News archive

The exhibition Indigenous Histories takes places at MASP Sao Paulo from 20 October 2023 to 25 February 2024.

The exhibition is a collaboration with KODE Art Museum Bergen. For more information on the exhibition follow this link

WONA members Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad, Elin Haugdal, Stephanie von Spreter and Hanne Hammer Stien take editorial responsibility for the thematic issue "Photographic Practices as Care-Taking" at the journal Photographies (vol. 18.1, 2025)

The thematic issue relates to the conference "Photographic Practices as Care-Taking" which took place at UiT Tromsø and Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø in autumn 2022 (see WONA's ACTIVITIES page for detailed information on the conference).

Confirmed contributors are: Charlotte Bank, Jana J. Haeckel, Elin Haugdal, Hilde Honerud, Suryanandini Narain, Synnøve Marie Vik, Dawn Wooley

Link to Photographies

The Vigeland Museum, in partnership with Eckbos Legat, Kulturbyrået Mesén and the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Arts and Ideas at the University of Oslo, is organizing a two-day seminar on sculpture in the intersection between nationalism and internationalism in the period from around 1900 until today. 

The seminar, its full title being Boundaries or no Boundaries – Sculpture in the Intersection between Nationalism and Internationalism, will shed light on various aspects of this subject matter, both in a historical and contemporary setting.
WONA member Stephanie von Spreter participates with her paper «Ghost of the Past? The (In)visible Hans Egede Monument at Trinity Church, Oslo».

The seminar takes place on Monday, 12 June and Tuesday, 13 June at Sentralen, Oslo. The full programme can be accessed here
Registration / ticket purchase is mandatory via the following link

Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library soon to open in Venice

Only four days left until opening of the amazing Girjegumpi in The Nordic Countries Pavilion in Venice! WONA congrats Joar Nango and his coworkers, amongst them our research member ph.d. student Katrine Rugeldal. She has followed Girjegumpi for a while and has published important surveys of public Sámi architecture. Please, also take note on the new network/project in progress, Huksenvieru sátnegirji – Sámi Dictionary of Architecture – Samisk arkitekturordbok (HUSA), which is a collaboration between Girjegumpi and WONA. We will keep you updated on our workshop and outreach in Venice June 13-14!

Stephanie von Spreter participates with her paper «Investigating the Arctic from a Gendered, (Post)Colonial and Posthuman Feminist Perspective. Three Contemporary Artistic Practices.» at the conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society, which takes place at the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi between the 21st and the 23rd of March. Her paper will be part of panel 24, Appearing of Disappearing: Transformation of the relations in the Arctic societies observed in the visual archives. The panel is organised by the APECS Art project group / APECS International Directorate currently led by UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

For the first time hosted by the Arctic Anthropology Research Team in Lapland, this on-site conference invites contributions to an anthropology of relations and beyond, celebrating the multiplicity of facets and “theoretical heterogeneity [that] may strengthen rather than weaken the force of relations as a general concept”. These theoretical avenues will be addressed by the three keynotes at this conference, by Dame Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge), Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen) and Piers Vitebsky (University of Cambridge). All of them have already made significant contributions to this field, for example through their study of the changing relations between people, animals and spirits, and to the general debate of what is the unit of anthropological enquiry: humans, animals, species or beings in general?

For more information on the conference and the programme please follow this link
To register for attending panel 24 via Zoom please follow this link

For more information on APECS (The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) follow this link

Kunstsentrene i Norge (KiN) invites to a panel discussion and launch of the new book Kunstsentrenes vekselstrøm (The Art Centres’ Alternating Current) in collaboration with editor Marit Flåtter and Museumsforlaget.

Panel discussion moderator: Maria Veie Sandvik, Editor at Museumsforlaget. Panel participants: Geir Bergersen Huse (contributing author), Hanne Hammer Stien (contributing author), Ingrid Blekastad (Director Kunstbanken senter for samtidskunst), Runa Vethal Stølen (Chair of the Board, Norske Kunsthåndverkere/The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts ) and Geir Egil Bergjord (Chair of the Board, Norske Billedkunstnere / The Norwegian Association of Visual Artists).

When: 21 March 2023, 13:00-15:00

Where: Rådhussalen, Trondheim folkebibliotek (local library). Main entrance from Kongensgate 1. Rådhussalen is on the second floor, the stairs are found next to the entrance.

