Wäinö Aaltosen Museo

Today I've been to the Wäinö Aaltosen Museo, to see the exhibition "Death and it's Many Faces," which I've been interested in seeing for a while now. It was interesting, and I've written down a lot of artist's names to look at a bit more. I thought it was good that the exhibition mainly seemed to include Finnish artists. As I've said before, I consider this a really good opportunity to look at some foreign artists who I would never hear about in England.
The piece above, "Tahrainen Suomi" (Stained Finland), is by Harro Koskinen, and it was very bold and interesting. I'm quite keen to get a flag and make a piece following this. I'm not sure what this work referred to, because I always thought the Finns were a peaceful, cheerful bunch, but it seemed to refer to guilt and blame, and obviously, death.
The work I saw covered many media and formats, with a common theme. Another good thing was that each room focussed on a different aspect of death, such as the death of animals, grief, and the depiction of Death as a character. The animal room included a giant smile constructed from cow jawbones on a steel frame, which was a bit unnerving. The show is on until March, and even though some pieces were fairly morbid I quite enjoyed myself. It's a decent sized space too. I guess it showed that some things, such as the depiction and consideration of death, are universal.
I guess this must be art week because I want to go back to Turun Taidemuseo tomorrow. I planned to go today until I found that the new exhibitions open tomorrow, so going today would have been a pointless trip. I think the work there is generally more experimental than at Wäinö Aalto, which seemed more focussed on quite traditional painting and sculpture. There weren't many contemporary works either; most were 20th century. The Taidemuseo's primary exhibition this time is of particularly outstanding works from their collection, so that should be another chance to see a lot of Finnish and Swedish work.