From grain silo to cultural lighthouse: Norway responds with museums to international pressure | Culture | EUROtoday

It is an previous grain silo erected nearly a century in the past, an inactive concrete colossus for years, which has simply been reborn as a cultural house. Kunstilo is the identify of the brand new museum devoted to Nordic artwork within the Norwegian metropolis of Kristiansand, the biggest sixth within the nation, the place it opened its doorways in mid -2024. The nation has been investing in tradition for years, an inexhaustible supply of tender energythat tender energy that may depend as a lot because the laborious in worldwide relations. With this wager, Norway is a part of the Cultural Tourism circuit, plans a future much less depending on oil and reinforces its profile in a context of rising geopolitical pressure, whereas the specter of the Putin Russia looms over all the area. Scandinavia desires his voice to be listened to finish to finish the idea of Arctic, doctrine that argued that what was occurring within the Nordic nations was disconnected from the remainder of Europe and the world.

It can be exaggerated to see on this industrial cemetery, rehabilitated with the utmost respect for the Catalan-Noruega Mestres WEST AQUITECTES-with places of work in Oslo and Barcelona-, the slightest counterattack technique, though these accountable affirm that it’s extra essential than ever creating agoras the place one thing greater than hate is shared. “In these times of changes and challenges, what happens around us reminds us of the importance of being connected. All of us who fight for a free world, for free art and for freedom of expression we must unite, ”says Kunstsilo director, Maria Mediaas Jørstad, on the Museum’s restaurant, with a view to the port of the town, through which the ferris on the best way to the north is normally stopped. “As a museum we cannot have a direct political role, but to participate in the public debate so that it does not become a resonance chamber of rejection and exclusion ideas.”

In just a few months, Kunsttsilo has managed to alter the panorama of the town, the place celebrities resembling Princess Mette-Marit and the author Karl Ove Knausgård, situated within the Norwegian, non secular and conservative biblical belt grew. Kristiansand, looking forward to his personal Bilbao impactit’s the nerve middle of this area situated on the southern finish of the nation and identified for its comparatively benign local weather: that is the warmest level of Norway, though it’s laborious to consider in essentially the most uncooked of winter. Until now, the best vacationer attraction within the metropolis was an amusement park devoted to a cartoon character, a saber -tooth captain, by means of which a million guests passes a 12 months. The new museum aspires to grab that indeniable management.

The silo, the work of the architect Arne Korsmo and with dimensions worthy of a basilica – has 40 meters excessive and capability to retailer 15,000 tons of grain – has change into the biggest repository of Nordic trendy artwork all through the world. This mission, the results of a collaboration between the private and non-private sector, homes a set of 5,500 works containing key items of the primary avant -garde currents of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The samples might be targeted on this geographical and cultural house.

“We are no longer a periphery that looks at the center. We must tell our own stories, ”says Art Historian Frida Forsgren, who has simply created the primary course devoted to Nordic avant -garde on the University of Agder, in Kristiansand. The worldwide Hilma AF Klint phenomenon, the unknown Swedish painter who made summary work earlier than Kandinsky, has regenerated curiosity within the area. This spring, the Orsay Museum will dedicate a pattern to the Norwegian painter Christian Krohg, little identified exterior of Scandinavia, whereas the celebrated Beyeler Foundation, in Basel, focuses one other exhibition on the fascination of the Nordic artists for gentle. Actually, in his work, darkness nearly by no means lacks. “Despite what the topic says, they usually tend towards the hidden and the ominous, the eccentric and the disturbing,” Forsgren confirms.

“We must participate in the public debate so that it does not become a resonance chamber of hate and exclusion ideas,” says the director of the brand new museum

The proof isn’t missing. The final to show in Kunsttsilo is the Mette Tronvoll artist, whose pattern Time (Time), open till the top of May, is an introspective research on the coastal tradition of the Norwegian island of Hidra. His work is a requiem for a rural panorama that disappears earlier than his eyes, by the final fishermen of this nation of peasants enriched by hydrocarbons. It appears to contradict the idealized Christmas postcard with which we normally determine Scandinavia from overseas. In current years, it has been clear that the area was not like we imagined it from afar. The social democratic paradise has given rise to the rise of the intense proper, social violence and exclusion, and the popularity of the pressured assimilation he practiced with native minorities and peoples. “We need to show what is not pretty and what is not working well,” says the director of Kunstsilo.

The museum bum in Norway appears evident, maybe as a mirrored image of the nation’s dedication to tradition, a pillar of the social pact. Since the pandemic, the Munch Museum has opened its doorways, situated on the Oslo Maritime Front, which homes a set of 28,000 works donated by Edvard Munch in 1944. Almost on the similar time, the National Museum, the biggest artwork middle within the Nordic nations, was inaugurated in 2022. In two years the brand new Museum of the Viking period ought to be prepared, additionally within the Norwegian capital, whereas different factors of the nation transfer. The Whale, a brand new museum devoted to whales, is predicted to be inaugurated in 2027 within the Northern Archipelago of Vesterålen.

In Tromsø, additionally situated on the northern finish of Norway, we work on a brand new headquarters for the Museum of the Arctic University, the oldest scientific establishment within the area. An hour north of Oslo, in the midst of nature, the Kistefos Museum, depositary of a non-public assortment of latest artwork, initiatives an bold extension by 2031. And, on the distant island of Svalbard, a brand new middle baptized as The Arc, projected by the celebrated Snøhetta company, can have the mission of opening the World Bank of Seed Environmental preservation through which Norway desires to be a pioneer.

It isn’t his solely battle. In Trondheim, the town the place the Norwegian kings are nonetheless crowning, simply launched knob, a brand new museum the place Munch’s tortured canvases coexist with works of the most recent sensations of artwork, resembling Anne Imhof and Simone Leigh. An rainbow of Ugo Rondinone adorns the museum’s facade, put in in an previous put up workplace. Its director, Marit Album Kvernmo, aspires to be “a museum for all.” And to play a job on this tense context. “Art is a powerful tool to tear down barriers, contribute to greater understanding among people and work for less polarized societies,” he replies. And it ends with a blunt instance: 60% of its acquisition price range of this new middle might be destined to purchase works by girls artists. Norway desires to mark a brand new compass. Will you get it?