To be able to attend the book launch and panel discussion please register via Hoopla (free entry). Register here

The anthology "Kunstsentrenes vekselstrøm" contributes to the debate about the future of Art Centres in Norway (kunstsentrene). The contributors discuss topics such as artist led spaces, distribution of power and freedom of expression. What does it mean for a public when there are artist-led spaces all over Norway? Are there important premises for understanding art in the artist-led model? Or the opposite, do they stand in the way for the professional development and professionalisation of art spaces? The first three artist-led art centers were established in Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger in 1976. Today there are 15 artist-led art centres, from Sámi Dáiddaguovddáš in Karasjok in the north to Agder art center in Kristiansand in the south. What significance do the artist-led centres have for a vibrant artistic life in regards to production and exhibition opportunities for artists?

The book contains contributions by Märit Aronsson-Towler, Joachim Friis, André Gali, Mina S. Haufmann, Geir Bergersen Huse, Merete Jonvik og Hanne Hammer Stien, Sissel Lillebostad, Mari Opsahl, Eivind Slettemeås, Stephanie Serrano Sundby, Hilde Sørstrøm and Synnøve Vik. The book was commissioned by  Kunstsentrene i Norge (KIN) med støtte fra Stiftelsen Fritt Ord og Norsk kulturråd og gis ut av Museumsforlaget.
For more information about the book click here

Lásságámmi was Nils-Aslak Valkeapää's own name on the house he had built up in Skibotn in Troms. Lásságámmi is also the name of the foundation that manages the rights of his artistic works. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943 - 2001), with the artist name Áillohaš, was and is one of the most prominent and influential Sami artists of all time. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s house Lásságammi is made available as a residence for native and foreign artists or researchers with a Sami or indigenous people’s perspective in their work. Elin Haugdal is resident at Lásságámmi in March 2023.

During her stay, Haugdal will work on a project about language and architecture, about words and concepts that are linked to Sami architecture in the broadest sense, both historical and contemporary. Of particular interest are words that describe architecture as a process and in use, that describe it as a social and collective space, as well as words that communicate its relationship to the surrounding landscape. It is important to convey the meaning and knowledge embedded in these terms to contemporary architecture, also outside Sápmi. The project is inspired by Joar Nango's Sami architecture library, Girjegumpi, and its academic, poetic and rhetorical dissemination. Authors, literary historians, linguists and art historians are invited to contribute to the project and will initially work with individual words to create a dynamic Sami 'architecture glossary'. Since Haugdal doesn't speak any Sami languages ​​herself, she will primarily try to be a facilitator for the project.

Haugdal will also finish writing two articles during her stay. One, "Home: Learning from Sápmi", has Lásságámmi and Nils-Aslak Valkeapääs' Ruoktu váimmus as its pivot point, and is about home and belonging, what home can be and how architects and artists have put it into practice. The second article is about Iver Jåks’s preparatory work and sketches for large public artworks, primarily his work Nordlys/Guovssahas in the town hall of Kárášjohka (1971–91).

Last but not least, Haugdal would like to take the opportunity to familiarize herself with Nils-Aslak Valkeapääs' artistry and political activities in order to better understand the significance of his works, and how they are also activated today in the fight against extractivism and green colonialisation.

For more information on Elin Haugdal’s residency follow this link
For more information on the foundation follow this link

Filmscreening of Titina by Tromsø barnefilmklubb (Tromsø children’s cinema club) at Verdensteateret, Tromsø, with an introduction by WONA member Hanne Hammer Stien.

In the introduction Hanne Hammer Stien talks about Titina, Amundsen and Latham. Following the film screening there is a guided tour through the Polar Museum for those children who wish to participate. There you can see and learn more about polar history in Tromsø.
The event is supported by Filmklubbforbundet
More information about Tromsø barnefilmklubb and the event here

Cinemateket, in collaboration with Perspektivet Museum, invites to a special screening of ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED, a new award-winning documentary by Oscar winner Laura Poitras.Marthe T. Fjellestad, curator at Perspektivet Museum will give an introduction before the film.

Nan Goldin is one of America's greatest living photographic artists, and since the 1980s has garnered international recognition for her documentation of, among other things, the American AIDS crisis. In recent years, Goldin has worked to hold the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma accountable for its role in the US opioid crisis, after she herself became addicted to OxyContin when she was prescribed the drug against wrist pain. ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED depicts Goldin's tireless fight against Purdue - which includes demonstrating outside the art museums to which the enormously wealthy owners, the Sackler family, donate large sums in an attempt to build a positive philanthropic image of themselves.

