Scandinavia's artiest city now has a fascinating new museum
In February a rainbow appeared above the streets of Trondheim and it has stayed there ever since, come rain or shine. It's an artwork by the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone that spells out the words 'our magic hour' and it acts as a rather cheery beacon for the new PoMo museum that sits beneath it.
In the past few years Norway has been busily opening new museums. Oslo unveiled a hulking architectural stack on the harbour front dedicated to the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 2021, with the grandstanding National Museum, which includes a room devoted to the first version of Munch's The Scream, following a year later. Last year a private collection of Nordic modern art was given a dramatic home in the form of the tubular Kunstsilo, a former 1930s grain silo in the southern town of Kristiansand.
PoMo, though, feels altogether more personable (£13; pomo.no). In Trondheim's much-loved former main post office — the name comes from Posten Moderne, or modern post office — it's the first museum crafted by the French-Iranian architect and interior designer India Mahdavi, who worked alongside the Norwegian architect Erik Langdalen. Step inside the pistachio-green art nouveau building, built in 1911, and you're met with a luminous white colonnaded space in which giant worm-like sculptures bend and contort, while a cluster of green balloons floating by the skylight resemble plant cells. A gallery shop to one side glows salmon pink, the items on its shelves carefully colour-coordinated; another bright statement is provided by a tangerine spiral staircase that unfurls between the floors.
I pass through rooms of Irving Penn still lifes, Catherine Opie nudes and Andy Warhol's Mao, and another that shows contemporary works alongside Piranesi prints and a golden, Afro-haired sphinx by the Brooklyn-based artist Simone Leigh. It's a little random at times but that's often the nature of a private collection: much of the art here was purchased over many years by the museum's founders, Monica and Ole Robert Reitan.
There is, of course, work by Munch: a series of bright lithographs set against dark blue walls. And the title of the first of its temporary shows (the museum will stage two each year), Postcards from the Future (running until June 22), nods to the building's history. The exhibition gathers personal perspectives from artists including Louise Bourgeois (via the dangling male figure of Arch of Hysteria) and Katharina Fritsch (via a series of pop arty single-colour holiday images). An 'in between' corridor, soundproofed in black fabric, is intended as a contemplative space. Here I sit on a bench and ponder an inflatable artwork bouncing in the breeze outside, created by the Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri, who was inspired by a petrochemical molecule. One of PoMo's aims is to help to reset the gender balance by devoting a minimum of 60 per cent of its acquisitions budget to female artists.
Right at the top is the cosiest spot in the building. Set amid the eaves, the library is a wood-lined space that resembles a forest cabin or treehouse, its A-frame ceiling covered in a gorgeous patina of wood-blocky prints in pastel pink and green — salmon and squid, seeds and oak leaves. It's a place in which to hole up with an art book and take in the view over the city.
'I was inspired by the folk art I'd seen around Trondheim, which I hadn't been expecting when I first visited,' Mahdavi tells me. 'You tend to think of Scandinavia in terms of its minimal design but there's a lot of craft here.' The architect describes colours as her friends, creating positive vibrations, and says she drew on the palette she saw while walking the streets here: the pinks of salmon and painted doors, the orange of its historical warehouses. 'I was surprised by all the barn reds and mustardy tones,' she says. 'Colour blocks are a real part of the heritage. And the crisp light you get here is just incredible.'
• 11 of Europe's best cities for art lovers
Despite being Norway's third-largest city, Trondheim is a small town in comparison with many British cities. With Mahdavi's words in mind, I walk around and spot a kaleidoscope of higgledy wood-timbered houses. Crossing the Gamle Bybro bridge into the cobblestoned Bakklandet district takes me over the River Nidelva, the water reflecting the sweet-shop colours of the 18th-century wharves, which now contain cafés and independent shops. At the bottom of a steep hill is the world's only bike lift, a funicular-like track invented in the 1990s, and an unusual concrete sculpture of a huge vintage radio with a man peeking out. The radio is a memorial to Otto Nielsen, an intriguing figure whose career took him from cabaret artist to radio presenter and resistance fighter.
Europe's northernmost medieval cathedral, which happens to also be one of its most beautiful, glows soft green from the soapstone it was carved from, its copper steeple etching the sky. Inside are pink granite tiles and a stained-glass rose window that casts an ethereal light over the soaring contours of the vaulted roof. A continuing restoration project, it was built over the tomb of St Olaf, the Viking king (much of 11th-century Trondheim was funded by pillaging forays to England) who converted Norway to Christianity. Latter-day pilgrims can pick up a little wooden effigy of his head for about £35.
PoMo isn't the only show in town. It forms part of Trondheim's art quarter, alongside the artist-led KUK gallery (free; k-u-k.no) and the more traditional Trondheim Kunstmuseum (£12; trondheimkunstmuseum.no). The latter is not to be confused with Kunsthall Trondheim, which opened in 2016 in a former fire station with a mission to show contemporary artists from around the world. During my visit, the Canadian Turner prize nominee Sin Wai Kin was featured with a witty, time-bending multimedia satire (free; kunsthalltrondheim.no). All the galleries are part of the Hannah Ryggen Triennale, named after the radical artist who started weaving anti-fascist tapestries in the 1940s.
