Without collectors, art would have difficulty surviving. But collecting is also a culturally creative pursuit. Donations made by patrons of the arts once provided the very basis for the development of museums as institutions, and patrons still play a significant role in artistic life today. They have been crucial in forming the public’s perception of art and its presentation. This was certainly true of Sonja Henie and Niels Onstad.

Throughout the years, the Henie Onstad Art Centre enjoyed a close relationship with Asger Jorn (1914–1973) and his art, at first through the donors, who had already acquired a significant corpus of the artist’s work, and then through the staff members and their close relations and friendship with the artist.

The Henie Onstad Art Centre has acquired various collections of work by individual artists, built up in close collaboration with the artists themselves. They are usually the culmination of contact and exhibition activity over an extended period. This is certainly true of the comprehensive collection of work by Zdenka Rusova, which has taken shape though acquisitions and gifts over a period of thirty-five years.

Amongst the Henie Onstad Art Centre’s many art treasures is a unique collection of around two hundred artworks by the Norwegian photographer John Olav Riise. This collection was recently drawn into the limelight once again, and was presented by the Art Centre in the form of an exhibition (shown in Norway and USA in 2006–07) and a publication.

Fluxus is a term used to describe an artistic standpoint rather than a particular direction or “ism” in an art historical sense. The name was coined by George Maciunas, and means flowing, in flux, to be found in movement. Officially, it was the same Maciunas who started the movement in Wiesbaden in 1962, when he arranged a series of concerts and performances that were planned to be published as the Fluxus Magazine.

In their collection, Sonja Henie and Niels Onstad included the work of several of the artists who showed regularly at Galerie Denis Renée, but never Victor Vasarely (1908–1997). The same may be said of other public collections in Norway. The artist’s work, however, was shown in the country at an early stage, since, thanks to his connections with Galerie Denise Renée, exhibitions were organized there in 1948 and 1952.

From the mid-1960s until his death forty years later, Mark Boyle (1934–2005) was a central, vital force on the British and European art scene.