Laura Poitras is best known for the Oscar-winning Edward Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR and RISK about Julian Assange. In her new film, she once again portrays a brave individual who takes up the fight against powerful players - and this time David wins the fight against Goliath. ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED is a strong and uplifting documentary that was awarded the Golden Lion during the Venice Film Festival. The film has been nominated for the Oscar for best documentary film and is one of the favourites to win the world's most prestigious film award on 12 March.

More information about the event here

Welcome to the exhibition opening of Iver Jåks: Material Feelings and Effectiveness at Tegnerforbundet - The Center for Drawing Art (Oslo) on Thursday 27 October at 18.00.

he exhibition is curated by WONA member Hanne Hammer Stien together with Kristoffer Holmen and presents works by the Sámi artist Ánddir Ivvár Ivvár/ Iver Jåks (1932-2007). The main focus of the exhibition is on Jåks’s drawings, several of which have not been shown before. The three Sámi contemporary artists Laila Labba (1995), niilas helander (1983) and Kurt Hermansen (1948) will contribute to the exhibition with newly produced works that go in dialogue with Jåks’s work.

The opening speech is held by the exhibition’s curators, as well as Hanna Horsberg Hansen (on behalf of the Inger and Iver Jåks Foundation) and Hilde Lunde, Director of Tegnerforbundet. niilas helander will contribute with his performance you should not rein in a free movement.

For more information on the opening and the exhibition follow this link

WONA leads session Bringing Collections Home as part of the 13th triennial NORDIK Conference of Art History in the Nordic Countries, entitled Collections, between 24-27 October 2022.

Collections are the basis for art history as we know it. Whether in museums or on the pages of treatises, we bring objects and artworks together and ascribe meaning to them. Through history, artmaking has been deeply entwined with collecting. Collections give power – over history, over art, over taste, and ultimately over the future. Arguing about and intervening in collections can also be a fight for alternatives and other futures, or a way to right past wrongs. Collections are born from creativity, and they can stifle new creations. Many artworks are collections in themselves and the collection itself can be seen as an artwork. No matter the perspective, collections are deeply bound to art history.

The conference will take place via zoom through the meeting:
https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/61512117146?pwd=WUx0VUZuNytCK1JuTE15dzBBL29MZz09

Panel sessions will be structured via break out rooms presented at the conference.

Please also find a PDF with the final programme here.

The exhibition is curated by WONA member Irene Snarby together with Christina Landbrecht and presents works by Sigurður Guðjónsson, Julie Edel Hardenberg, Marja Helander, Outi Pieski, Máret Ánne Sara and Anders Sunna.

It is a group show featuring 24 works by six renowned artists from Iceland, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), and the Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish parts of Sápmi—a region which stretches across these three nations and into the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Spanning video, sculpture, painting, photography, and installation, the exhibition offers visitors insights into different artistic reflections from across the region as well as Indigenous perspectives. The show comments on various aspects of the intimate yet existentially fraught relationship between human beings and nature.
»Luondu« is a Sámi word with a complex meaning, denoting nature as well as personality. »Luonddus«, in turn, means »to be in nature.« The poetic alliteration »Luondu Luonddus« amplifies both and means »As part of nature, we are nature.« For Sámi people, as well as for Inuit from Kalaallit Nunaat and the inhabitants of Iceland, human beings and nature don’t just coexist, they are inextricably intertwined.
The selection of artworks, which includes several artists currently representing Nordic countries at the Venice Biennale, stimulates questions on how to develop a new understanding of our surroundings in the face of myriad global environmental threats.

For more information on the exhibition follow this link

The research group Worlding Northern Art (WONA) at The Arctic University of Norway invites proposals for papers by art historians, artists, curators and writers for the conference Photographic Practices as Care-Taking that will take place at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, 24–25 November 2022 – in-person and online. The conference is organized in collaboration with Perspektivet Museum, Tromsø.

