The Finnish National Gallery’s virtual exhibition offers a new way to experience the works of Hugo Simberg

The works on display were created in the late 1890s when Simberg was at the start of his artist journey, studying in Ruovesi under Akseli Gallen-Kallela and travelling to London, Paris and Italy.  The exhibition includes Simberg’s most beloved works from the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, such as Kuoleman puutarha (The Garden of Death, 1896) and Halla (Frost, 1895). The exhibition was curated by Marja Lahelma, PhD.

For the Finnish National Gallery, the exhibition is an important step in experimenting with how artworks from the collection can be exhibited to the public in new ways in the future. A virtual environment allows for examining the details in small original works in an enlarged size and without many of the physical world’s limitations. Simberg’s original gouache works can only be exhibited for brief periods of time. The virtual exhibition allows for studying the works from the comfort of the patron’s living room.

The exhibition is built for the Oculus Meta Quest 2 VR headset, and it has also been used as the basis for a browser-based version for Digimuseo that does not require a VR headset. The world of Hugo Simberg can be explored through VR headset on the Ateneum Art Museum's free admission day December 15, 2023. The exhibition will also be on display at the Pop and Contemporary Art Museum PoCo in Tallinn from November 6 to February 29, 2024. The Finnish National Gallery has partnered with production company Donkey Hotel Ltd and animation studio Talking Animals to implement the exhibition.

Hugo Simberg is one of the most important artists of Finnish symbolism. Myths, fairy tales and the imagination provided Simberg with a new type of art language that allowed expressing complex and complicated thoughts or emotions. The meanings of the artworks, which are in part naive in style, are not reduced to one interpretation; they always contain several overlapping layers and levels.