What's on?
Stenersen is our museum for alternating exhibitions.
Now showing: Indigenous Histories
There are two flexible exhibition rooms on the first floor, and on the ground floor you find the reception and Kode’s bookshop.
For those who wants to keep up with what’s happening in the Bergen art scene, Stenersen is the museum you want to visit most often.
We show between six and eight new exhibitions every year in this museum, presenting international contemporary art, exhibitions of architecture, handicraft or graphic art and exhibitions of works from our own collections.
Visit Stenersen?
Opening hours and information
Stenersen and his collection
The Museum got its name from collector and financier Rolf Stenersen. In 1971, he sold parts of his collection to Bergen city for a tenth of its actual worth.
The collection holds more than 250 objects, focusing on visual art and sculpture. Among the highlights are works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Asger Jorn and Victor Vasarely.
With works like these, Stenersen’s collection provided the museum with a distinct reference framework within international modernism. The Stenersen art collection was established as an individual foundation, which is the owner of the artworks and the building today.
Works from the Stenersen collection are regularly displayed at Kode’s own collection exhibitions, and larger parts of the collection will be exhibited when Lysverket reopens.
Per Palle Storm: Rolf Stenersen (udatert / undated)
The building itself
One of the conditions for Stenersen’s donation was that the city provided a suitable building for the collections. The building was completed in 1978, designed by architect Sverre Lied.
Lied was apparently inspired by functional museum architecture, particularly Kunsthaus Zürich and the Munch Museum. The building has glass on both sides, and Lied’s idea was that one should be able to look straight through the building—to make it look like it was almost floating above ground.
After several alterations to the building’s architecture and appearance, an ongoing work for Kode is to restore the museum as in keeping with the architect’s visions.
Stenersen. Udatert foto. Fotograf: Ukjent. Arkivet etter Morgenavisen AS, Bergen Byarkiv.
Foto: Thor Brødreskift
Foto: Dag Fosse / Kode