This conference aims to examine how photographs take part in complex networks of relations. While particularly analogue image making, curating and archiving suggest a yearning for something ostensibly more stable, more material and concrete than we experience on an everyday basis, other practices embrace today’s changing digital culture. Thus we would like to investigate which role photographs take in such a world of constant transformation, how they can “touch” and remain objects of affect when they are simultaneously part of rapidly changing circumstances and contexts. We ask: Can photographs be seen as “care-takers”, establishing empathic relationships between humans and between humans and more-than-humans? Can photographs create “other” worlds of being and caring? How can photographic images and their practitioners participate in transversal, post-disciplinary processes of recoding, rewriting and “alter-worlding” (Åsberg and Braidotti 2018)? We would like to address if and how a variety of photographic practices can be recognized as practices of care-taking, from artistic to curatorial, as well as archival and collective methods and (counter)strategies.

Historically, care is a concept of ambiguity, emerging in the tension between burden and love, anxiety and attention, ethics and politics. Here, however, care is to be understood in its simple everyday meaning: to feel concern, interest, or affection, to attach importance to something – and as what is necessary for the welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something. Further frameworks for understanding care can be found in feminist theories’ “ethics of care” (Gilligan 1982), Latour’s “matters of concern” (Latour, 2004), When Species Meet (Haraway 2008), Matters of care (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) and in relation to the recently experienced pandemic, which has laid bare a crisis of care in all aspects of society and our environments (Dowling, 2022).

The conference will have two keynotes: Jana Johanna Haeckel (art historian/curator/lecturer) and Katarina Pirak Sikku, (artist). There will be three sessions based on CFP. The sessions will be grouped into different aspects of care-taking and relate to WONA’s three research interests: art and identity; art and ecology; art and science (see https://uit.no/research/wona). Overlap between the three may occur, for example when research engages with both historical and digital photographic archives in which questions of race, sexuality and identity get scrutinized, whereby the role of science in ordering, categorizing and labelling is discussed; in photographic and curatorial practices that review the chemical aspects of photography, their ecological impact and possible (scientific) solutions; and in practices that use the photographic medium as an agent for environmental and political activism, creating intersectional solidarity and care amongst human and more-than-humans.

Proposals for individual papers should be 250 words abstracts and should also include a short vita of the presenter (max 100 words), and an e-mail address. Abstracts should be e-mailed to stephanie.von.spreter@uit.no by 10 October 2022. We do not accept papers that have already been substantially published. Papers should be 20 minutes in length and generally include visuals. Topics should be relevant to contemporary discourses on photography. Each paper presentation will be followed by a Q&A led by the session’s moderator. Please provide information if you intend to participate in-person or online.

As part of the 13th triennial NORDIK Conference of Art History in the Nordic Countries, WONA invites papers to be submitted for their session Bringing Collections Home

Call for papers on the topic of “COLLECTIONS” for the 13th triennial NORDIK Conference of Art History in the Nordic Countries, 24-28 October 2022 (virtual via zoom). 

Collections are the basis for art history as we know it. Whether in museums or on the pages of treatises, we bring objects and artworks together and ascribe meaning to them. Through history, artmaking has been deeply entwined with collecting. Collections give power – over history, over art, over taste, and ultimately over the future. Arguing about and intervening in collections can also be a fight for alternatives and other futures, or a way to right past wrongs. Collections are born from creativity, and they can stifle new creations. Many artworks are collections in themselves and the collection itself can be seen as an artwork. No matter the perspective, collections are deeply bound to art history.

The NORDIK Association for Art Historians is hereby announcing a call for papers for the upcoming conference taking place 24.-28.10. 2022 under the heading “Collections”.

Preference will be given to paper proposals that are at a high level of reflexivity and at the forefront of research and practice in art history or related branches of study such as visual culture, critical theory or museum studies. Contributions based upon artistic research and practice are highly welcome.

WONA Worlding Northern Art terms responsible for one of the 31 sessions that are part of the conference, entitled Bringing Collections Home

