It is an old grain silo erected almost a century ago, an inactive concrete colossus for years, which has just been reborn as a cultural space. Kunstilo is the name of the new museum dedicated to Nordic art in the Norwegian city of Kristiansand, the largest sixth in the country, where it opened its doors in mid -2024. The country has been investing in culture for years, an inexhaustible source of soft powerthat soft power that can count as much as the hard in international relations. With this bet, Norway is part of the Cultural Tourism circuit, plans a future less dependent on oil and reinforces its profile in a context of growing geopolitical tension, while the threat of the Putin Russia looms over the entire region. Scandinavia wants his voice to be listened to end to end the assumption of Arctic, doctrine that argued that what was happening in the Nordic countries was disconnected from the rest of Europe and the world.
It would be exaggerated to see in this industrial cemetery, rehabilitated with the utmost respect for the Catalan-Noruega Mestres WEST AQUITECTES-with offices in Oslo and Barcelona-, the slightest counterattack strategy, although those responsible affirm that it is more necessary than ever creating agoras where something more 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, at the Museum’s restaurant, with a view to the port of the city, in which the ferris on the way to the north is usually 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 a few months, Kunsttsilo has managed to change the landscape of the city, where celebrities such as Princess Mette-Marit and the writer Karl Ove Knausgård, located in the Norwegian, religious and conservative biblical belt grew. Kristiansand, eager for his own Bilbao effectit is the nerve center of this region located at the southern end of the country and known for its relatively benign climate: this is the warmest point of Norway, although it is hard to believe in the most raw of winter. Until now, the greatest tourist attraction in the city was an amusement park dedicated to a cartoon character, a saber -tooth captain, through which one million visitors passes a year. The new museum aspires to snatch that indisputable leadership.
The silo, the work of the architect Arne Korsmo and with dimensions worthy of a basilica – has 40 meters high and capacity to store 15,000 tons of grain – has become the largest repository of Nordic modern art throughout the world. This project, the result of a collaboration between the public and private sector, houses a collection of 5,500 works containing key pieces of the main avant -garde currents of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The samples will be focused on this geographical and cultural space.
“We are no longer a periphery that looks at the center. We must tell our own stories, ”says Art Historian Frida Forsgren, who has just created the first course dedicated to Nordic avant -garde at the University of Agder, in Kristiansand. The international Hilma AF Klint phenomenon, the unknown Swedish painter who made abstract paintings before Kandinsky, has regenerated interest in the region. This spring, the Orsay Museum will dedicate a sample to the Norwegian painter Christian Krohg, little known outside of Scandinavia, while the prestigious Beyeler Foundation, in Basel, focuses another exhibition on the fascination of the Nordic artists for light. Actually, in his work, darkness almost never 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 new museum
The evidence is not lacking. The last to expose in Kunsttsilo is the Mette Tronvoll artist, whose sample Time (Time), open until the end of May, is an introspective study on the coastal culture of the Norwegian island of Hidra. His work is a requiem for a rural landscape that disappears before his eyes, by the last fishermen of this country of peasants enriched by hydrocarbons. It seems to contradict the idealized Christmas postcard with which we usually identify Scandinavia from abroad. In recent years, it has been clear that the region was not like we imagined it from afar. The social democratic paradise has given rise to the rise of the extreme right, social violence and exclusion, and the recognition of the forced 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 seems evident, perhaps as a reflection of the country’s commitment to culture, a pillar of the social pact. Since the pandemic, the Munch Museum has opened its doors, located on the Oslo Maritime Front, which houses a collection of 28,000 works donated by Edvard Munch in 1944. Almost at the same time, the National Museum, the largest art center in the Nordic countries, was inaugurated in 2022. In two years the new Museum of the Viking era should be ready, also in the Norwegian capital, while other points of the country move. The Whale, a new museum dedicated to whales, is expected to be inaugurated in 2027 in the Northern Archipelago of Vesterålen.
In Tromsø, also located at the northern end of Norway, we work on a new headquarters for the Museum of the Arctic University, the oldest scientific institution in the region. An hour north of Oslo, in the middle of nature, the Kistefos Museum, depositary of a private collection of contemporary art, projects an ambitious extension by 2031. And, on the remote island of Svalbard, a new center baptized as The Arc, projected by the prestigious Snøhetta agency, will have the mission of opening the World Bank of Seed Environmental preservation in which Norway wants to be a pioneer.
It is not his only battle. In Trondheim, the city where the Norwegian kings are still crowning, just released knob, a new museum where Munch’s tortured canvases coexist with works of the latest sensations of art, such as Anne Imhof and Simone Leigh. An rainbow of Ugo Rondinone adorns the museum’s facade, installed in an old post office. Its director, Marit Album Kvernmo, aspires to be “a museum for all.” And to play a role in 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 example: 60% of its acquisition budget of this new center will be destined to buy works by women artists. Norway wants to mark a new compass. Will you get it?