La Grande Bouffe
From Sámi art seeking to heal colonial wounds to spray-painted bedrooms and a brand-new museum – even as budgets shrink, the Norwegian art scene still offers a lavish autumn spread.
Commentary
The Ethics of Movement
A European tour of works by Frida Kahlo brings attention to the uncertain future of a collection rooted in Mexico’s cultural history.
The End Is Nigh…ish
Contemporary art’s rhetoric of doom has become a comfortable cliché, as the scramble for relevance turns resistance into a risk-free, legible aesthetic.
Dancing Around an Estate
The major museums in the Nordics are reaching out to expand their audiences like never before. But who is keeping contemporary art and history alive?
Art Schools Are Not Policy Instruments
Recasting Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art as a classical art school would erode artistic freedom.
Spring Salad
Geopolitics looms over everything in Denmark. But not on the art scene, which is serving up glam-rock, food happenings, and solo shows featuring international heavyweights.
Millennial Takeover
The Swedish spring is marked by aesthetic confidence and structural uncertainty.
Eat Your Phone, Amen!
How do we hold onto what is materially sacred in a time that worships the cloud?
Spiritual Disarmament
Pure hypocrisy: Denmark’s Minister for Culture praises art and culture in the fight against AI while the budget for the National Collection of Photography is slashed.
Consolation Prize
Will poverty save us? A dispatch from Helsinki.
A Happy, Unspecified Fantasy
Arthur Köpcke arrived in Copenhagen in 1953. Not long after, the city became a centre of the European avant-garde. When might that happen again?
No Case for Renewal
While a dramatic shift towards authoritarianism is taking place in the United States, art clings to aesthetic strategies from the 1980s.
