Illustrated Stories on Display: How Exhibitions Speak

This seminar series explores exhibitions as rhetorical arenas where images and illustrations tell stories. Scholars and curators show how visual narratives persuade, move, and invite audiences into dialogue.

Picturebooks in major art museums: From Moomin to Chop Chop and Kollektivet

The exhibition From Moomin to Chop Chop at Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde art museum in Stockholm, Sweden (15.02- 17.08.2025) was part of the celebrations of Tove Jansson’s Moomin 80 years. The exhibition filled the museum with picturebook art from the middle of 1940s until today. Prominent Swedish, Swedish-Estonian and Finland-Swedish picturebook artists from four generations, Tove Jansson (1914–2001), Ilon Wikland (f. 1930), Pija Lindenbaum (f. 1955) och Linda Bondestam (f. 1977), were represented by 300 works. The interplay between visual and verbal narration and the artistic process was in focus. The aesthetics of picturebook art was manifested via themes such as queer, refugee experiences, alienation, and technology.
The exhibition Kollektivet- Picture Book Illustration from Finland at Kunsthalle Helsinki (15.8- 14.9. 2025), after which it will tour to other venues, including the Nordic Watercolour Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, presents a curated selection of acclaimed illustrators from Finland, including Linda Bondestam, Jenni Erkintalo, Lena Frölander-Ulf, Edith Hammar, Maija Hurme, Erika Kallasmaa, Jenny Lucander, Laura Merz, Sanna Pelliccioni, and Maria Sann. Many of these artists have received international recognition and awards for their work. The exhibition is a follow up of the exhibition BY!, that was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2014. While BY! focused on Finland-Swedish picturebook artists Kollektivet also includes Finnish picturebook artist, but the working language is Swedish. By a multilingual approach the somewhat separate literary fields of Finland-Swedish and Finnish picturebook art are brought together, manifested in a joint mural. Richly layered picturebooks serve as a springboard for reflection, tackling challenging topics as well as themes of hope and imagination. The exhibition raises questions about the artistic possibilities of the picturebook as format in its own right, filling Kunsthalle Helsinki with picturebook art marks a shift in the recognition of picturebooks as art.

Mia Österlund is a picturebook scholar, and professor of Comparative Literature at Åbo Akademi Universiy, Turku, Finland. She participated in the curating committee of picturebook exhibitions such as BY! 2014, From Moomin to Chop Chop 2025, and Kollektivet 2025. She has written essays for the art catalogues of the exhebitions. Österlund runs the research project Swedish-Language Children’s Literature Criticism and Research in Finland 2022–27 at The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS). Her research is on gender, girlhood, temporality, fat studies, ocean studies and queer theory in children’s literature. She is a member of the editorial board of Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research and was one of the organizers of the IRSCL Congress 2019 in Stockholm. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6409-5764 mosterlu@abo.fi