Northern Norway Art Museum in 2017
A new permanent collection
The exhibition of works from our permanent collection was designed in 2010, focusing mainly on historical painters like Adelsteen Normann, Francois-Auguste Biard, Gunnar Berg and Peder Balke. It is time to take a fresh look on the collection and its exhibition design. We'll therefore close the permanent exhibition space on the first floor on January 1st 2017, and start thinking, exploring and redesigning.
The curator group's main goal is to create a new and complete experience of the collection, which now includes over 2100 works in a wide spectrum of techniques, art forms and periods. The museum wants to make a bigger part of our shared cultural history available to both residents and visitors. With that in mind, we'll expand the exhibition with one more floor and maybe move a few walls, all to give you an even better experience of art in Northern Norway. The new exhibition will be a dynamic and pulsating arena for both historical and contemporary art, and evolve constantly. We want it to be a meeting ground for experimentation, reflection and play, for visitors of all ages.
We wish everyone welcome to a new permanent collection in August 2017.
Nordlig sfære | Northern Sphere
In January, we'll bring selected highlights from the collection to Longyearbyen and our satellite, Kunsthall Svalbard. The Exhibition presents nineteen works attempting to capture the spirit of Svalbard, both conceptually and contextually, demonstrating the changing ways art depicts nature, culture and history.
Nordlig sfære | Northern Sphere opens January 21.
View from up here
We'll kick off 2017 in Tromsø with the film exhibition View from Up Here in conjunction with Tromsø International Film Festival. In collaboration with Anchorage Museum in Alaska, we'll screen experimental, art and documentary films from the circumpolar everyday life. Seen from the outside, the Arctic is exotic, wild, untouched and hostile - a place attracting adventurers, scientists and artists. But from the inside, the Arctic is experiencing new global challenges, with climate, societies and culture in flux. The films tell stories of people and places from the demystified inside, pointing to «North» being relative to your position and perspective.
I Craft, I Travel Light
I Craft, I Travel Light is a group exhibition of Norwegian and Russian arts and crafts, made in collaboration with The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts Northern Norway. It premiered in Archangelsk in October 2016, and will open in Tromsø April 29th, after visiting Murmansk in February and March,.
The exhibition aims to visualize the rich aesthetic tradition on both sides of border and help strengthening the identity and status of arts and crafts. Included is works made of traditional nature materials like tree bark, reindeer antlers and bones, fish skin, and wood, as well as recycled materials and found objects. I Craft, I Travel Light emphasizes the value of local resources, but also how life and culture is in constant motion, also when facing modernization and technological developments. The project hopes to be a platform for reflection and an arena for debate on ways of life and sustainability in the North.
Subsistence
In June we'll collaborate with Arctic Arts Festival (Festspillene i Nord-Norge) and Anchorage Museum on a collection of interventions, discussions and visual narratives that highlight the complexity of Arctic communities. Taking “subsistence” as its framework for investigation and reflection, the project explores the extent to which Arctic places are at risk of being a consumer product that is exhaustible, and what the meaning and implications of that end-point might entail.
Subsistence will result in an exhibition of contemporary art from the circumpolar area opening during the Arctic Arts Festival, and will also be the official festival exhibition of AAF 2017. The exhibition will come to Tromsø and Northern Norway Art Museum in October 2017.
Digital Balke/Devine North
The installation Digital Balke/Divine North presents a wide selection of works from Northern Norway by romantic painter Peder Balke (1804–1887) in digital form. Accompanied by electronic music by Gaute Barlinghaug, the works are displayed on three screens, challenging the traditional notion that art should be experienced in its original form. The project questions whether this way of presenting art degrades or add value to the artwork.
Devine North has been touring Northern Norway since fall 2014, and arrives in Longyearbyen and Kunsthall Svalbard in June.
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