Session description:
Through the Sámi repatriation project Bååstede (2014-2019) the transfer of more than 1600 objects from the Norsk Folkemuseum / the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History and the Museum of Cultural History at University of Oslo to six Sámi museums in Norway was made possible. Although the concept of repatriation in Bååstede was used to describe a physical homecoming, historian Veli-Pekka Lehtola (2018) talks about other forms of repatriation when he describes how Sámi individuals and communities re-engage with material from photographic archives and
collections. Similarly, Kirsten Dobbin (2013) speaks about visual repatriation in which it is not necessarily desired to have physical objects and photographs returned, but rather elements of history, memory, and identity that are embedded in the images found in collections. Art historian Anja Heiß (2017) advocates that restitution and provenance research can only be meaningfully carried out within collections, and that institutions need to problematize their own collections through such curatorial/institutional projects. Alongside research projects and art historical investigations, artistic and curatorial interventions can contribute to alternative forms of repatriation and restitution, working both with(in) collections, involved communities and the wider public. An example of such a project is Sámi artist Katarina Pirak Sikku’s longstanding engagement with the pictorial and written material of the archive and collections of the former State Institute for Racial Biology, held by the library of Uppsala University. Another example is the art and research project Ládjogahpir (2020) developed by Sámi artist Outi Pieski and archaeologist Eeva-Kristiina Harlin, introducing rematriation as a counter-concept to the patriarchal concept of repatriation.

Bringing Collections Home welcomes papers addressing research projects, as well as artistic and curatorial interventions in collections/archives that enable and critically reflect on processes of repatriation, restitution, and care.

Questions raised in these papers can include:
-How do museum professionals, curators, art historians and artists work to re- engage with archives and collections to create different kinds of homecoming?
-What kind of concepts and methods can be applied to successfully repatriate and restitute material that belongs to descendants of violated individuals and communities?
-How to address the public to make them aware of such violations?

Keywords: Worlding, (visual) repatriation, artistic interventions, curatorial interventions, homecoming, collection and archival research, Sámi repatriation, rematriation, re- engagement, re-enacting, care

Submission requirements:

Proposals for individual papers should be submitted by e-mail in the form of an abstract (100-150 words) along with an e-mail address to: stephanie.von.spreter@uit.no

Papers will be selected competitively based on the abstracts. We recommend sending in papers that have not already been substantially published. If the paper relates to previously published material, it should focus on a particular aspect of such. Papers should be maximum 20 minutes in length. Paper presentations are followed by a Q&A led by the session’s moderator.

A short vita of the presenter will be required once the abstract is accepted.

Deadline: 9 May 2022

For further information and submission of papers, please contact: Stephanie von Spreter, stephanie.von.spreter@uit.no

For further information regarding the conference, follow this link

As one of the contributors to the recently published Duodji Reader: Twelve Essays on Duodji by Sámi Duojárat and Writers from the Past 60 Years (edited by Gunvor Guttorm and Harald Gaski, produced by Sámi Allaskuvla / Sámi University of Applied Sciences and Norwegian Crafts), WONA member Irene Snarby participates in a virtual book talk together with Gunvor Guttorm, Tonje Kjellevold and Harald Gaski.

The virtual book talk takes place on Zoom. More information about the book and Zoom registration is found via the Facebook Event page.

Call for postdoc candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in Art History/Architecture/Photography at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-PF program» (uit.no/project/arcticmsca) to recruit excellent young researchers planning to apply for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) to pursue a career in research. We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of Art History/Architecture/Photography. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-PF at UiT together with Prof. Elin Haugdal. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 55 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-PF program” (uit.no/project/arcticmsca/list-of-participants). Successful postdoc candidates will be invited to Tromsø (travel and accommodation expenses covered) for a three-day MSCA-PF symposium June 8-10, 2022 (if pandemic allows). At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor and learn how to write a successful MSCA-PF application. The selected candidates will, jointly with the supervisor, write the MSCA-PF application by the deadline of September 14, 2022.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of Art History/Architecture/Photography.

For further information please follow this link

WONA contributes to the Sami Week in Tromsø (31 January - 6 February 2022) with the film screening of Buot iežan bohccuid dovdann / Alle mine rein kjenner jeg (All my reindeer I know) by Grete Andrea Kvaal

The screening of the short film takes place on Friday, 4 February at 15.15 (until 16.30), UiT Campus, Tromsø (Teorifagbygget Hus 6, rom 6.222, kino). The screening is followed by a conversation with the artist. Follow the EVENTS section on this website and our Facebook page for detailed information and to reserve a seat. The event is free of charge.

In 2022 WONA takes editorial responsibility for a double issue of the Norwegian quarterly journal for art history, Kunst og Kultur (Issues 2/3, 2022), to be launched in October 2022

The double-issue will be published under the working title Belonging and is edited by Monica Grini, Elin Haugdal and Hanne Hammer Stien. The issue will also contain contributions by Svein Aamold, Hanna Horsberg Hansen, Geir Tore Holm, Merete Jonvik, Svein Ingvoll Pedersen, Irene Snarby, Stephanie von Spreter and Hilde Sørstrøm.

