The exhibition with works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection opens the new museum building by Renzo Piano. Amassed over the last thirty years, the works reveal the personal, social and artistic engagement of artists who have broken new ground within the history of art. The spectator travels through different thematic zones - geopolitics, urbanism, politics, violence, sexuality, religion, identity and memory - that reveal social and personal issues through the materials, structure, and semantics of the works.
curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran
Ass. curator: Therese Kjelsberg Möllenhoff
Norway’s most important contemporary art museum, Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo,
designed by Renzo Piano, will open to the public on 29 September 2012. The museum
is launched with To Be With Art Is All We Ask, an exhibition with works from the
Astrup Fearnley Collection.
The new museum is already being hailed as one of the outstanding new museums
worldwide. Located on a landmark site on the edge of the fjord and divided into two halves
separated by water, the museum is a spectacular architectural addition to the waterfront,
constructed out of wood with a dramatic double curved glass roof.
One building houses the museum’s permanent collection and the other will house temporary
exhibitions, a café and shop. In addition, the museum has its own bathing beach and lies
next to a sculpture park stretching along the shores of the fjord. The museum covers an
area of 7,000 square metres on the headland of the new waterfront district of Tjuvholmen,
and is surrounded by many new galleries, restaurants and a hotel.
To Be With Art Is All We Ask presents a curated exhibition with works from the Collection
including some of the world’s most innovative contemporary artists. Amassed over the last
thirty years, these works reveal the personal, social and artistic engagement of artists who
have broken new ground within the history of art. The exhibition brings together three
parallel strands. The first is an in-depth look at the work of certain artists who have an
outstanding presence in the Collection, showing the development and coherence of their
oeuvres. The second is a chronological mise-en-scène that not only contextualizes the
works, but allows the spectator to compare and evaluate the differences and similarities
between what each of the artists was doing at the same moment in time. The third strand is
the way in which this exhibition tells a story – or rather, depending on how one connects the
works and connects with them, several perpetually floating, non-linear narratives that have
neither beginning nor end. The spectator travels through different thematic zones –
geopolitics, urbanism, politics, violence, sexuality, religion, identity and memory – that reveal
social and personal issues through the materials, structure, and semantics of the works.
Viewed together, they present a cosmopolitan vision that spans different cultures and
historical periods, exposing the themes that make up our common contemporary
experience.
Astrup Fearnley Museet is a privately owned contemporary art museum, founded in Oslo
in 1993 to house and display the Astrup Fearnley Collection, Norway’s most important
contemporary art collection, dating back to the 1960s. The museum is funded by Thomas
Fearnley, Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation, and Astrup Fearnley AS. The Collection
includes works of Norwegian and international contemporary art, and focuses on individual
works and artists including major works by Jeff Koons, Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst, Koo
Jeong-a, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Huang Yong Ping among many others.
Renzo Piano is one of the world’s leading architects, best known for his work with Richard
Rogers on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, as well as the Beyeler Museum in Basel, the Menil
Collection Museum in Houston, and the extension of the Morgan Library, New York. His
iconic new building in London, the Shard, has already become one of the city’s best-known
landmarks.
Astrup Fearnley Museet is generously supported by
Thomas Fearnley, Heddy and Nils Astrup Foundation, and Astrup Fearnley AS.
Foto: © Nic Lehoux
Press Enquiries:
Gard Andreas Frantzsen
Head of Communications
T: +47 22 93 60 43
E: g.frantzsen@fearnleys.no
Ingrid Pettersen
Press Officer
T: +47 22 93 60 46
E: press@fearnleys.no
Grand Opening September 27th - 29th
Program September 27th
10:00 Press Conference Renzo Piano
11:00 1:1 Interviews (by appointment only)
11.00 Press preview of the museum until 12.00
13.00 Site inspection of Oslos new waterfront hotel THE THIEF. Refreshments.
14:00 VIP guests arrival START
15:00 Ceremony
17:00 Doors Close
17:00 All local galleries open for press. See separate program. Refreshments.
20:00 Program End
Program September 28th
TBA
18.00 Site inspection of Oslos new waterfront hotel THE THIEF. Refreshments.
21:00 Galleries at Tjuvholmen open for press. See separate program. Refreshments.
Program September 29th
12:00 Museum opens to the public
21:00 Concert with supergroup Apparatjik at Albert Nordengens plass, Tjuvholmen
Astrup Fearnley Museet
Strandpromenaden 2, 0252 Oslo
Opening hours
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 12-17
Thursday 12-19
Saturday, Sunday 11-17
Mondays closed
The museum will be open from 12-20 for the Grand Opening on the 29th of September.
Prices
General admission 100 NOK
Senior 80 NOK
Student 60 NOK
Ages 18 and under Free entrance