The Lillehammer Art Museum In Norway ~ Chosen Museum Of The Year ~ Toured By Our Editor

Written by Alexander Sorenson Friday, 07 October 2011 23:16

The Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway was chosen as museum of the year in 2008. This is the first time an art museum has received this award. The Lillehammer Art Museum, two hours outside of Oslo, features Norwegian visual art from the early 1800s to the present day. Established as a private foundation in 1994, the Lillehammer's permanent collections include historical and contemporary paintings and sculptures of such artists as Hans Gude, J. C. Dahl, Adolph Tidemand, Eilif Peterssen, Christian Krogh and Edvard Munch. Temporary exhibitions include contemporary international art. Local Lillehammer painters including Kristen Holbø, Thorvald Erichsen and Lars Jorde are well represented in the collection. The museum offers guided tours (in English) everyday. The foundation Lillehammer Art Museum was established April 1 1994. The foundation is a further development of the 67-years-old institution Lillehammer City Collection of Paintings. The museum also holds temporary exhibitions of Norwegian and international art. Lillehammer Art Museum is considered one of the country's most important and representative works from the year 1820-1950. The core of the museum's collection was generously donated by two private collectors: In 1921 the merchant and local patriot Einar Lunde donated over 150 paintings to the city of Lillehammer, and in 1958, antique dealer Oscar Johannessen from Oslo gave his collection of paintings from the 1800s to the institution. In course of the last years the collection has been strengthened by a number of substantial donations and by acquisitions mainly focused on contemporary art. In 2008 art collector Jon Dobloug gave parts of his collection of Norwegian contemporary art to the museum. The collection contains 189 works of art, and has the title "Jon Dobloug's collection". The museum is one of the nation's leading art museums, and houses a collection consisting of approx. 3400 works. The museum also organizes six separate exhibitions a year, featuring both historical art and modern art. Through the government-sponsored art programme The Cultural Rucksack, the museum also offers cultural and art workshops. The unique museum building was drawn by the architectural firm Snøhetta in connection with the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer.

The museum's Art Garden was designed by the artist Bård Breivik and connects the old building and the new building together. It uses rocks and water as the main themes. In connection with Bård Breivik exhibition in 1992/1993 Breivik said the following in the exhibition catalog: "The water has its own life, a river never in straight lines. Where it can, looking for water to go under overpasses through the terrain, or on the plains flowing rivers meander. The whorls that occur in the river free water for foreign objects and provide the new oxygen and freshness. Besides, it is a sensual tension between the soft, pliant water and the hard stone that gives both visual and audio experiences that encourage play with water so young children do when they find a pond." The museum buildings would become the first major project the Snøhetta firm realized. A sleek, modernist buildings totaling 5,100 square meters was opened to the public. Snøhetta experimented with some of its formative ideas in this project, exploring the relationships between immediate conditions and broader contexts, and the resonances between a cultural institution's contents and its wider audience. Snøhetta has since evolved to become a major international architectural firm, which has noted buildings throughout the world. Their style can be described as humane modernism. A characteristic is a relatively low buildings, attuned to nature and the environment. Examples of signal building was designed by Snøhetta is the Library of Alexandria and the Norwegian Opera. Snøhetta is about to erect a building at Ground Zero in New York and recently won the competition to a new building to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Company has received numerous international awards and accolades. Exhibition on view through 9 January, 2011 is "Edvard MUNCH by Andy Warhol" featuring Warhol's silk-screen typical variations of some of Munch's famous artworks.