Past Exhibitions 2010
SNØHETTA: architecture – landscape – interior
February 4 through April 24, 2010
The innovative, award-winning, and environmentally conscious architectural firm, Snøhetta, is featured in a multi-faceted exhibition. SNØHETTA architecture – landscape – interior offers insight into the design and construction of the firm’s most important works, including the celebrated Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, the recently completed Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, Norway, and the planned National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York. Organized and initially presented by the National Museum – Architecture in 2009, this exhibition includes films, photographs, drawings, models, and interactive learning devices.
Formed in 1989 in Oslo when three Norwegians, one Austrian, and one American won a competition to design Alexandria’s new library, Snøhetta is an international architectural and design firm with its main offices in both Oslo and New York. The Snøhetta team now consists of 120 internationally diverse staff collaborating to produce eco-friendly designs connecting culture and landscape. The firm’s philosophy sets a high standard for all of its projects to be socially conscious and sustainable. Its designs are characterized by a symbiotic relationship between context and landscape; they aim to achieve harmony between buildings and their surroundings, both cultural and environmental.
Among Snøhetta’s first completed projects, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was commissioned to resurrect the long-extinct library of Alexandria. The structure embodies the unique juncture of its location: nestled between the contemporary metropolis of Alexandria, its ancient Mediterranean harbor, and the vast Sahara Desert. Architects incorporated local and historical materials, from a hieroglyph-covered granite façade to papyrus in the reflecting pool. Its tilting, circular construction captures iconography that spans culture and continents. As the lines extend from earth to horizon to sky, they pull the visitors through past, present, and future; the physical design parallels the human experience of time, reminding visitors of the unique crossroads at which the Bibliotheca stands.
Since
this initial project, the team has completed several other works
projecting a similar vision of creating accessible designs integrating
surrounding culture, climate, and ecosystems. This most notably
includes the 2008 Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, which won the
2009 Mies van der Rohe Award—the European Union Prize for
contemporary architecture. Upcoming projects include the King Abdulaziz
Center for Knowledge and Culture, Saudi Arabia, and the National
September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion, New York City, along with a
number of new projects in North and Central America from Canada to
Guatemala.
The exhibition presents a comprehensive selection of Snøhetta’s innovative designs using various media including films, photographs, computer visualizations, drawings, models, and an interactive multi-touch table. Divided into eight units, the installation presents 11 of Snøhetta’s most important projects. Models of several Snøhetta designs will be on view, including the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Opera House in Oslo, the Ras Al-Khaimah Gateway Project, the King Abdulaziz Center for Knowledge and Culture, and Tubaloon—Kongsberg Jazz Festival Band Shelter. Through these diverse means of demonstration, this installation provides a glimpse into the working methods and visions of the architects at Snøhetta, and a preview of some of their work to come.
Sponsored by the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, the publication of a comprehensive catalogue of Snøhetta’s designs, Snøhetta Works (Lars Muller Publishers, 2009) will be available for viewing and purchase at Scandinavia House in Volvo Hall.
Commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the exhibition is produced by Norway’s National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in close collaboration with Snøhetta. Support for the exhibition has been provided by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York and Tova Borgnine. The curator is Eva Madshus, Senior Curator at the National Museum—Architecture in Oslo.
Read Ada Louise Huxtable’s recent review in the WSJ here.
Read Pierre Alexandre de Looz’s recent review on artinfo.com here.
Gallery Hours: Open Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 6 pm
Gallery Admission: FREE
Conditions of Architecture & Current Works
Lecture by Craig Dykers
Tuesday, March 30, 7 pm
$10 ($8 ASF Members, FREE to Students with a valid ID)
A companion lecture to the exhibition SNØHETTA architecture – landscape – interior, Snøhetta co-founder Craig Dykers will present recent works from the Snøhetta office and discuss contemporary conditions in architectural practice that the firm is evaluating.
Dykers co-founded the architecture and design firm in 1989 – the same year the firm won the international competition to design the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. Snøhetta established a New York office in 2004, the year it was awarded the commission for the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center.
The international practice emphasizes site-specific and environmentally responsible design solutions that “enhance…qualities of place and create diverse and rich architectural experiences.” Featured in a multi-faceted exhibition at Scandinavia House on view through April 3, 2010, SNØHETTA architecture – landscape – interior offers insight into the design and construction of the firm’s most important works and includes films, photographs, drawings, models, and interactive learning devices.
Past Exhibitions 2009
Victor Borge: A Centennial Exhibition
January 4 through May 2, 2009
Affectionately known as “The Great Dane,” Victor Borge was a unique combination of musician, humorist, and humanitarian. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, The American-Scandinavian Foundation presents Victor Borge: A Centennial Exhibition at Scandinavia House, The Nordic Center in America. Continuing through May 2nd, 2009, this significant exhibition explores his life and achievements through a collection of film clips, recordings, photographs and memorabilia from Borge’s personal archives.
