Birthday celebrations.

Aalto celebrations are building up in Finland and abroad. Peter MacKeith comments on new Aalto enthusiasm and looks at the two key exhibitions in Helsinki and New York, which will both travel internationally later this year.

'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own county', remarked Christ to St Matthew. Their Latin original rendering was Finnish architect Alvar Aalto's ironically caustic title for his private boat, reflecting his sense of being overlooked professionally during his younger days and then attacked as the 'Establishment' during his waning years. The phrase almost arrogantly haunts this year's centenary celebrations of Aalto's birth. For such is the scale of Aalto's reputation as a master-architect of this century that 1998 is marked by two major world-travelling exhibitions, accompanying catalogues with appreciative essays, a Helsinki City exhibition, numerous books, monographs, symposia, tours, lectures and speeches. The Museum of Finnish Architecture and the Museum of Modern Art in New York have mounted the travelling exhibitions, confirming for larger purposes Aalto's position with regard to Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, the other masters of the twentieth century.

Indeed an Aalto industry, albeit with certain dignity (no ties and definitely no T-shirts), has been produced for 1998. The Finnish Tourist Board was already recruiting journalists from abroad for a sponsored five-day Aalto tour to Finland in the fall of 1997. A commemorative Aalto coin has been minted, and his preferred Tuscan wine has been especially labelled, as well as a Finnish berry wine. Presumably the wines will be available for service at the intermission of the theatrical production of 'Aalto in Paimio', scheduled for the summer theatre season. Even if the rumoured 'international Aaltomotif patchwork competition' is not listed on the official centenary programme, it is clear that 1998 will bring the architect and his work into the foreground of Finnish cultural life, as well as renewing interest in his built achievements throughout the world.

On the exact 100th birthday, 3 February, the Finnish Prime Minister opened an exhibition, Alvar Aalto in Seven Buildings, in the Helsinki Art Hall. Jointly organized by the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Alvar Aalto Museum, the Alvar Aalto Foundation and the Finnish Association of Architects, the exhibition is already booked to travel throughout Europe for the next two years. (Already on New Year's Eve of this year, the Alvar Aalto Museum had opened its newly designed permanent exhibition offering an overview of Aalto's career). On 16 February, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened their retrospective exhibition, entitled Alvar Aalto: Between Humanism and Materialism. MoMA has previously only accorded this kind of retrospective for its public for the work of Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright and has never accorded such a place of prominence in its galleries exclusively to Aalto (the Finnish retrospective following Aalto's death was offered to MoMA and it declined for internal political reasons; the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York played the New York host instead). MoMA's 1998 show will also travel internationally, reaching Japan by late 1999.

Re-evaluation

In the exhibitions and presentations following Aalto's death in 1976, the emphasis was on the vitality of his life, on the inseparability of his character from his work. Much of the material concerning Aalto published and exhibited until now has been tinged with either the influence of Aalto himself upon the criticism, or by the strong personal memory the organizers have had of the architect. Over the last decade, for instance, Goran Schildt has carefully written a three-volume biography, drawing on interviews, writings, personal experience and archival examinations. While some observers have criticized the biography for being too appreciative a hagiography, in fact Schildt's work has been important, for it has cleared the way towards a referenced appreciation of Aalto's career.

The emphasis this year is rightfully on the sheer abundance of Aalto's work, on the process of its development, on its objectives and its significance over time. The passage of time has lessened the influence of the architect's personality; and there is now a generation of architects and scholars who appraise Aalto's work with a rather less prejudiced eye. The establishment of the Aalto Foundation's archival activities over the last 15 years now provides researchers with welcome access to the design process behind the production.

The centennial organizers are careful to note that these arc not simple retrospectives; reflecting the shifts in Aalto research and scholarship, the principal exhibitions and accompanying literature are more analytical, selective presentations. Markku Lahti, the Director of the Alvar Aalto