The Architecture & Design Museum’s new exhibition, Escape to Moominvalley, explores Tove Jansson’s meaningful places and the Moomins’ ways of living. The exhibition is divided into spaces from Tove Jansson’s own life and the fictional worlds she created, weaving reality and fiction together.
Author, illustrator, and artist Tove Jansson is best known for creating the Moomins and Moominvalley. During the Winter War and the bombing of Helsinki, Jansson’s imaginary world in the Moomin books was a refuge both for Jansson and her readers. In her real world, Jansson created important places for herself and her close circle, where she could live and work how she wanted.
These real and imagined spaces are the focus of the Architecture & Design Museum’s new exhibition Escape to Moominvalley (10th October 2025 – 27th September 2026).
As you enter the exhibition, you start in Tove Jansson’s real spaces that she created as her own sanctuaries to live and work. Jansson’s studio in Helsinki and the summer house on the rocky island of Klovharun were part of her identity and creativity.
“Tove Jansson had a strong vision for her own spaces and actively shaped her surroundings to make them comfortable for herself. Her motto was ‘work and love’. What mattered most was that the spaces supported making art and living a creative life. In the same way, she gave her imagined characters the freedom to live their own lives and inhabit the most imaginative environments,” says exhibition curator Jutta Tynkkynen.
One of the focal points of the exhibition is Tove’s connection to the Pellinge archipelago and the island Klovharun. The very island where Tove and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä, built a cottage together in the 1960s. The island and their cottage tell a story of peace, love, and the freedom to be oneself - a core theme running throughout Escape to Moominvalley.
In Klovharu, Jansson and Pietilä saw the possibility of a true refuge with space and peace for their work. They spent nearly 30 summers together on the island in their summer cottage.
Tove Jansson’s spaces were spaces where she could be her true self and be sanctuaries for her. The significance of the places in Helsinki and the archipelago can be seen in her books, with many of them appearing in the Moomin books and illustrations.
“For my background research for the exhibition, I reread all the Moomin books and also examined the illustrations in the books with particular care, looking for descriptions of spaces and architecture. As I went through Moomin Characters’ extensive photo collection, I began to notice a recurring theme: individual objects depicted in the drawings as items from Moominvalley surprisingly seemed to have counterparts in Tove Jansson’s own world. I particularly remember Fillyjkonk’s dressing table from the book Moominvalley in November, which looks just like the dressing table in Tove Jansson’s studio home.
In the end, the entire exhibition project team searched for and found similarities between the images, and I have selected 18 pairs of images for this exhibition. However, I am completely convinced that we have not yet found all the similarities, and anyone can enjoy searching for them while reading the Moomin books! ”, says one of the exhibition curators, Jutta Tynkkynen.
Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley was created during the Second World War, at a time when safety was fragile. The first Moomin story, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), tells of the loss and rediscovery of home. The Escape to Moominvalley exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum reminds us that Jansson not only created an escape from reality, but also hope in the midst of it.
The second, inner part of the exhibition dives into Moominvalley, and explores themes such as home and homelessness, loneliness and community, and security and insecurity through the Moomin stories. Despite being 80 years since the first story, the stories and themes can still be connected to today. The Moomins were, and still are, not only a fairytale space, but a metaphor for survival and reconstruction.
In Moominvalley, living is not only about practical arrangements, it is also a way of being.
The Moomins’ home is open to all: anyone, from the Muskrat to the Hattifatteners, can stay for a short or long visit.
“The Moomins’ way of living broadens our understanding of what a home can be. Living is not static – homes can move, change, be rebuilt, or not exist at all. The Moomins’ approach encourages us to imagine the model of living that suits us best,” says Tynkkynen.
Escape the Moominvalley looks at the past, the present and future. In addition to Tove Jansson’s original work, multiple international contemporary designers and architects are also featured. They share their own interpretations of what shelter, community, and survival mean in today’s world, where crises and uncertainty shape our lives and the rules of living. Connecting Moominvalley’s themes to the present world.
The Museum of Architecture and Design has created three guided paths for the exhibition, through which the spaces of Tove Jansson and the Moomins are also revealed from different perspectives:
The Rainbow Path is a norm-critical path within the Escape to Moominvalley exhibition. It explores the diversity of gender and sexuality through the lens of Tove Jansson’s life and art.
The Dating Path guides visitors through the Escape to Moominvalley exhibition room by room, offering small reflection tasks and questions that spark conversations about memories, dreams, and attitudes toward life.
The Children’s Path is a path within the Escape to Moominvalley exhibition, designed to be experienced together with children. It offers tips and reflection tasks that support a shared museum experience and encourage exploring the exhibition through play, imagination, and interaction.
Escape to Moominvalley reminds us that places of escape are about escaping reality, and about ways of seeing reality differently. Tove Jansson’s world invites exhibition visitors to think about what home means, not just in terms of walls and ceilings, but in terms of meaning, connection, and the courage to be oneself.
Escape to Moominvalley
October 10, 2025–September 27, 2026
Museum of Architecture and Design, Helsinki
The Escape to Moominvalley exhibition is co-produced by the Architecture and Design Museum and Moomin Characters.
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