In the nearly 70 years that he lived in the United States, Victor Borge performed on the radio, in films, on television, in opera houses, sports arenas, and the White House. In 1956, he secured a permanent place in Broadway history with his Comedy In Music, which still holds the record for the longest-running one-man show.
Distinctively Danish, his comedy encouraged audience interaction and found humor in the mundane. Mr. Borge effectively used physical and visual elements during his live and televised performances, maintaining a consistent, dynamic energy and high level of spontaneity, marked by impeccable timing and highly developed musicality.
Recognized as an ambassador of goodwill in both his native Denmark and his adopted America, Borge was knighted by the five Nordic countries and honored by both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. He received Kennedy Center Honors in 1999 and was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Statue of Liberty Centennial Committee.
Born Børge Rosenbaum in Denmark on January 3, 1909, Mr. Borge trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and began his career in Denmark in the 1930s. While touring in Sweden, the Third Reich invaded Denmark, rendering it impossible for Borge to return and resume his career there. He left for the United States a few months later aboard the USS American Legion (the last passenger ship to leave Europe for America at the onset of World War II) arriving stateside on August 28, 1940.
Through his career and his humanitarian efforts, Victor Borge influenced the lives of countless Americans and Scandinavians alike. A strong proponent of Danish-American friendship, he opened the eyes of many Americans to Danish culture.
Support for the exhibition was provided by the Scan|Design by Inger and Jens Bruun Foundation; the Sanna and Victor Borge Memorial Fund; the Elsie H. Hillman Foundation; Flemming and Judy Heilmann; Bicky and George Kellner; Peter Flinch; Stig Host; Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr.; Scott Gonge; Lennard Rambusch, Esq.; Joan M. Warburg, and Ambassador Richard B. and Mrs. Marlene Stone.
Northern (L)attitudes: Norwegian and American Contemporary Art
May 29th through September 19, 2009
A collection of photographs, paintings, videos and mixed media, this exhibition will celebrate the works of nine provocative contemporary artists (four American, five Norwegian) all of whom are American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) 
Fellowship recipients: Eric Aho, Marion Belanger, Lene Berg, Sandra Binion, Kjell Bjørgeengen, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Unn Fahlstrøm, Nina Katchadourian and Are Mokkelbost.
A transatlantic cross-pollination of concepts and mediums, Northern (L)attitudes explores how each country’s geography, environment and culture informs the work of the artist. The exhibition will highlight intersections of cultural exchange and how they occur.
As evident through their works, the American artists were clearly taken with Scandinavia’s flora and fauna, keenly observing and investigating its geography, climate, vegetation, and wildlife through paintings interpreting ice and forest, and photographs and video delineating landscape, rocks and animal behavior.
In contrast, the Norwegian artists are occupied with societal conventions and visceral intangibilities. During their time in the United States, these artists drew inspiration from politics, sound, and the visual rhetoric of power and color, among other things.
The exhibition was supported by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York.
Carl Fredrik Hill: Swedish Visionary and Modernist
Drawings from the Malmö Art Museum
October 1, 2009 – January 9, 2010
Over 75 works, most never before seen in U.S., reveal Hill as prophet of Surrealism and Expressionist art
The first major exhibition in America devoted to Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911), one of the most important and original Swedish artists of the 19th century, focuses on the series of astonishingly visionary and expressive drawings Hill produced during the last 30 years of his life, a period in which he was regarded as incurably insane. Although derided by his contemporaries, these late drawings are now recognized as 
important precursors of such movements as Surrealism, Expressionism, and even Pop art. Many of today’s leading artists, including Georg Baselitz, Donald Baechler, Arnulf Rainer, and Per Kirkeby, have been influenced by Hill’s work.
The selection of over 75 drawings, many never before exhibited in the U.S., comes from the collections of Sweden’s Malmö Art Museum, a major repository of the artist’s work.
Acclaimed in his youth as Sweden’s most gifted exponent of French Impressionism, at age 28 Hill suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. During his long period of confinement, until his death at age 62, he drew obsessively, creating a parallel world inhabited by images drawn from nature, memory, art history, and his imaginative fantasy. By turns apocalyptic and lyrically poetic, the works on view represent the extraordinarily wide range of styles, techniques, and imagery that Hill explored during this time. Variously executed in chalk, crayon, and pen, they range from violently/wildly expressionistic scene of the Scandinavian countryside and 
erotically charged nudes, to extraordinarily complex and precisely drawn interiors of fantastic temples and palaces, to haunting portraits of family and friends.
Carl Fredrik Hill, Swedish Visionary and Modernist: Drawings from the Malmö Art Museum was organized by the Malmö Art Museum, one of the leading art museums of Scandinavia. Its collection of some 32,000 objects includes over 2,000 works by Carl Fredrik Hill. The exhibition curator is Göran Christenson, Director of the Malmö Art Museum.
Christenson will be present at the opening of the exhibition and will give a talk on his impressions of Hill and reflect on the contemporary aspect of his drawings.
Support for this exhibition was generously provided by a grant from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. Additional funding was provided by the Consulate General of Sweden in New York.