Collection content

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  The Provanance of a Kunsthalle

  This exhibition explores the material provenance of Kunstnernes hus through investigations of building materials, technical infrastructure, lighting, maintenance systems, exhibition armature and more. Through archival studies and on-site surveys, 15 students from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design have excavated the production history, sourcing, economy, usage, ownership history, and alteration records of the building’s facades, spaces, structure, components, materials, and artworks. By constructing an alternative history, this exhibition challenges the way we understand and assess the building and might change the way we transform it for the future.

  Kunstnernes hus was completed in 1930 as an artist-led foundation to show contemporary Norwegian and international art. Incredibly rich in its detailing and exquisite in its use of natural light, Kunstnernes hus is still viewed as one of the best exhibition spaces in all of Norway.

  The exhibition is the result of a fall seminar housed within the building taught by Erik Langdalen and Nicholas Coates in close collaboration with Kunstnernes hus and in dialogue with Mari Lending, Åsmund Torkildsen, Marianne Heier, Dag Erik Elgin, Jonas Norsted, Espen Johnsen and others. The seminar is part of the research project Provenance Projected. Architecture Past and Future in the Era of Circularity and is the second in a series looking at the provenance of architecture through the lens of buildings for art.

  Students:

  Lorenz Andexer, Solveig Koløen Birkeland, Herman Bjerke, Gentiana Dobra, Sofie Holme, Teo Glorvigen Kalafat, Guro Kalstveit, Emanuel Victor Kjellberg. Silja Klæstad, Haakon Andresen Lindstad, Eirik Uhre Løvhaug, Emily Suong Ngoc Nguyen, Einar Runde Saxegaard, Marie Hag Simensen, Astrid Aune Tveita

  Exhibition

  Nov 7—Dec 21, 2025
  Read more about The Provanance of a Kunsthalle

• Symposium II, Oslo

  Provenance Projected, symposium II, Oslo December 11–14 2024

  WEDNESDAY evening: Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsveien 17

  17:00 Dag Erik Elgin, Tour of the exhibition Bomba

  18:00 Uwe Fleckner, A Picture goes around the World. Guernica and the (shattered) Power of a Masterpiece + Emir Kusturica, Guernica (1978)

  THURSDAY morning: Ambassaden, Henrik Ibsen’s gate 48

  10:00 Erik, Tour on Erik&Jorge’s restauration work oftheSaarinen US Embassy

  THURSDAY afternoon, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Maridalsveien 29

  13:00 Business Meeting over lunch with news&updates on projects, symposia, conferences, exhibitions, publications

  Charles Saumarez Smith, John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture

  Charlotte Skene Catling, AaltoSiilo – Silo Nightmares

  Presentation and discussion

  PhDs and Postdoc work

  Flavia Crisciotti, Unframed Edges: Veronese and Bellini on display in the 1950s

  Simon Mitchell, Warehouses of Architectural Components 

  Jørgen Tandberg, Broadcasting Time

  Alena Rieger, Moveables

  FRIDAY: Henie Onstad Art Center, Høvikodden

  10:00 Welcome Anne Hilde Nesset, director Henie Onstad Art Center

  Building physiognomy (discussion):

  Erik Langdalen & Nicholas Coates, Høvikodden in Circulation: The Provenance of an Art Centre

  Provenance exhibition 2027 (discussion):

  Caroline Ugelstad, Notes on the Exhibition and the Høvikodden Archives

  Adam Lowe, Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Art

  Jorge Otero-Pailos´ Ethics of Dust: Norwegian Government Quarter Ceiling

  Mari Lending, Sverre Fehn: Piercing History

  Dag Erik Elgin, Joseph Beuys at Høvikodden: Rumours and Facts

  Symposium

  Dec 11—14, 2024
  Read more about Symposium II, Oslo

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  BOMBA, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo

  In November 2024, Dag Erik Elgin will present an exhibition intervention at Kunstnernes Hus. BOMBA will engage the presence of Pablo Picasso's seminal Guernica at Kunstnernes Hus in 1938, just one year after the painting was completed. At the top center of Picasso's painting depicting the terror of the aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War, a light bulb surrounded by a lampshade emits sharp, cone-shaped rays of light. In the painting, the lamp is surrounded by twisted bodies, and it ambiguously exists both as an ordinary electric light source and as a bomb at the moment it explodes. The Spanish word BOMBA refers to this ambiguity, referring both to the bomb and to the light bulb (in Spanish, bombilla eléctrica is a diminutive of bomba).

  Taking as its point of departure this pivotal moment in the exhibition history of Kunstnernes Hus, Elgin's intervention will reflect on the complex legacy of modernity and modernism, the technological and artistic innovations of these eras, and the continuation of war into the present.

  Uwe Fleckner will present the lecture "A Picture goes around the World. Guernica and the (shattered) Power of a Masterpiece" at Kunstnernes Hus Wednesday December 11, at 6pm.

  Exhibition

  Nov 8—Dec 15, 2024
  Read more about BOMBA, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo