Helsinki rejected a proposal to establish a Guggenheim art museum in the city.

The city board voted eight to seven to block Mayor Jussi Pajunen’s proposal to build the museum, according to a memorandum posted on the Finnish capital’s website. The memorandum didn’t provide a reason for the rejection. Passage by the board would have sent the proposal to the city council, its highest decision-making body.

Helsinki asked the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in January 2011 to look into establishing its fourth European museum in Finland’s biggest city. The 140 million-euro ($184 million) museum was planned as a mostly non-collecting institution hosting traveling exhibitions of contemporary art, with attendance estimated at about half a million people a year.

The Guggenheim Foundation has museums in New York, Bilbao, Berlin and Venice, and is building one in Abu Dhabi.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kati Pohjanpalo in Helsinki at kpohjanpalo@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Brogger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net