While Trondheim has carved out a reputation for its contemporary art, it's not the only reason to come here. There are harbourside saunas, including one in a wartime bunker, and a strong music tradition. You can drop by for a craft ale at Bar Moskus, where the owner spins records and local bands take to the tiny stage (drinks from £7; barmoskus.no), or head to the Rockheim museum, with its section on Norwegian dark metal and a cantilevered roof that changes colour at night (£12; rockheim.no).
• Read our full guide to Norway
And the city's food scene is just as creative as its art one. The renowned local chef Heidi Bjerkan recently closed her Michelin-starred restaurant Credo to concentrate on a new project in Oslo but others are forging ahead. I stop by for a glass of natural wine at Fagn, whose menu includes a beef tartare sandwich and woodruff ice cream (three courses from £45; fagn.no). I also pull up a seat at the chef's table at Speilsalen, a fine-dining restaurant set in the former ballroom at the Britannia Hotel, Trondheim's grandest place to stay, for a champagne lunch of king crab and fennel, and mountain char and gooseberry (from £102). On the other side of PoMo, the Nye Hjorten theatre has just been renovated and has a suitably theatrical bistro, Olga's, serving oysters and lobster rolls (mains from £17; olgas.no).
'Over the years Trondheim has been referred to as the capital of technology and a football city,' says Wil Lee-Wright, who moved here from the UK in 2010 with his Norwegian wife, Ida, and now helps to run Tollbua restaurant. Its chef, Christopher Davidsen, has since won a Bocuse award for dishes such as pollock with verbena and fermented lemon (set menus from £58; tollbua-trondheim.no). 'But I think its art and culinary identity are the most credible.' I make a note to return in August for the Trondersk Food Festival, which showcases the region's incredible seafood and cooking skills.
• 10 of the best places to visit in Norway
On my final day I take the vintage Grakallbanen tram that trundles up to the hills around Lianvatnet Lake, where locals swim in the summer and snowshoe and ice fish in the winter. Looking down at the colours of Trondheim below me it feels like a pretty magic hour — not just for me but for the whole city.Rick Jordan was a guest of the Britannia Hotel, which has B&B doubles from £200 (britannia.no); and PoMo, which has tickets from £13 (pomo.no). Fly to Trondheim
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The Guardian
12 hours ago
- The Guardian
Fights, flings and fabulous paintings: how sibling rivals Augustus and Gwen John tormented each other
When I began researching the lives of Gwen and Augustus John, the image I held in my mind was of the two of them, as very small siblings, sketching together on the coast around Tenby. For both to have escaped the narrowness of their modest provincial home, and established themselves at the heart of early 20th-century art, was a remarkable journey – and I was intrigued by what possible forces of temperament and upbringing might have driven them. It is hard to credit, now, the scale of Augustus's celebrity. His youthful drawings were compared to Raphael; he was briefly acclaimed as the leader of British post-impressionism, then celebrated as the pre-eminent portrait-painter of his age. And while recognition came slower to Gwen, the singularity of her vision, drawing on early expressionism and abstraction, as well as her own mystic embrace of Catholicism, earned her a significant place in the modernist canon. But if there are early clues to the Johns' success they aren't simple to find, because, apart from their mother's amateur talent for watercolours, they had no other role models. Their childhood, in fact, was unusually forlorn. When their mother died in 1884, Gwen was just eight, Augustus six and a half, and their father was so felled by anxiety and grief he had no idea how to comfort them. 'I used to cry all the time,' Gwen wrote, while Augustus would recall that, along with their two other siblings, they became a farouche little tribe, retreating behind a wall 'of invincible shyness'. Yet it was misery that bred in the Johns a rebellious longing for escape – and, for Gwen and Augustus, their first and best escape was in art. They drew from the moment they were able to hold pencils, sketching portraits of the world around them. While they had only the vaguest idea of where their sketching might lead, when a teacher suggested that Augustus might do well at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Gwen insisted that she must go there too. The Slade felt like a miracle. The Johns were learning their craft, but they were also experimenting with love, with ideas, with the rackety fun of London. They were also as close as a brother and sister could be, understanding each other as no one else could, equally hungry for lives that would fill the void of their motherless upbringing. Yet beneath the intimacy there was also, always, an itch of sibling antagonism. At its roots lay Augustus's childish, bullying resentment at being the younger of the two, and Gwen's furious attempts to fight back. When their lives began to diverge, as Augustus and his work began to achieve a precocious fame, that itch could flare up again. 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Always the harshest critic of his own work, and the most loyal supporter of his sister's, he once prophesied that in 50 years, he would be known 'as the brother of Gwen John'. It was a prophesy uttered in a moment of gloom, but it spoke volumes about his relationship with his sister. The two of them, as siblings, might have become separated by time, circumstance and mutual exasperation, yet the bond between them was one that Augustus, in particular, was unable to break. Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John, by Judith Mackrell, is published by Picador on 19 June
The Sun
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I paid £70 for rare painting worth £8,000 at car boot sale – my three must-follow tips to find gems
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BBC News
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