this paper will contribute a meaningful perspective to the mostly unrecognized affective power held by hospital museums and serve as a starting point for the harnessing of that power to create braver, more affective and cathartic visitor experiences in hospital museums present and future.
Keywords
affect, space, hospital museum, performance, catharsis
Bio of the Authors
Sofia Saarinen (sosaarin[at]uef.fi) is a masters degree student in the department of Folklore studies in the university of Eastern Finland. She is finishing up her undergraduate in Folklore studies with a focus on cultural mental health studies, gender studies and psychology. Her bachelor's thesis – which her poster is also based on – is called "Museum or hospital? An ethnographic study on space and affect in the Kellokoski hospital museum" (2026). It explored the affects that activated or stayed dormant in museum visitors during their visit to Kellokoski hospital museum and how they intertwined with the spaces and objects the visitors were in contact with. Sofia is interested in continuing to explore the potential of hospital museums as places to move through and process different, sometimes shocking emotions or affects.
H3: From Documentation to Discourse – Museums, Built Heritage, and Emotional Sustainability
Title of docent (architectural heritage) Iida Kalakoski
Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Abstract
We propose a paper that examines how museum practices of documenting and presenting the changes in the built environment reflect and contribute to emotional sustainability. The paper draws on three peer‑reviewed articles previously authored by us.
The first article, Surusta kiukkuun: Kadonnut kaupunki Helsinkiä, Tamperetta ja Turkua käsittelevissä 2000‑luvun valokuvateoksissa (Tekojen kaupunki, 2025), analyses how demolished buildings are represented in memory‑oriented photographic works and how these representations shape urban remembrance. The second article, Museonäyttelyt ja ‑julkaisut rakennussuojelukeskustelussa: Tapauksena Vapriikin kadonneet kaunottaret (Suomen Museo – Finskt Museum, 2025), examines the role of a museum exhibition and its accompanying publications in building conservation discourse. The third article, Katoavan kaupungin kuvat: Juhani Riekkolan Amuri‑teos muutoksen tallentajana (Ennen ja nyt, 2026), explores how photographic practices participate in remembering a disappearing urban environment.
Across all three articles, shared questions of memory, loss, and the mediation of built heritage come to the fore. Central to this shared concern is the selection of what is remembered and how practices of remembrance are shaped. From the perspective of this paper, we are particularly interested in how documented materials actively guide public understandings of the past and evoke emotional responses.
We argue that documenting the built environment and disseminating curated knowledge are not neutral acts, but forms of cultural heritage production. Building on this premise, the paper conceptualises documentation practices as a form of built‑heritage discourse (cf. the Authorised Heritage Discourse; Smith, 2006), and examines how practices of remembering and dominant heritage framings shape what people come to perceive as possible, desirable, or inevitable. In doing so, the paper explores how documentation influences values, imaginations, and attachments, and how these cultural and material effects condition emotional sustainability in times of polycrisis.
Keywords
historical documentation, museums, built heritage, discourse, memory
Bio of the Authors
Iida Kalakoski is an architect with a title of Docent (Architectural Heritage). She works as a University Lecturer in Built Heritage Management at Tampere University and leads the Kone Foundation‑funded research project Korjaamisen käänne (The Repair Shift) as well as the Future‑oriented Heritage (ForHer) research group.
Riina Sirén is an architect, building conservator and a doctoral researcher specialising in the power relations of building repair. She teaches and conducts research on the meanings and maintenance of built heritage at Tampere University as part of the Future‑oriented Heritage research group.
H4: PHOTOGRAPHY AS A MEDIATOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
Researcher Yki Hytönen
Helsinki City Museum, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
The presentation examines the change in the built milieu and the photo's ability to convey that change. The change can be seen when comparing photos taken from the same area in different eras. At the core of the examination is spatial experience in the physical milieu and its change. Spatial experience is connected to place experience, to the fact that a person living in an area can identify a certain area as one's home. Changes in the environment can be mild and gradual or drastic and fast. They can transform the experience of a break in the continuity of the local community into an experience of their own home region. Especially in urban environments, constant change creates discontinuity, which should be counterbalanced by experiences of continuity. A photograph is able to produce spatial experiences that can be used to get behind the change in time. By framing the verifiable change of the photographs in the description of social development, the background factors of the change in the living environment can be made visible. The aim of the presentation is, on the other hand, to offer aspects of improving the collective resilience related to the change of the local community by integrating into the change. On the other hand, making change visible can give museums one tool to participate in the social debate and towards more emotionally sustainable society.
Keywords
Change, resilience, photograph, spatial experience, continuity
Bio of the Authors
Yki Hytönen graduated from the University of Helsinki with a major in Finnish history in the mid-1990s and then worked for 14 years at the historical research agency Oy Spiritus Historiae Ab, writing organizational, company and association histories. During the past 15 years, he has worked as a researcher at the Helsinki City Museum and the Finnish Museum of Photography. His last three books have dealt with the history of Finnish photography. Hytönen is currently working as a researcher at the Helsinki City Museum's photo collections. He is a keen photographer and has worked as a teacher of visual expression at working-class colleges.
WORKHOPS:
Workshop 1: Rethinking Heritage Practices: Working with Dissonance and Difficult Emotions
Dr. Satu Kähkönen, Finnish Heritage Agency, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
How should heritage practices be transformed to address social and emotional sustainability alongside spatial, historical, and aesthetic concerns?
Heritage professionals working with both the built environment and archaeological contexts encounter sites shaped by loss, environmental transformation, unresolved conflict and histories that are, in one way or another, contested or silenced. At the same time, prevailing professional frameworks, guidelines, and institutional routines tend to prioritize coherence, consensus, and positively framed narratives. As a result, emotionally difficult experiences—such as grief, anger, injustice, or ambivalence—are often muted, managed away, or left outside everyday heritage practice.
