On May 10, curators Markús Þór Andrésson of the Rekyjavik Art Museum, Jaime DeSimone of the Portland Museum of Art and Anders Jansson of the Bildmuseet will join art writer Gregory Volk for a conversation about the North Atlantic Triennial, currently on view at the Portland Museum of Art until June 5, in a virtual program produced by Scandinavia House in collaboration with the Portland Museum of Art. Co-organized by the Portland Museum of Art, the Reykjavík Art Museum, Iceland, and the Bildmuseet, Sweden, the North Atlantic Triennial is the first exhibition devoted entirely to contemporary art of the North Atlantic region.
Featuring both emerging and more established artists living today, the exhibition presents 21st century art from an unprecedented cross-section of artists living in Maine, the Canadian Maritimes, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Faroe Islands, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark as well as Indigenous nations throughout the region.
The program will air here via YouTube and remain available to stream following the premiere; check back closer to the date to see how to watch.
About the Speakers
Markús Þór Andrésson holds the position of Chief Curator, Exhibitions and Public Engagement at Reykjavík Art Museum since 2017. Prior, he worked as an independent curator, writer and filmmaker. He holds a degree in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, class of 2007. Previously he was an undergraduate in studio arts at the Iceland Academy of The Arts.
Anders Jansson is a curator and the deputy director at Bildmuseet, Umeå, where he curated and organized exhibitions Architectures of Transition, Faith Ringgold, Design Matters and Animalesque: Art Across Speices and Beings. Before joining Bildmuseet in 2018, he was the director of Skellefteå Museum (2016-2018) and prior to that Head of departet at Museum Anna Nordlander, Skellefteå (2009-2016). As an editor and writer he has contributed to publications such as Engtanle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination (Hatje Cantz 2019) and Ángela Ferreira: Pan African Unity Mural (2019). He holds degrees in curating from Stockholm University (MA, 2004) and Art History from Umeå University (BA, 2004).
Jaime DeSimone is the Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic Curator of Contemporary Art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, where she curated the exhibitions Ragnar Kjartansson: Scenes from Western Culture (2019–20), Carrie Moyer and Sheila Pepe: Tabernacles for Trying Times (2020), and Richard Estes: Urban Landscapes (2021). She received grants from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IASPIS – The International Artists Studio Program in Stockholm, and FRAME Finland, as well as a Curatorial Research Fellowship from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for research and travel in connection with the 2022 North Atlantic Triennial. DeSimone is also a current scholar in the Fulbright Arctic Initiative III for 2021-2022. She served in other curatorial positions at MOCA Jacksonville (2014-2018) and the Addison Gallery of American Art (2005-2012). She holds degrees in art history, with a specialization in Contemporary Art, from American University (MA, 2005) and Bates College (BA, 2001).
About the Moderator
Gregory Volk is a New York-based art writer, freelance curator, and former Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He writes regularly for Hyperallergic, and his articles and reviews have also appeared in many other publications including Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail.
He has written numerous texts on Icelandic artists through the years and his book-length essay on innovative German artist Katharina Grosse appears in the monograph Katharina Grosse (Lund Humphries, 2020). A graduate of Colgate University (B.A) and Columbia University (M.A.), Volk has curated many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad.