Exhibition policy reflects strategic intent

Pauli Sivonen, Director, SerlachiusThe exhibition policy is a document that defines the points of departure, goals and qualitative criteria of the museum’s exhibitions. It gives direction to the exhibitions.

When you enter the museum and begin to explore the exhibitions, you observe around you artworks, objects, staged environments, texts and multimedia. These elements are not in the gallery space by chance; they are all based on the design work of the museum’s curators.

Through its exhibition activity, the museum interacts with its public. This interaction, in turn, is based on the museum’s exhibition policy.

Most museums have recorded the points of departure and goals of their collection activity in their collection policy. For some reason, exhibitions, exhibition programmes and ways of making exhibitions are designed more intuitively. Very few museums have a written exhibition policy.

The board of our Fine Arts Foundation adopted Serlachius’s exhibition policy in early 2026. You can access it via the link below.

The exhibition policy is a document you don’t really need. You can very well visit Serlachius’s exhibitions however you want and as often as you wish. We would like, however, to make the exhibition policy available to you. It offers a glimpse into the thinking behind the museum’s exhibitions. You can view it as a kind of product guide for our exhibitions, or perhaps even as a user manual.

The exhibition policy opens up diverse perspectives on the museum’s exhibitions. It addresses, for example, the technical starting points of exhibition activity. What kind of exhibition spaces does the museum have, and what is the organisational rhythm of its exhibitions? What do the exhibitions tell about, and what kinds of materials are gathered in them? With whom does the museum produce exhibitions?

The exhibition policy also sets qualitative goals for the museum’s exhibitions, and metrics to evaluate their success. It must define, at least at some level, the strategic intent with which the museum develops its working methods.

Ultimately, the function of the exhibition policy is also to set goals for the museum’s impact. What does the museum want to achieve with its exhibitions? Is the intention, for example, to offer museum visitors aesthetic experiences, educate them, or act as their conversation partner?

It is essential, of course, that the exhibition policy does not become a constraint that shackles or monotonises exhibitions. It is intended to create a framework for exhibition activity, not to force all museum exhibitions into a single mould.

I believe that the museum should invest in defining its exhibition policy. It is from this that exhibitions derive their rhythm, form, content and goals.