This workshop invites museum and heritage professionals, practitioners, and researchers to explore how existing heritage practices—across both built and archaeological domains—could be rethought and reshaped to better engage with contradiction, emotional dissonance, and contested meanings. Rather than focusing on resolving conflict or producing shared narratives, the workshop asks how heritage work might acknowledge, hold, and work with emotional complexity as an inherent aspect of cultural heritage sites and landscapes.
The workshop is grounded in research on heritage processes related to mid-twentieth-century hydropower environments in Northern Finland (see: Kähkönen, S. 2024. “Vesivoimarakentamisen ristiriitainen kulttuuriperintö” in Lähdesmäki, T., Kähkönen, S., Paqvalén, R., Turunen, J. Kenen kulttuuriperintö? Tunteet, tilat & teot. Vastapaino.), but the discussion is open and relevant to a wide range of heritage contexts and cases, including built and archaeological heritage, as well as layered cultural landscapes.
The workshop invites discussion around questions such as:
What emotionally difficult or contested themes emerge in heritage work, and how are they addressed or silenced?
Which established routines or expectations limit engagement with conflict, loss, or contested interpretations?
How could participatory processes be designed to allow disagreement without forcing consensus?
What kinds of skills, tools, or institutional support would enable a shift in practice?
The workshop combines a short introductory framing with facilitated discussion and joint reflection. Discussion builds on participants’ experiences, examples, challenges, and questions from their work.
Those interested in participating are encouraged to get in touch with the workshop organizer in advance to suggest themes or cases they would like to bring into the discussion. Contact email: satu.kahkonen[at]museovirasto.fi.
Keywords
built heritage, cultural environment, heritage dissonance, conflicting narratives, participatory practice
Bio of the Authors
Satu Kähkönen holds a PhD in Art History and works as a Senior Adviser at the Finnish Heritage Agency. She coordinates collaboration between the Agency and the museums with regional responsibility to preserve cultural environments, encompassing landscapes, built heritage, and archaeological sites. Prior to her current role, she worked as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, where she specialized in design and architectural history and Finnish heritage and environmental administration. Her teaching experience includes general art history, design history, and architectural history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Workshop 2: Co‑Creating a Nordic Network for Inclusive Museum Research: Dialogue, Practice, and Future Directions
PhD Cinthya Lana1, PhD Stefanie Steinbeck
1University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden. 2National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark. 3Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Abstract
Museums across the Nordic region are increasingly expected to advance social sustainability, inclusion, and participation. Yet these ambitions unfold unevenly: participation gaps persist, institutional conditions vary, and emotional and organisational demands on museum work are intensifying. Addressing these challenges calls for new forms of cross-Nordic collaboration that move beyond national frameworks.
This participatory workshop introduces the Nordic Network for Inclusive Museum Research (NO-NORMS), an emerging initiative aimed at building a collaborative platform for research on emotional and social sustainability in museums. The network focuses on three interconnected dimensions of institutional life: (1) visitors and users, (2) staff and organisations, and (3) archives and collections. Together, these perspectives foreground how access, representation, and labour are intertwined, shaping museums’ capacity to act as socially and emotionally sustainable institutions.
Designed as an interactive session, the workshop invites participants to actively contribute to this emerging research agenda. Attendees will be encouraged to share short, practice-oriented examples, methodological questions, or institutional experiences related to challenges such as contested histories, participatory practices, organisational tensions, and unequal relationships between museums and their publics.
The session will begin with a brief introduction to the network’s aims and conceptual grounding in care-oriented, affective, and institutional approaches. Facilitated small-group discussions will then enable participants to exchange perspectives across national and professional contexts and identify shared concerns.
The workshop aims to generate concrete outcomes, including potential research themes, collaborative formats, and ideas for future funding and publications. It will conclude with collective reflection and initial planning toward establishing a sustained Nordic research network.
Keywords
Inclusive museums; Nordic collaboration; social sustainability; institutional change; museum research
Bio of the Authors
Cinthya Lana, ph.d., researcher
Bio: Cinthya Lana is a Brazilian researcher and curator specializing in Amazonian anthropology, cultural heritage, and decolonial museum practices. Her work examines the intersections of biodiversity, Indigenous knowledge systems, and heritage governance. She has led international research projects on digital restitution in collaboration with the National Museums of World Culture and the National Museum of Brazil. Her collaborations include major institutions such as the British Museum and Wellcome Collection in London. She is the author of Amazonian Indigenous Cultures in Art and Anthropological Exhibitions. Her research contributes to debates on Indigenous data sovereignty, restitution, and sustainable heritage futures.
Stefanie Steinbeck, ph.d., postdoctoral researcher
Bio: Stefanie Steinbeck is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Museum of Denmark. Their work examines peoples embodied, emotional, and material engagements in cultural settings, with particular attention to the perspectives of children. They are trained as an anthropologist and specialise in explorative qualitative methodologies, working at the intersection of research and practice to bring a critical lens to how cultural institutions shape visitor experiences. They lead Track 1 in NO‑NORMS, focusing on visitors and users.
Marie Wengler, ph.d., postdoctoral researcher
Bio: Marie Wengler is an Postdoctoral Fellow at Copenhagen Business School. Her research investigates the taken‑for‑granted assumptions that shape organisational life and institutional practice. Marie is also an emerging lens‑based visual artist and co‑founder of DÍSIR – Nordic Womxn Photographers. She leads Track 2 in NO‑NORMS, focusing on staff and organisations.