Janne Sirén


Janne Sirén is a Finnish art historian and the Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Before joining the Albright-Knox, Sirén served as Director and City of Helsinki Department Chief at the Helsinki Art Museum from 2007 to 2013. Prior to that, he served as Director of the Tampere Art Museum from 2004 to 2007.

Early life and education

Sirén was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of Aivi Gallen-Kallela and Matti Sirén. He is the great-grandson of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, a painter whose work is considered to be extremely important to Finnish national identity.
Sirén attended College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he majored in art history and took courses on philosophy and Italian language and culture. After obtaining his B.A. in 1993, he pursued an M.A. at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. There he wrote two qualifying papers—one in his major field titled “Intersecting Paths in the History of Modern European Painting: An Investigation of Edvard Munch’s Influence on Henri Matisse, 1895–1908,” and a second in his minor field titled “Melodies in Blue and White: Luca della Robbia at Santa Maria Impruneta and the Cultural Stance of Terracotta Invetriata in Quattrocento Florence.”
In 2001, Sirén received his PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts. His dissertation, “Axel Gallén and the Constructed Nation: Art and Nationalism in Young Finland, 1880–1900,” discussed the role the work of his grandfather played in the construction of Finnish national identity. It was nominated by the Institute of Fine Arts Faculty Committee for New York University’s “Outstanding Dissertation of the Year” award. His dissertation advisor was pioneering feminist and post-colonialist art historian Linda Nochlin.

Career

Sirén began his professional career in the Department of Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was an assistant professor from 2000 to 2004. His teaching included courses on American and European art from the Renaissance to the present, aesthetics, critical theory, and museology.
In 2004, Sirén began his tenure as Director of the Tampere Art Museum in southern Finland. While there, he also served as Deputy Director of the Tampere Museums Department. In 2007, he left Tampere and accepted the position of Director and City of Helsinki Department Chief at the Helsinki Art Museum. The museum’s collection comprises more than 9,000 works, nearly half of which are on display in public locations in and around Helsinki.
In 2013, Sirén returned to the United States and joined the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, as Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director. He was preceded at the Albright-Knox by Louis Grachos, who was appointed the Ernest and Sarah Butler Executive Director and CEO of The Contemporary Austin in 2013. At the Albright-Knox, Sirén oversees a world-renowned collection of modern and contemporary art containing more than 7,000 artworks. He has curated or co-curated several major exhibitions, including Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape, Monet and the Impressionist Revolution, 1860–1910, and Picasso: The Artist and His Models.
Sirén’s tenure at the Albright-Knox has been defined by a massive campus expansion project entitled AK360. He has overseen all aspects of the project and has spearheaded a $155 million capital campaign. Under his leadership, the Albright-Knox raised $125 million between June 2016 and March 2018, including a $42.5 million matching challenge from businessman and investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the largest single philanthropic gift in the history of Western New York. In November 2017, Gundlach announced a second AK360 matching challenge of $10 million for funds raised through November 2018.

Personal life

Sirén lives in Buffalo, New York, with his wife Sonja, whom he met in Israel while she was pursuing her doctoral studies on security policy and human rights in Nordic countries. They have three children.

Selected publications