Playing Pieces

In "Playing Pieces", visitors can see artworks that museum professionals in Norway have put at the top of their wish lists.

The Savings Bank Foundation DNB is a charitable foundation, which, since 2005, has been investing heavily in the purchase of art in collaboration with Norwegian art museums. Loaned out on a long-term basis, these works complement museum collections, helping to establish new contexts and stories.

With art from the late 19th century to the present, this is an extensive exhibition.

Here, visitors will encounter works by the popular West-Norwegian painter, Nikolai Astrup, the Impressionist Claude Monet, pop artist Andy Warhol, the avant-garde Kurt Schwitters, who lived for a while in Norway, and many others, including German expressionists, American art photographers, and female pioneers.

Displayed over two floors in Permanenten, "Playing Pieces" uses innovative digital tools that let you engage with the art in new ways.

World-class art

The exhibition guides the visitor through the main themes around which the Savings Bank Foundation DNB has built its art collection. With 43 Norwegian and international artists, the exhibition is broad in scope.

20th-century greats such as Claude Monet, Nikolai Astrup, Peder Balke, and Harriet Backer are presented alongside a rich selection of works that illuminate the foundation’s focus on German expressionism, works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Gabriele Münter, and others.

A separate section is devoted to American art photographers, including Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon.

Who finds a place in Art history?

One of the exhibition’s leitmotifs is the question of how collecting art influences art history.

"Playing Pieces" looks at different collaborations and changing views on what constitutes relevant art to explain why Norwegian museums tend to favour these particular artists.

One section is devoted to notable pioneers like Louise Bourgeois, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, and Barbara Hepworth, whose work has been acquired thanks to the foundation’s efforts to include more female artists in museum collections.

What stories are told through art, why are they told, and who tells them?

Museums, artists, researchers, collectors, and politicians all move the playing pieces that make up the game of art history. Some of those pieces have been forgotten, while others have yet to be discovered.