case: BARE NASJONALGALLERIET
BARE walls. A building full of possibilities.
Helping open a new cultural chapter at Nasjonalgalleriet.
When Nasjonalgalleriet closed in 2019, its collection left the building. The Munch Room stood without Munch. The sculpture halls stood without sculptures. The galleries were empty, yet full of memory.
Nasjonalgalleriet has opened the doors to a new chapter. Together with artistic director Lars Ø Ramberg, the ambition is to bring living artists and new cultural experiences into one of Norway’s most significant buildings.
Kurated by is a strategic partner in shaping how that new chapter meets the world: developing the identity, the concepts and the commercial philosophy that can connect the house with audiences, collaborators and brands. BARE was the first invitation.
A growing need for physical cultural experiences
For years, Nasjonalgalleriet has been a place people remembered. Now it can become a place for people to create new memories in and finally return to the building and its unique architecture.
We believe there is a growing need for physical cultural experiences: places to encounter art, share a moment and discover something unexpected together. Few buildings offer the history, scale and possibilities of Nasjonalgalleriet. Its long-awaited restart has created room for more than a programme of exhibitions. It created space for a cultural arena with its own pulse.
Our role is to help build the connections around it. What ideas belong in this house? Which artists and audiences could meet here? And how can a brand contribute to the experience in a way that gives the public something worth coming for?
The first encounter: BARE
Before the rooms could be filled with new work, Lars Ø Ramberg invited people to see them as they were.
Conceived and curated by Lars Ø Ramberg, BARE made Nasjonalgalleriet itself the exhibition. No new artworks were added. Daylight, architecture, acoustics and the traces left by generations of art and visitors came into focus.
The emptiness made the building’s transition visible. People could remember the works that had once occupied the rooms while imagining who and what might enter next.
For Analogue, BARE established an open way of meeting its audience. It welcomed people into the house at the beginning of its transformation and gave them a part in imagining its future.
SCREAM, off the wall!
We took one of the building’s most recognisable absences beyond its doors.
The empty wall where Munch’s The Scream once hung was reproduced at 1:1 scale as an outdoor poster wall. A fragment of the Munch Room appeared in public space: a physical trace of what had been there and an invitation to visit the room itself.
Inside, former Nasjonalgalleriet guide Ellen Johanne Lerberg and artist Lars Elling, who once worked in the building as a guard, led visitors through the galleries. Their memories brought the history of the rooms to life without putting reproductions on the walls. Visitors wore simple white paper suits and became part of the scene.
BARE could be experienced in the city on 1:1 poster walls, in the building and through the stories people carried.
Building the future of possibilities.
BARE opened the conversation. The next task is to keep it moving.
Kurated by works strategically with Analogue and Lars Ø Ramberg to develop how Nasjonalgalleriet presents itself and how its artistic direction can create further possibilities. We connect cultural ideas with the people, partners and resources that can help realise them: through exhibitions, events, content, new concepts and experiences that give audiences a reason to come back.
For brands, the opportunity is to find a meaningful role in an arena people want to be part of. That role starts with understanding the house and its programme. A collaboration should add something to the experience, whether it supports an artist, opens a new way into a subject or makes an ambitious idea possible.
This is how cultural capital is built: through participation in moments that matter to people. At Nasjonalgalleriet, there is space to explore what those moments could be.
WHAT COMES NEXT
BARE could only happen in that brief interval between the building’s past and its next life. Next, new artists and new content will enter the rooms.
The exhibition showed what an invitation can do. A wall could bring the museum into the street. A memory could fill an empty gallery. An audience could become part of the work.
Together with Analogue and Lars Ø Ramberg, Kurated by is helping turn that opening into a living cultural arena, and inviting the right collaborators to help shape what happens there next.
