Arne O. Holm says While the US Is Crumbling, I Seek Refuge in an Art Museum
"Fish you were here" by Karl Gustav Gjertsen.
Comment: The news stories are coming in at a relentless pace. I am seeking refuge in the latest addition to the northern art scene. The Northern Norwegian Art Museum is now in place in Bodø, northern Norway, inviting us to understand both our past and our future.
This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. The comment expresses the writer's opinions.
Yet, I was wrong in thinking it would be a break from the current dramatic reality.
And thankfully so.
With an almost surprising relevance for art that spans over decades, the museum instead becomes a topical comment on the reality we all face.
The significance of art
I am no art critic, but I am concerned with the social significance of art and art's ability to ask questions and provide us with new thoughts. Above all, it is a democratic project in a time when democracies are being demolished.
I enter the old bank building in Bodø, northern Norway as reports say that the Trump administration has ordered republican politicians to no longer participate in public assemblies.
The reason is that they would face protests from their own constituents who have lost their jobs through simple presidential orders. Constituents who confront their politicians in open meetings. Those meetings are now shut down. The US administration is choosing exclusion before discussion.
Scared to talk
The US universities are cleared of books and teaching staff because they challenge the same administration on fundamental democratic rights. Scientists are fired for not researching what the power apparatus wants to be researched.
The duty of the academics is to participate in the public debate. Now, they are scared to talk to journalists, fearing the repercussions.
The independent legal profession has been flushed down the toilet. Law firms are losing their security clearances and work assignments for representing clients who have challenged Trump.
We who feared Trump were met with arguments about how the US institutions were so strong that they would hinder the worst impacts of his policies. They were wrong. Trump's answer is to pick the federal system entirely apart.
Mental preparedness
Therefore, I seek refuge in a museum that aims to open up for bridge-building and democratic processes. A museum that has survived the attempts of artistic censorship and an absurd and meaningless location debate.
Conveyor of the controversial and the banal.
A museum that writes in its own declaration that it will "explore current issues" and that has named its first exhibition "Everything is speaking." Instead of excluding, the Northern Norwegian Art Museum is to inspire discussion.
The art portrayed on the walls of the old bank building becomes part of the mental preparedness we all need in a time when almost everything is measured in defense allocations and canons.
An old print by the unique and outstanding artist Karl-Gustav Gjertsen, titled "Fish You Were Here," becomes a topical comment on the decrease of cod quotas currently threatening the coastal industry.
A silk print titled "The Dislocated" renews its relevance through the war in Ukraine and in Gaza, while Francois-Auguste Biard's painting from 1840, "The Minister Laestadius Preaching to the Sàmi," reminds us of the abuses against our own people.
Ugly and beautiful
I could go on and on. Nevertheless, the most essential part is the museum's role as a conveyor of both the ugly and the beautiful, the controversial and the banal.
An art museum showcasing art from our own masters. For centuries, we northerners had to settle for art created by artists on quick visits to the exotic North.
More than ever, we need an arena free from censorship.
