Largest Moomin museum

The largest permanent exhibit of Moomin artefacts is the Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley Collection at the Tampere Hall, Finland, which houses more than 2,000 items, including original drawings and paintings, and three-dimensional tableaux, produced by the Moomins' creator, Tove Jansson and her collaborators.

The Moomins were the creation of Tove Jansson (Finland, 1914-2001), a painter, illustrator and novelist whose first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was published in 1945, in Swedish, by Söderström & Co. The round, white creatures, which resemble hippopotamuses, are trolls that live in Moominvalley; the central characters are Moomintroll and his parents, Moominmamma and Moominpappa. Jansson wrote nine Moomin novels and five picture books, as well as a cartoon strip. In 1986, she donated original artworks to the Tampere Art Museum, where they were displayed until 2016, along with a significant donation of archival material made in 1993. In 2017, the collection moved to its new, dedicated home in Tampere Hall.

The museum recounts the story of the Moomins chronologically, with nearly 400 original sketches, pen and ink drawings, and paintings; 30 three-dimensional tableaux, plus a 2.5-m-tall (8-ft 2-in) reproduction of the blue Moominhouse; private photographs, letters and other pieces of paraphernalia; and a reading room featuring every Moomin book in their many translations.

This is not the only celebration of Jansson's creations in Finland - more of her art is exhibited at the Helsinki Art Museum. There is a Moomin theme park called Moominworld in Naantali, Finland and another, called MoominValley Park, that opened in Japan in 2019. An exhibition of Moomin art - much of it on loan from the Moomin Museum - completed a two-year tour of Japan in 2021, and in South Korea, Moominland Jeju combines a cafe and gallery of Moomin art. In Iceland, fans can even visit the Moomin Ice Cave in Leppävirta.