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Astrup Fearnley Museet is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in 2023. To mark this significant milestone we present an extensive exhibition featuring iconic works, hidden treasures and recent acquisitions to the Astrup Fearnley Collection, across the museums two buildings. The selected works represent various time periods and highlight a number of key directions that have come to define the identity of the collection and the museum more broadly.

The Astrup Fearnley Collection is one of Europe’s most wide-ranging collections of international contemporary art. Beginning in the 1960s, Hans Rasmus Astrup assembled a collection that emphasized artists themselves, rather than historical periods or stylistic trends, a focus that established him as one of the world’s most active, daring, and influential collectors. The collection holds multiple works from several significant artists, both Norwegian and international, documenting the development and complexity of their practices. With the passing of Astrup in 2021, the Astrup Fearnley Collection was donated to a non-profit foundation that has as its sole purpose to further develop this collection and to present it to a broad public. The celebration of the museum’s anniversary is thus also a tribute to the museum’s founder, Hans Rasmus Astrup, who, with this generous gift, made his collection available to us all. 

Before Tomorrow includes the presentation of several major installations and video works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection. Børre Saethre’s My Private Sky, first displayed at the museum in 2001 and recently acquired for the collection, will be reconstructed. This large scale installation creates an environment that is both seductive and disturbing, drawing inspiration from the history of cinema and the genre of science fiction. Kara Walker’s massive mural THE SOVEREIGN CITIZENS SESQUICENTENNIAL CIVIL WAR CELEBRATION from 2013, will be recreated in the museum’s main exhibition space, having recently entered the collection. Following the display of Wolfgang Tillmans’ Concorde Project (started in 1997) at the Museum of Modern Art in in New York in 2022 as part of his retrospective there, visitors will have an opportunity to view a selection of works from this series. Additionally, Allora & Calzadilla’s major installation Clamor (2006), which includes a series of live sonic activations, will be presented for the first time since 2009. Among a younger generation of artists, Helen Marten’s Orchids, or a hemispherical bottom (2013), first displayed at the 55th Venice Biennale, will be featured in the show, as well as several artists based in Norway.