Doors open: 18:00
Language: English
Start: 19:00 - Please allow plenty of time to get to the 12th floor
The Sky Room has limited capacity, so please arrive early to ensure a seat. A live stream will be set up in Amfi in the Lobby should max capacity be reached.
Crew members can direct you to seats outside of the filmed area upon request.
This event will also be streamed live here.
Through the series Museum Talks, MUNCH invites key practitioners in the field, who are rethinking the role of the museum, to bring their unique perspectives to Oslo.
We ask:
How can art museums be relevant public arenas for discussion?
How can we contribute meaningfully to the artistic ecosystem? How can large-scale institutions operate sustainably with transparency and kindness? How can we include marginalized groups and develop new voices? What is the role of the curatorial in museums, and how can we nurture experimentation whilst retaining long-term research perspectives?
Art museums are part of an ecosystem of smaller and mid-size art institutions, galleries, and individual artists and practitioners. In Norway, a number of museums were consolidated after the government’s museum reform of 2003. That meant more power and financial resources distributed across fewer institutions. This has strengthened the economy of some museums, but it has also entailed shifts in power dynamics, greater bureaucracy, and expectations of higher visitor numbers.
Since the move from Tøyen to Bjørvika, MUNCH has wanted to challenge what a museum can be. The contemporary art project Munchmuseet on the Move (2015–2020) formed a bridge between the old and the new museum. It was collaborative and inspired by the artist-initiated Prosjekt i Gamlebyen (PiG) from 1994. As a two-year-old institution on the waterfront of Bjørvika, with a greater mandate from the City of Oslo, it is more important than ever to discuss the role of the museum. MUNCH would like to continue to acknowledge and support the crucial work of promoting art in the city and provide artists with the opportunity to develop new projects. MUNCH sees that the precarious studio situation in Oslo is a major challenge for the possibilities for artists to live and work in the city.
Several institutions in Oslo have contributed to the programming, including UKS – the Young Artists’ Association, Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Oslo Kunstforening, Nitja, Fotogalleriet, Podium, Kunstnernes Hus and The Norwegian Association of Curators.
Laura Raicovich is a New York City-based writer and curator. Her recent book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, was published in 2021 by Verso Books. She is also editor and curator of Protodispatch, a digital publication featuring artists’ takes on the local and global conditions that make their work necessary; she initiated the forum with Mari Spirito and Protocinema in 2022. With a collective of artists, musicians, and culture workers, Raicovich opened The Francis Kite Club, a bar/cultural/activist space in NYC’s East Village in 2023. Prior to these projects, Raicovich served as Director of the Queens Museum and Interim Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; she was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center, and the Tremaine Curatorial Fellow for Journalism at Hyperallergic.
Tone Hansen (b. 1970, Kirkenes, Norway/Sápmi) has been director of MUNCH since October 2022. She is the former director of Henie Onstad Art Centre (2011–2022). Here, she led a comprehensive rehabilitation of the 1960s building and established a strong artistic profile with an extensive live programme, topical thematic group exhibitions, and important solo presentations. Hansen was an operative chair of UKS – the Young Artists’ Association from 2003 to 2005. From 2016 to 2019, she was the leader of the Norwegian Arts Council.
Photo: Michael Anglo
