Exhibitions
Learning in a fun environment: Vellamo’s many permanent and temporary exhibitions offer something for everyone!
Current exhibitions
Crime and Rugs
Graffiti rugs by Niina Mantsinen 11.12.2020-28.2.2021
Niina Mantsinen (born 1986) is a textile artist from North Karelia, Finland, whose works are based on graffiti, street art and traditional ryijy wall rugs. In her ryijys, Mantsinen combines the urban and illegal sides of graffiti with cosy, warm and traditional...
Olavi Heino: Fort Slava – Built on Sand
Poems and paintings from the Kukouri Fortress 5.11.2020-21.2.2021
Artist Olavi Heino says: I like to paint in series. This way I do not need to empty my creative arsenal all at once but instead I can utilize my ideas, as I have done here, in 20 paintings on the same theme. Compared to a poem, one verse corresponds to one painting...
Fateful Svensksund
9.6.2020-17.1.2027
Experience the Maritime Centre Vellamo’s most impressive and influential exhibition yet! The Fateful Svensksund exhibition is a never-before-seen dive into the Svensksund naval battles, the largest ever in the Baltic Sea, fought just off the coast of Kotka. The...
I do! Stories of Love.
7.6.2019–30.10.2022
What would life be without love or the daily life without a little celebration? Love and celebration meet at the I do! Stories of Love exhibition, where visitors get to admire Kymenlaakso region’s wedding gowns and love stories from the past 100 years. The feel-good...
Sea Monsters
12.4.2019–16.1.2022
When the earth was flat and the seas teemed with monsters... The monsters of old naval charts have been brought to life and made concrete: Come in, explore and play! The Sea Monsters exhibition will take you to the dangerous waters of the Carta marina map from 1539....
Play Town
Play Town for children. Enjoy!
Time flies at Play Town in Vellamo. Drive a bus or a tractor, play in the small market stall or kitchen! Maritime Centre Vellamo also has many other things to see and do for people of all ages. Can you find all activity points at Vellamo? There are a lot of them,...
Glass for Everyone – Karhula 1889–2009
19.5.2017–31.1.2022
The Karhula glassworks (1889–2009) was one of Finland’s most important glassworks. In the 1930s, Karhula played a key role as Finnish glass design discovered its own language of expression and made its international breakthrough. Although art glass was important,...
Boat Hall
An impressive collection of boats from different decades
Beautiful boats and coast guard equipment Boat Hall exhibits an impressive collection of boats from different decades. They have been used for racing and leisure cruising, military and coast guard operations, fishing and rescuing. The centre stage in Boat Hall is...
Mosaic
Glimpses into the history of Kotka and Kymenlaakso Mosaic provides different and even surprising glimpses into the history of Kotka and Kymenlaakso. The aim is to highlight themes, items and pictures from our collections that have not previously been on display in...
The Coast Guard Museum
The maritime operations of the Finnish Border Guard from the prohibition era to the present day.
The Coast Guard Museum, built in cooperation with the Finnish Border Guard, sheds light on the work of coast guards from the 1930s to the present day. The Coast Guard Museum exhibits the Beaver and Sääski surveillance aircraft, which controlled borders from the air,...
North Star, Southern Cross
The sea conveys. At the Maritime Museum of Finland you can travel on the surface and in the depths. The sea is a medium for people, goods and ideas. At the Maritime Museum of Finland you can travel on the sea through time and place, on ships, at ports, in distant...
Upcoming exhibitions
Now I love
Exhibition on joy, sorrow and other emotions 12.3.-30.5.2021
Join us on an exploration of emotions! Now I love is a captivating multisensory art adventure where you get to immerse yourself in different emotions safely by the power of your imagination. The brightly coloured parasol of joy swirls around amidst books while anger...
Past exhibitions
From the Soil
11.9.-29.11.2020
When you look at the curves of your body, what do you see? A fell and northern lights, pores and bone shapes? ANTOcollective’s From the Soil exhibition examines the human body, seeking landscape-like qualities and abstract shapes. The pictures, videos and soundscape...
Washed Ashore. Photographs by Johanna Sandin.
1.9.-1.11.2020
As I have walked along the beaches of my hometown Hanko with my camera in hand, I have become increasingly aware of the plastic and other debris lying around. More and more often I have had to remove disturbing colorful plastic objects from an otherwise scenic...
Starry Night – paintings by Maaria Märkälä
5.6.-30.8.2020
Maaria Märkälä (born 1964) is a landscape painter whose paintings are inspired by her own everyday life and trips abroad. For Märkälä, the entire painting process is a form of slow travel. Märkälä’s characteristic pink and green rhododendrons have recently started to...
Icebreaker Tarmo
2.6.-16.8.2020
The Tarmo is open during the summer, next time in the summer of 2021. See you then! You can now enjoy a 360-degree virtual tour onboard the Tarmo! The script was created by curator Kerttuli Hoppa and the virtual tour was produced in cooperation with the experts and...
Living Images, Yeastograms
6.9.–1.12.2019
The Living Images Research Center opens to the Kymenlaakso Museum, Maritime Centre Vellamo on the 6th of September 2019. The exhibition includes the latest research results on yeastograms and older prints of yeast photographs. There will be real living images, the...
Harbor
27.4.2018 – 12.8.2018
Satu Loukkola, Tiina Salmi, Jouni Salonen and Annukka Visapää Sculptures, graphics and photographs Harbour. It can represent safety, a destination, mobility and variety. People arrive in the harbour and depart from it. Sometimes it is calm, other times windy. It is...
Among the Flowers. Art from the Heinänen Art Foundation Naivist Collections.
10.5.–11.8.2019
Naive art tells us about the joy of living. The collection of Heinänen Art Foundation records the breakthrough decades of naive art with its key illustrators, techniques and themes. The foundation’s collection of naive art belongs to the collection of Oulu Museum of...
Great Coastal Road
4.12.2015-30.9.2018
From riding trail to Coastal Road, from Coastal Road to motorway. Road, road-builders and travellers. Straight and flat. That is what the E18 motorway is like, taking drivers speedily across southern Finland. People have been making their way on this road since the...
Body Sensing
8.2.–28.4.2019
This exhibition produced by the Pori Centre for Children’s Culture and the Pori Art Museum and organised by curator Päivi Setälä reflects the meaning of bodily knowledge and the senses. This exhibition makes noises, smells and feels. The...
The Forgotten Meaning of Books. Books of the Hamina Orthodox Church library from the 17th to the 20th century and icons from private collections.
5.12.2018-20.1.2019
From the traditional standpoint, a book is a source of information and is meant to be read. However, the meaning of a book has never been limited to reading only and can instead be seen as much more extensive and diverse. Many of the meanings have changed and been...
A Town of Winds. Kotka Town through the Eyes of Artists.
31.8.–25.11.2018
A Town of Winds displays artworks, paintings, graphic arts and drawings which portray the City of Kotka. This exhibition presents up to 80 artworks by 32 artists portraying the City of Kotka, some of them living in Kotka, others elsewhere in Finland. The exhibition’s...
Sex and the Sea
15.6.2018 – 20.1.2019
A pin-up girl’s picture on a cabin wall speaks of longing during an excruciatingly slow ocean voyage. This exhibition, put together by international top-level artists Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greenaway, studies the loneliness, lust and eroticism amongst sailors Since...
Lost Lighthouses
18.5.2018 – 20.1.2019
Lighthouses and lighted beacons are a part of our architectural and cultural history, maritime history and sea safety. They are home islands, fixed points, memories and, in many cases, also battle grounds and innocent victims of the war years. Some lighthouses have...
Flow
I and we. The Museum of Kymenlaakso examines the human need to be part of a group but also true to oneself. “Who wouldn’t want to leave their own permanent mark on the world? As long ago as the Stone Age, people left painted handprints on cliffs and thus lived on for...