TL;DR
Get art and craft supplies delivered free with Prime
- Fast, free delivery on millions of items
- Prime Video, Amazon Music and more included
- Member-only deals all year
Arcana Borealis — Northern Women and Esotericism opens Oct. 23 at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum and runs through Feb. 28, 2027. The exhibition brings together more than 200 works by 50 artists, tracing how spiritual beliefs and shared creative practices shaped art across the Nordic region and Sápmi.
Arcana Borealis — Northern Women and Esotericism, a major exhibition examining spirituality, esoteric beliefs and artistic communities among women artists, is scheduled to open Oct. 23 at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum. The exhibition, part of the Finnish National Gallery, will bring together more than 200 works by 50 artists and remain on view through Feb. 28, 2027.
The exhibition spans painting, sculpture, textiles, stained glass and video, with work by artists including Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, Anna-Eva Bergman, Maja Fjaestad, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and contemporary Sámi artist Outi Pieski. The presentation considers how belief systems, ecological ideas and imagination influenced artistic practice, rather than treating spirituality as separate from the history of modern art.
Af Klint’s paintings are a central point of reference. The source report describes her as deeply engaged with Christian esotericism and says she understood the works as arising from spiritual channeling. It also places her early abstract paintings in a history that has often credited Wassily Kandinsky with initiating abstraction around 1910. The exhibition brings af Klint’s work into view alongside that of Anna Cassel, her collaborator in the Stockholm group known as The Five, whose members explored spiritual ideas through séances and meditation.
Another collaborative work is Pieski’s performance “Guhte gullá / Here to Hear”, made with dancers and choreographers Biret and Gáddjá Haarla Pieski. The report says the performance draws on Sámi heritage and traditional clothing, and addresses trauma linked to state-sponsored assimilation and discrimination. The exhibition’s dates and participating artists are reported by Colossal; the museum’s curators are Dr. Nina Kokkinen and Dr. Marja Lahelma.
The exhibition offers visitors a way to encounter modern art through relationships and shared belief, not only through accounts centered on isolated individual artists. Its focus on women’s creative networks puts collaboration, spiritual practice and community alongside the paintings and objects themselves.
That approach also connects art history to the different cultural settings represented in the show. By placing work from across Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sápmi within a cross-border northern frame, the exhibition asks how mythology and alternative cosmologies shaped artists’ ideas about existence, creativity and belonging. Pieski’s work adds a contemporary Sámi perspective to a program that spans historical and contemporary practice.
For audiences, the result is a broad exhibition rather than a single-artist retrospective: more than 200 works offer multiple accounts of how women made art, formed communities and drew on spiritual traditions. The subject also revisits the history of abstraction, where af Klint’s early work complicates familiar chronologies that put other artists at the beginning of the story.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
From Stockholm Circles to a Nordic Show
Around 1906, af Klint was working in Stockholm and making paintings informed by her spiritual interests. She and Cassel were part of The Five, a group of women artists who explored spiritual realms together. Their work and collaboration provide one historical thread for an exhibition that also includes later and contemporary artists.
The show’s title combines arcana, meaning “hidden knowledge,” with borealis, meaning “the north.” The museum describes the North not simply as a geographic label but as a cross-border cultural and imaginative space shaped by mythology and spiritual traditions. That framing joins artists from several Nordic countries with Sámi cultural perspectives.
The exhibition arrives amid continuing attention to how art history has described abstraction and credited its early practitioners. The supplied report notes that af Klint’s work predates the period around 1910 often associated with Kandinsky’s move into abstraction. The exhibition presents her work in that wider historical discussion, while also emphasizing the artistic relationships that shaped it.
““the myth of the lone artistic genius””
— Ateneum Art Museum, as quoted in the Colossal report
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
What the Exhibition Details Confirm
The reported schedule gives the exhibition’s opening and closing dates, venue, participating artists and overall scale. The source material does not provide ticket prices, visiting hours, access information or a complete checklist of the 200-plus works, so those details cannot be confirmed here.
The report describes the curators’ interpretation and the themes the museum says the exhibition addresses; it does not provide a full catalogue or individual artist statements for every work. The precise arrangement of works in the galleries and the extent of accompanying public programming are also not specified in the available material.
women artists spiritual art prints
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Helsinki Exhibition Opens in October
Arcana Borealis opens Oct. 23, 2026, at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki and is scheduled to close Feb. 28, 2027. Visitors seeking practical information such as ticketing and opening hours will need to consult the museum’s visitor updates; those details are not included in the source report.
The exhibition will give audiences an opportunity to see works by historical figures such as af Klint and Cassel alongside contemporary work by Pieski. Further information about the displayed works, gallery presentation and related events may become available through the museum as the opening approaches.
Sámi traditional clothing and accessories
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
Key Questions
When and where does Arcana Borealis open?
Arcana Borealis — Northern Women and Esotericism is scheduled to open Oct. 23, 2026, at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. It is due to run through Feb. 28, 2027.
How many artists and works are included?
The exhibition is reported to bring together more than 200 works by 50 artists. The available source does not list every work in the show.
Which artists are featured?
Named artists include Hilma af Klint, Anna Cassel, Anna-Eva Bergman, Maja Fjaestad, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Outi Pieski. The exhibition spans historical and contemporary work.
What does the exhibition mean by artistic communities?
It examines how collaboration and shared spiritual practices shaped artists’ work. One example is af Klint and Cassel’s participation in The Five, a Stockholm group whose members explored spiritual ideas through séances and meditation.
Are ticket and visiting-hour details available?
The source report does not specify ticket prices or opening hours. Visitors should check the Ateneum Art Museum’s current visitor information for those details.
Source: rss
Halloween Picks
halloween
As an affiliate, we earn on qualifying purchases.
