Five Summer Exhibitions in Norway
The museums have gradually begun to open in Norway after the pandemic and here we present some of the gems that open up to the public this summer. The museums invite to paintings of female nudes, storytelling by François-Auguste Biard, fundamental questions of life and death as well as works from the Astrup Fearnley collection. Learn more about these five summer exhibitions in Norway.
Astri Welhaven Heiberg at Haugar kunstmuseum Tønsberg
This exhibition is the result of extensive research carried out by art historian Signe Endresen, who has also been invited to curate it. This is a unique chance for Haugar to show a relatively unknown artistry and at the same time contextualize Welhaven Heiberg’s work in relation to contemporary painting colleagues.
Astri Welhaven Heiberg (1881–1967) is best known for her portraits of female nudes and landscapes.
The exhibition runs through 26 September.
THE OTHERS – Nordnorsk kunstmuseum Tromsø
Welcome to the first retrospective exhibition on the French romantic artist François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882). In Norway, Biard is primarily known for his depictions of Sami indigenous peoples and Arctic nature and culture, but the exhibition will show that he also travelled to and painted from all around the world.
The lives of others
This exhibition is a collaboration with the museum Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris, France, and is a thorough and broad presentation of Biard’s life and work. The exhibition brings together a large selection of works of art from public collections in France, international and national institutions and private, often unpublished, collections, in addition to works from NNKM’s collection. But the exhibition also includes both contemporary and historical works by other artists who contextualize Biard’s art from a northern perspective, like Aslaug Juliussen, Tomas Colbengtson, John Savio and Marja Hellander. Sami artist Raisa Porsanger has made several installations unique for this exhibition, in direct dialogue with Biard’s works.
The exhibition runs through 29 August
Life and Death at Teknisk Museum Oslo
What is health? What is illness? What is good treatment?
The goal of this exhibition is to inspire dialog about and new knowledge on medical history and the present – and what it means to be human.
The most important starting point is the collections. The design revolves around one particular and special body – the mummy “Maren.”
The project leader, Ellen Lange, has planned for it to inspire people to ask questions about what medicine and health are — and what they can and should be.
When the museum now handles medicine and health in the new permanent exhibition, it does so with the aim to touch and be touched.
“We want to give our visitors a good and strong experience that hits them in the gut, head, and heart. The hope is that they will carry it with them for a long time. We also want to make it possible for users to influence and influence us – that is, the exhibition and the museum – by enabling us to take in their perspective and input and thereby be constantly evolving,” Ellen Lange says enthusiastically.
Permanent exhibition at Norsk Teknisk Museum, Norway’s national museum of science and technology
Summer exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo
Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo houses Norway’s largest collection of international contemporary art. The collection includes seminal works by artists from around the world. Since its genesis in the 1960s, the collection has focused on selected artists, following their development in depth over many years and through different phases. Chief curator Solveig Øvstebø at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo is from this year on in charge of the museum’s program.
“In planning the exhibitions, I have considered the museum’s history and institutional position, which in recent years has had one foot firmly planted in the American contemporary art scene and the other in that of Norway. It was therefore a deliberate choice to invite one American artist and one Norwegian artist for the two main exhibitions this year. At the same time, I wished to highlight other notable currents in the museum’s extensive collection, so in the summer of 2021, we will present a new selection of works from the collection, in an exhibition spread across both of the museum’s buildings,” she says.
The exhibition runs through 5 September
Anna Ancher at Lillehammer kunstmuseum
Anna Ancher is one of the most popular Nordic artists of the period 1880–1920. The exhibition includes nearly 200 works, which makes it the largest ever solo exhibition of Ancher’s art. The exhibition is being organized in collaboration with SMK and Art Museums of Skagen in Denmark.
A separate review of the Anna Ancher exhibition at Lillehammer Museum of Art will be published in Daily Scandinavian in a few days.
The exhibition runs through 15 August.
Five Summer Exhibitions in Norway, compiled by Tor Kjolberg
Feature image (on top) Nude women, Astri Welhaven Heiberg
