- This is a pilot project of major significance for new art, making funds available to an institution for the purchase of works to be incorporated into its collection, says Karin Hellandsjø, director of Henie Onstad Art Centre.
This is an entirely new form of cooperation. For many years now, Sparebankstiftelsen DnB NOR (the DnB NOR Savings Bank Foundation) has been helping museums to fund art purchases that they would otherwise be unable to make. What is new is the idea of actively supporting new and experimental art with a donation that gives Henie Onstad Art Centre the freedom to expand its collection by selecting artists and commissioning new and highly specific works. The donation from Sparebankstiftelsen DnB NOR will be disbursed over three years, thus allowing modifications in its use depending on the collection’s profile and the Arts Centre’s outward-oriented and interdisciplinary programmes.
- The art we have purchased for museums has been of a more established character, whether Norwegian or international, and has included little contemporary art. But we are also eager to support young artists in their work, and to see our funds used in ways that help people to experience new art of a more experimental nature, says Frode Helgerud, CEO of Sparebankstiftelsen DnB NOR.
The focus will be on art that uses the local environment, the sculpture park and public areas in and around the Art Centre. The project will be organised under three headings: “Høvikodden Permanent” inside and out, “The Høvikodden Project” and “Fluxus”.
The project will be developed over the period 2011–2013 and will include, among other things, a number of commissioned works. Detailed documentation of each commission will be published as a monograph. These monographs will be collected together to form a major publication documenting the entire Kunstgaven, which will be released in conjunction with an exhibition about the donation in 2013. This publication will also include several CDs covering the project’s audio works.
A supplementary programme aimed at children and young people is being developed specifically for the project. Kunstgaven will also play a part in the Arts Centre’s new project focusing on digital art education for children and young people, which is currently being developed to accompany the Art Centre’s larger exhibitions and parts of its collection. The Art Centre collaborates with the Music and Culture School in Bærum, providing an art course for children and young people that directly addresses ongoing exhibitions and the permanent collection. The works of the Kunstgaven project will play a part in this as well.
With its breadth and explicit commitment to new art, the Kunstgaven project will enhance Henie Onstad Art Centre’s contemporary profile, while at the same time reinvigorating and further expanding its collection with the purchase of Fluxus works. These important new acquisitions will make this part of the collection unrivalled in the national context and help Henie Onstad Art Centre to become a unique centre of expertise in this field internationally.
This project, made possible by the generous gift from Sparebankstiftelsen DnB NOR, will not only allow Henie Onstad Art Centre to consolidate its position as one of the country’s leading institutions for contemporary art and interdisciplinary activities, it will also help the Art Centre to take a major stride in developing its collection and its educational programme for children and young people, while at the same time providing an immense boost to Norway’s young art scene.
