Museum Object Collections

The collections of Tampere’s museums contain approximately 370,000 objects. The unifying factor of these collections is Tampere and the Pirkanmaa region, as the majority of the museum objects narrate the history of the area and its inhabitants. The objects relate to everyday life, culture, and industry. Included are, for example, rugs, shoes, machinery, magical objects, posters, coffee cups, and artifacts from Tampere’s textile industry. The work carried out with the collections aims to ensure that the stories they tell reach both current and future residents of Tampere.

About 20 museum professionals work with the object collections: researchers, conservators, conservation workers, and museum masters. They are responsible for organizing, preserving, conserving, cataloging, digitizing, managing information, and customer services related to the object collections.

The collections mainly grow through donations and by actively documenting contemporary phenomena. Each acquisition is carefully considered, as the collections are already quite comprehensive in many respects, and space for new collections is limited. Only a small portion is on display in exhibitions at any given time. Additionally, the treasures of the collections can be browsed online through the Siiri information service.