Currently two banners from the work Manifesto (2025) by American artist Andrea Geyer are exhibited on the façade of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. One reads, “I need a museum where I can find more than myself,” and the other, “I want a museum that feels its floors shaking when other museums are destroyed in war.” It is hardly difficult to agree with these statements, but the need to put them on big banners for all to see naturally indicates that they formulate a deficiency in today’s art museums. Are museums only concerned with affirming their audiences? And do they show enough solidarity with struggling artists and cultural workers in other countries?
On 22 February, Kunstnernes Hus organised a workshop with Geyer, who invited visitors to come together to talk about the role that museums should play in their daily lives and to write down their wishes. Some of these messages were put on display in the stairs leading up to the galleries where the exhibition Back to the Land by Jannik Abel is currently on view. The exhibition has also been activated through the conversation program
“Back to the Table”, which has addressed themes such as “Art and Crises” and “Art and Activism,” and will conclude on 9 March under the forward-looking title “The Continuation.” After her workshop, Geyer participated in the penultimate of these conversations, a panel discussion on the role of art institutions, organised in collaboration with the Fritt Ord Foundation.
In addition to Geyer and Kunstnernes Hus Director Sarah Lookofsky, the panel for “Art and the Institutions” also consisted of three international guests, all institutional leaders who have recently lost their positions for political reasons.
Matej Drlička was the director of the National Theatre of Slovakia from 2021 until the current authoritarian, pro-Putin government led by Prime Minister Robert Fico returned to power for the fourth time; he and the directors of six institutions were dismissed during 2024. Drlička characterized Fico’s political program as a “revenge reform.” He compared the situation in his home country to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, but argued that while Orbán subtly took full control of Hungarian cultural institutions over the course of six years, Slovakia is witnessing a more rapid takeover, followed by a complete destruction of state support systems. Drlička remarked that the country’s Minister of Culture Martina Šimkovičová, a former TV host whom he described as both racist and homophobic, did not give an official reason for his dismissal, but he assumed it was because he had been outspoken and critical to her verbal attacks on the queer community.
Stefanie Carp and Adam Budak had recently lost their positions at the Ruhrtriennale theatre festival and the Kestner Gesellschaft art association in Hanover, respectively, as a consequence of Germany’s labelling of all support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
Carp claimed that it is impossible to work internationally in Germany today. She told of an inquisitorial pressure which required her to check all the artists for suspected anti-Semitism. She had invited one of her sources of inspiration, the internationally renowned Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembe, to open the festival. But a politician claimed that Mbembe was anti-Semitic because they had found some sentences in his 2019 book Necropolitics, in which he writes critically about the state of Israel. Carp received support from the artist Candice Breitz and other Jewish intellectuals, but the entire festival ended up being cancelled. Although the festival was officially cancelled due to Covid-19 measures, Carp believed that it was actually an act of political censorship. She described the German censorship as “censorship that does not want to be seen as censorship,” where the justification is often something else, such as security measures.
Budak was also not given a proper justification when he was forced to resign as director of Kestner Gesellschaft. But in November 2023 he wanted to express “empathy for Palestinians” and shared a heart-shaped Palestinian flag on his private Instagram account and used the term “genocide” for Israel’s actions in Gaza, and was subsequently accused of being anti-Semitic and forced to leave his position. The Polish-born curator said that the atmosphere in today’s Germany partly reminded him of Poland in the 1980s, when limitations of freedom of speech and a censorship generated fear and a lack of solidarity. He said that people he thought were friends no longer talk to him. Ironically, Budak had just planned an exhibition program in the name of the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was from Hanover and is best known for her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Budak believed that what is seen in Germany today is a “parody of memory culture” and an “abuse of the Holocaust.”
Carp and Budak both spoke of widespread self-censorship in the German art scene, which they believed was related to the fear of losing social status, positions, and funding. Drlička stated that the only reason that he and his fellow panelists could be dismissed was because there are collaborators who are ready to take over, no matter what the political situation is: “There is always a collaborator who steps in, that is always why they win.”
Lookofsky, who has been director of Kunstnernes Hus since the autumn of 2023, said that she got chills listening to her colleagues from Slovakia and Germany. She expressed concern that the far-right is on the rise, also in Norway, and that the Progress Party may come to power after the election this autumn, and thus implement major cuts to cultural funding. She also said that she has already noticed a nationalist wave in Norway, a movement away from cosmopolitanism, which makes it difficult to get support for international programs. But she emphasised that even though Kunstnernes Hus has little money, it has independence, and is able to facilitate conversations that cannot be had elsewhere.
Geyer stated that we must insist on radical solidarity and trust. She identified white supremacy as the underlying problem and argued that it is important to acknowledge the problem within one’s own borders and not just point away from oneself, while also taking a global perspective. She highlighted the importance of learning from the knowledge that exists among people who have been oppressed, such as Indigenous Peoples and formerly enslaved peoples. Geyer argued that in order to plan for the future, it is necessary to look at history: what has led to this moment? She said that we need to free our imaginations when thinking about what we need from museums.