Follow our website and FB page for launch date and more information.

WONA member Hanne Hammer Stien contributes chapter "Photographic Portraits as Dialogical Contact Zones: The Portrait Gallery in Sápmi - Becoming a Nation at the Arctic University Museum of Norway" to the publication Adjusting the Lens: Indigenous Activism, Colonial Legacies, and Photographic Heritage edited by Sigrid Lien and Hilde Wallem Nielssen (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021). 

About the book: Adjusting the Lens explores the role of photography in contemporary renegotiations of the past and in Indigenous art activism. In moving and powerful case studies, contributors analyze photographic practices and heritage related to Indigenous communities in Canada, Australia, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. In the process, they call attention to how Indigenous people are using old photographs in new ways to empower themselves, revitalize community identity, and decolonize the colonial record. Adjusting the Lens presents original research in this emerging field in Indigenous photography studies, juxtaposing the historical and the contemporary across a range of geographically and culturally distinctive contexts. The transnational perspective of this exciting collection challenges old ways of thinking and meaningfully advances the crucially important project of reclamation.

Follow this link for more information and purchase the book.

WONA member Monica Grini publishes Samisk Kunst og Norsk Kunsthistorie (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2021)

About the book: What is the role of the nation state in art history, and how has the national paradigm shaped the presentation of Sámi art? This book examines the representation of Sámi art, artefacts, practices, materialities, actors, concepts, and themes in Norwegian art history, to uncover some of the prevailing disciplinary mechanisms and narratives. This is one of very few historiographical studies on the art historical discipline in Norway, and the first comprehensive monograph on the representation of Sámi art.

The book can be downloaded (open access) from the Stockholm University Press website by following this link

WONA member Stephanie von Spreter publishes article "Feminist strategies for changing the story: re-imagining Arctic exploration narratives through (the staging of) photographs, travel writing and found objects" at Journal of Aesthetics & Culture (Volume 13, 2021 - Issue 1).

The article can be downloaded (open access) from the journal’s homepage by following this link

WONA member Elin Haugdal contributes chapter "New Architecture in Author Museums and Centres" to the publication Transforming Author Museums. From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs edited by Ulrike Spring, Johan Schimanski and Thea Aarbakke (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2021). 

About the book: Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.

Follow this link for more information and to purchase the book 

WONA members Hanne Hammer Stien and Stephanie von Spreter contribute to publication Conversations on Photography (Oslo: Fotogalleriet / Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2021)

About the book: Instead of presenting an objective, historical overview, Conversations on Photography grapples with the rapidly expanding and forward-thinking nature of the photographic  field from the perspective of the Nordic region by putting national and international contributors into conversation. These discussions between some of photography’s foremost contemporary practitioners provide unique insights into overlooked or erased stories, moments, and movements in the history of the medium, and of Fotogalleriet. Their voices contribute to analyzing a discipline whose potential is yet to be fully acknowledged within the larger field of contemporary art – a discipline that continues to spearhead new thinking around the role of art and its social motivations and responsibilities.

Follow this link for more information and to purchase the book.

WONA is happy to announce that Hanna Horsberg Hansen becomes professor. Follow this link for an article about the announcement of the professorship.

Event at the Nordic Countries Pavilion, with contributions from key members of the Sámi Architecture Dictionary group:

WONA member Hanne Hammer Stien co-curates (with Kristoffer Dolmen) exhibition with works by Iver Jåks at Tegnerforbundet, Oslo (28 October 22 December 2022).

About the exhibition: Drawing was an important part of the practice of the Sami artist Ánddir Ivvár Ivvár (1932–2007), also known as Iver Jåks. He is primarily known for his prints, sculptures and installations. In the material Jåks left behind there were also numerous drawings, showing the breadth of Jåks´work. As a proponent of Sami culture he contributed widely within Sami and Norwegian society. The exhibition is based on the idea of drawing as an independent form of cognition, and will show a selection of drawings together with selected pieces from Jåks’prolific production.

For more information follow this link

WONA member Stephanie von Spreter contributes with essay to exhibition Ulla Schildt. Flowers from Svalbard at Bærum Kunsthall (9 January - 2 February 2020).