From 10 October 2025, the Architecture & Design Museum in Helsinki inaugurates Escape to Moominvalley, its new exhibition marking the eightieth anniversary of the Moomin stories, created by Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson. The exhibition uses the Moomins as a lens to explore how Jansson conceived space, home, and landscape, and how these ideas move from the real places of her life into the imagined settings of Moominvalley.
The exhibition path begins with the places that shaped the artist’s vision. Jansson’s Helsinki studio, where she lived and worked, and Klovharun, the small island in the archipelago where she spent her summers, are reconstructed through archival materials, personal objects, and photographs.
These are not merely biographical contexts; they are two laboratories of everyday design: the studio as a compact organism capable of holding both work and intimacy, and the island as an exercise in essentiality, where architecture meets climate, light, and the idea of limits.
From these reference points, the exhibition enters Moominvalley, reimagined as a system of spaces observed from the perspective of its inhabitants. The focus is not on illustration per se, but on how the environments function. Visitors are invited to consider what “shared space” means when standing before the Moomin family’s bath house, a structure on the water’s edge that, in the cold months, is “claimed” by different characters such as Too-Ticky and the invisible shrews. Here, the idea of possession intersects with use and hospitality, suggesting that a place can change its nature depending on who occupies it and when.
The notion of refuge runs through the entire exhibition. Jansson began writing during the Second World War, while Helsinki was under bombardment. The first book, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), tells the story of a family scattered by catastrophe in search of shelter, who eventually find a home in the valley. There, the landscape becomes a device for care. The valley offers protection from external threats without denying their existence. It filters the noise, as good architecture does when it protects without isolating.
Escape to Moominvalley extends this dual movement to today’s visitors. On the one hand, it offers a symbolic refuge from autumn and from the uncertainties of the present. On the other, it foregrounds the themes that keep the Moomins relevant: home and homelessness, solitude and community, security and vulnerability. The display avoids nostalgic aesthetics. Instead, it reflects on how spaces organise relationships. The result is a reading of the Moomins as an environmental project, where the landscape is made of timbers, stones, kitchens, jetties, boats, and small architectures that teach us how to live together.
The exhibition also features contributions by contemporary designers and architects who explore survival, shelter, community, and resilience. These projects address essential housing modules, lightweight systems for outdoor living, and minimal infrastructures for emergency or migratory contexts. Placed alongside Jansson’s materials, they point to a possible continuity between imagination and practice—between imagination as a design tool and design as a form of care.
- Titolo mostra: Escape to Moominvalley: Reflecting Reality Through Tove Jansson’s Imaginary World
- Dove: Architecture & Design Museum, Helsinki, Finlandia
Quando: 10 ottobre 2025 – 27 settembre 2026
Curatrici: Jutta Tynkkynen, Suvi Saloniemi
Organizzazione: in collaborazione con Moomin Characters
Sito: admuseo.fi >