Such questions about the role of museums are raised in a Norwegian context where a number of new museums, both public and private, have popped up in recent years. It is almost like a competition in signal buildings, where much of the motivation has been to attract international attention and large audiences. On the Oslo waterfront, the private Astrup Fearnley Museum was first with its new building in 2012. This was followed by the newly built National Museum and the Munch Museum, both of which opened recently. Christen Sveaas’s art foundation and Kistefos Museum launched their new building The Twist in 2019, and the municipality of Kristiansand and Nicolai Tangen followed suit with Kunstsilo last year. In the last month, we have also seen the inaugurations of the Reitan family’s museum PoMo in Trondheim, and a new branch of Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in Bodø.
But radical solidarity? That is, a solidarity that goes beyond signing a declaration or raising a flag? There is not much to suggest that this a priority in Norwegian museums. And it does not seem coincidental that it is a smaller artist-run institution like Kunstneres Hus – and not a large museum – that provides space for this conversation, not to mention for Geyer and Abel’s critical projects. Small and medium-sized art institutions are mainly where artists are given space for artistic experimentation and development, and this is also primarily where we find examples of the solidarity that Geyer called for – or, at least, where we have any hope of finding signs of it at the managerial level.
In addition to Kunstnernes Hus, one of the institutions to recently provide space for discussion of these topics is Nitja Center for Contemporary Art in Lillestrøm. When Nitja dedicated its premises to the exhibition and conversation program Cancel Culture Club & Spa (CCC&S) just before Christmas – a collaboration with Hanan Benammar, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, and Miriam Haile – Director Kathrine Wilson, who has led the art center since 2023, gave an introduction in which she explained that she, with her team, has made solidarity one of their core values. Apparently, this declaration comes with a certain willingness to act. CCC&S addressed a number of specific cases of backlash and cancellation in the Nordic countries and internationally in recent years. The discussions took place in closed gatherings where artists could safely share their experiences and were followed by a number of public lectures where the aforementioned Breitz was included as an international guest.
To find a similar engagement at the major museums, you have to look closer to the ground. Respect is due to the employees of the National Museum who organised themselves under the slogan “Culture Against Genocide” to criticise the museum’s silence and lack of action regarding the genocide in Palestine. I must say that I would like to see a similar commitment at the Munch Museum against oil sponsorship, but it seems as if the majority of the Norwegian art field has become comfortable with that situation, and that climate catastrophe is considered normal and not something to talk about too loudly.
Why is it so difficult for museum directors to show solidarity? I think that the mechanisms highlighted by the panel at Kunstneres Hus also apply in countries where freedom of expression is not under direct attack. It is about class and social status, and about securing positions and funding. And it is consequently about where museum management has its loyalties. If the large museums are primarily loyal to their sponsors, we have a problem, whether these are super-rich collectors like Tangen, John Fredriksen, and Stein Erik Hagen or oil companies like Idemitsu and Aker BP – or, for that matter, the Ministry of Culture and other public funds. The arm’s length principle is absolutely crucial to have artistic freedom and politically independent institutions with competent artistic leadership.
Recently, we saw an example of how bad things can get, when fear of losing funding reigns. Email exchanges between the The Fredriksen Family Collection and the National Museum that the daily newspapers Aftenposten and Dagens Næringsliv published on 19 February, revealed the museum’s attempts to undermine art criticism by Nicholas Norton in Kunstkritikk and Espen Hauglid in Morgenbladet, by dismissing these publications as “leftist,” making it very clear that the museum feared the criticism would have consequences. The matter was not improved by Director Ingrid Røynesdal’s statements to Kunstkritikk afterwards, where she suggested that the vocal criticism the sponsorship agreement has received is simply caused by Norwegians not being accustomed to private sponsors.
It is true that there is a general concern about the super-rich gaining more and more power in the Norwegian art field, through everything from sponsorships to establishing their own museums. But in the Fredriksen case, the criticism is very specific. It is partly about ethical considerations (the fact that the Fredriksens are tax refugees who have made parts of their fortune by collaborating with Putin’s Russia and South Africa during apartheid), and partly that the agreement gives the Fredriksen sisters, Cecilie and Kathrine, too much influence over the museum’s programming. The latter point was subscribed to by ICOM (International Council of Museums), although it would not go so far as to exclude the museum from membership in the organisation. Fortunately, it seems as if the two sisters are on their way out, as they have partly withdrawn from the agreement. It should be possible to run the National Museum without engaging in collaborations that compromise the museum’s integrity and reputation.
Although there are courageous institutional leaders like Drlička, Carp, and Budak, it seems obvious that solidarity must primarily come from below. In any case, there is no point in waiting for it to come from above. As Abel said, it starts with the artists, but they need to be many. Geyer stated that it is about a willingness to stop what you are doing, come together and dedicate yourself to a cause. We should probably all take a look in the mirror – that is, without drowning in it – and consider how we, in our work, can stretch beyond ourselves.
