NB Day 5: Tromsø … Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum

The Northern Norway Art Museum website describes its mandate as “… to generate interest, awareness, and knowledge about visual art and craft in the region … .” The museum has three branches … one in Bødø, one in Svalbard, and one here in Tromsø. Its collection consists of historical and contemporary art, and it also hosts temporary exhibitions.

Admission to the museum was NOK 110pp = approx $12 at today’s exchange rate. Once we purchased our tickets, we hung our wet gear on a coat tree near the entrance and headed up to the top floor as recommended by the woman at the desk. Here we found not only some of the pieces from the museum’s collection, but also the preservation workshop … no one was working today.

The exhibition on this floor — entitled “To Nature” — consisted of a selection of artwork representing the topic at hand … but through different perspectives. Several of them were from the 19th century when Romanticism in Europe turned the attention of artists’ gaze north to the “… Arctic, to its beautiful and untouched nature.”

Moving down to the next floor, here we found a temporary exhibitions entitled “Mother Dough: The Slow Alchemy of Witnessing” … featuring works of artists who live in or were born in Tromsø’s twin city … Gaza … a 25-year relationship. The message of each piece was more or less political in nature, described as emerging “… from fragments absences, and unfinished gestures. They refuse closure. They refuse to disappear. Like mother dough, art remains alive through those who tend to it and those who carry it forward.”

A small museum … but with some interesting pieces, some of which were designed to be thought provoking.Read more