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A Perfect FinnFest Sunday: Art, Nordic History—and Maybe the Best Soup in Minneapolis
Purchase Your FinnFest Sunday Pass
Your FinnFest Sunday ticket includes a visit to the American Swedish Institute—Eyes as Big as Plates, the Turnblad Mansion, the Museum Store, and FIKA Café.
We’re thrilled to share one more experience included with your FinnFest Sunday ticket: a visit to the American Swedish Institute!
FinnFest guests can explore Eyes as Big as Plates, a remarkable photography exhibition created by Finnish-Norwegian artist duo Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth.
The exhibit began as a playful exploration of Nordic folklore and has grown into an international project featuring people quite literally immersed in the natural world. Using grasses, branches, leaves, seaweed and other materials gathered from each person’s surroundings, the artists create wonderfully strange and beautiful portraits that explore aging, identity, nature and our relationship with the environment.
More than 30 of these large-scale portraits are displayed throughout the historic Turnblad Mansion—and the setting couldn’t be more fitting.
The exhibit has a natural connection to FinnFest. It brings together Finnish creativity, Nordic storytelling, folklore, environmental awareness and a wonderfully unexpected sense of humor. It invites us to look at nature—and at one another—with fresh eyes.
There’s More to Explore
Your Sunday FinnFest ticket also includes a self-guided tour of the Turnblad Mansion, one of Minneapolis’s most fascinating historic homes.
Built in the early 1900s for Swedish newspaper publisher Swan Turnblad and his family, the mansion is filled with intricate woodwork, decorative plasterwork, stained glass and details worth slowing down to see. You can wander at your own pace while experiencing the Eyes as Big as Plates portraits throughout the mansion.
Be sure to leave time for the ASI Museum Store, too. It is truly an experience of its own, with a beautifully curated collection of Nordic gifts, books, home goods, jewelry, foods and wonderfully unexpected finds.
And then there’s FIKA Café.
Fika is the Swedish tradition of pausing for coffee, something delicious and time together—and the café is a perfect place to settle in after exploring the museum. FinnFest Festival Director Monica Hendrickson is especially hopeful that the café’s potato leek soup will be on the menu that day.
Her official review?
“It’s like heaven in a bowl.”
Thank You to Our Host Partner
We are incredibly grateful to the American Swedish Institute for serving as a FinnFest host partner this year and welcoming our guests into this extraordinary space.
Finland and Sweden each have their own histories, traditions and identities, but FinnFest has always been about creating connections—across generations, communities and the Nordic world. We can’t imagine a better way to spend Sunday than surrounded by art, history, culture and a little fika.
Join us Sunday and experience it all with your FinnFest ticket. We can’t wait to explore ASI with you!
Come for FinnFest. Stay for the art, the mansion—and maybe a bowl of that potato leek soup.