Symposium: List of Participants

Read more about the background of the participants at Symposium: Re-thinking and Re-positioning Nordic Modernism.

Keynote speaker Angela Lampe

Angela Lampe

Angela Lampe has a PhD in Art History at the Sorbonne University Paris. Here, she specifically focused on the artist Per Kirkeby and questioned whether he was part of the Nordic tradition.

Since 2005 she is a curator of the modern art collections at the Musée National d'Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou where she organized a large number of international exhibitions, including, Alice Neel, Un regard engagé and Allemagne / Années 1920 / Nouvelle Objectivité / August Sander (with Florian Ebner) in 2022; Chagall, Lissitzky, Malévitch - l'avant-garde russe à Vitebsk 1918-1922 in 2018; Paul Klee. Irony at Work (2016); Kandinsky. A Retrospective (2014/15); Vues d'en haut (2013) and together with Clément Chéreoux Edvard Munch, Modern eye (2011).

Jonas Ekeberg

Jonas Ekeberg

Jonas Ekeberg is a well-renowned Norwegian artist, critic and curator. He is currently head of Visual Arts at the state-led organization Art and Culture Norway. He has been the director of Preus Museum for photography (2014-2009), and head curator for the Momentum Biennale in 2000. As a critic, Ekeberg has worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and several Norwegian newspapers, and he has been the editor of numerous art journals in Norway. Ekeberg is also the author of the book, Post-Nordic. The Rise and Fall of a Nordic Art Scene 1986-2006.

Janne Sirén

Janne Siren

Dr. Janne Sirén is a Finnish art historian and the Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

Over the course of a decade of his leadership, the museum has embarked upon the most significant campus expansion and development project which culminated in the June 2023 opening of the Buffalo AKG, designed by OMA/Shohei Shigematsu. Sirén has initiated several major exhibitions at the museum, including We the People: New Art from the Collection (2018-19); Out of Sight! Art of the Senses (2018-18); Picasso: The Artist and His Models (2016-17); Monet and the Impressionist Revolution, 1860-1910 (2016-16); And Anselm Kiefer: Beyond Landscape (2013-14). In 2022, Sirén co-organized Anselm Kiefer: Questi Scritti, quando verrano bruciati, daranno finalmente un po´di luce, a new exhibition of Kiefer´s work in Venice´s Palazzo Ducale. 

Lars Toft-Eriksen

Lars Toft-Eriksen is Senior Curator at MUNCH, and holds a PhD in art history from the University of Oslo. He specializes in Edvard Munch, surrealism and Scandinavian modernism. In his research on Munch he has in particular focused on critical analysis of ideological and mythological narratives in art historiography. He has curated a number of exhibitions within the fields of modern and contemporary art, including exhibitions on surrealism, Norwegian modernism, Edvard Munch, Asger Jorn, Carl Fredrik Hill, Ludvig Karsten and Bjarne Melgaard.

Dorthe Aagesen

Dorthe Aagesen

Dorthe Aagesen is Chief Curator and Senior Researcher with the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen, where she has worked since 1999. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated at SMK include: Matisse: The Red Studio (2022, with The Museum of Modern Art, New York); Kirchner and Nolde – Up for discussion (2021, with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam); Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (2019, with the MNAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris), and Asger Jorn – Restless Rebel (2014). 

Ulf Küster

Ulf Kuster

Ulf Küster is a Senior Curator at Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland since 2004, and has a PhD in Art History from Freiburg/Breisgau. He has curated exhibitions on Giacometti, 2009, Segantini, 2010, Louise Bourgeois, 2011, Bonnard, 2012, Monet, 2017, Edward Hopper - Landscapes, 2020, Mondrian, 2022, and more. He is currently working on the exhibition Northern Lights, on landscape painting in the global boreal ecozone between 1880 and 1930, in cooperation with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo NY.

Bosse Nilsson

Bosse Nilsson

Bo Nilsson has worked as a curator and director for a long list of art institutions in Sweden and Denmark, and is currently the director of the Artipelag in Stockholm, Sweden. Nilsson has worked extensively with the Tangen Collection, and he curated the exhibition På armlängds avstånd – Hundra år av nordisk konst, on the collection at the Artipelag.

Karin Hindsbo

Karin Hindsbo

Karin Hindsbo is the Director of Tate Modern, London since 2023. Here she oversees the day to day operations of the gallery and holds overall responsibility for the conception and delivery of its programme. She has formerly been the Director of The National Museum, Oslo (2017-2023), KODE, Bergen (2014-17), Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand (2012-14), Kunsthall Aarhus (2009-11) and Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen (2006-08).

Lisbet Skregelid

Lisbet Skregelid

Lisbet Skregelid is a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of  Agder, Norway. Here she leads the PhD specialization Art in Context and the research group Art and Young People. She is deeply engaged in examining why art matters in society and particularly in education.

Øystein Sjåstad

Øystein Sjåståd

Øystein Sjåstad is a professor of Art History at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. He has published numerous articles, catalogue essays, and books on Norwegian nineteenth-century art, with a particular interest in how art interacts with and challenges ideologies. His recent research focuses on nationalism, national identity, gender, and feminism.

Jacob Thage

Jacob Thage is the former director or Museum Jorn. In 2023 he established Kunstraadgiverne, which specializes in art consulting. He has curated more than 100 exhibitions of Danish and international art, i.e. Egon Schiele, Camille Claudel, W. Lehmbruch, Cobra-artists and A. Tapies. Thage has also written several books and articles on art and design.

Hanne Cecilie Gulstad

Hanne Cecilie Gulstad

Hanne Cecilie Gulstad works as a curator at Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, Norway. Here she works with the museum’s collection focusing on contemporary art and crafts, and with The Tangen Collection, focusing on Nordic Modernism. She has a BA in Art History from NTNU in Trondheim and MA in Modern Culture from the University of Copenhagen. Gulstad has previously worked for several institutions and galleries in Norway and Denmark, and she has written for journals and magazines like The Art Newspaper, KUNSTforum and Museumsnytt.

Karl Olav Segrov Mortensen

Karl Olav Segrov Mortensen

Karl Olav Segrov Mortensen is a curator and Head of Programming at Kunstsilo. Mortensen has a master’s degree in Art History from the University of Bergen and is currently working on a Ph.D. on the Norwegian artist Marianne Heske’s Prosjekt Gjerdeløa at the University of Agder. Mortensen worked as a curator and educator at the former regional art museum in Kristiansand, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum (2006-2019), where he has been responsible fora long list of exhibitions, art projects and curatorial experiments.

Frank Falch

Frank Falch

Frank Falch is a curator at Kunstsilo, formerly Sørlandets Kunstmuseum. He has curated exhibitions of contemporary arts and crafts as well as visual arts, including several retrospectives. He is currently working on a research project on representation of art history in contemporary collection displays, focusing on art of the 20th century and modernism. He is a former member of the international jury, Office of Contemporary Art (2005-13). In 2019 he took part in a reference group defining the spatial organisation of Kunstsilo’s exhibition structure.