Today we went to the National Gallery of Iceland Museum. It was a 2 for 1 deal from yesterday’s admission to the House of Collections Museum. Once again, a very impressive Museum. Airy white space, clinically clean. I could be happy sitting in the main exhibit hallwith no artwork. For me, it feels therapeutic in there. The exhibits were excellent also. One was an examination of forgeries in the painting world, detailed explanations with forgeries exhibited nest to authentic works. If one cared to take the time to read it was very educational.
Another exhibit featured an artist, Kristján H. Magnússon, a notable artist of the Icelandic nation in the first part of the 20th century. He studied art in the United States, and once made the front page of the paper for remarking that Boston was colder than Iceland. His innovative Icelandic landscape painting often depicted the Icelandic winters, a subject much avoided. He also painted portraits and worked as one of the first successful advertising graphic artists in the pre-television era. One of the strong points of the Icelandic museums we have visited is their detailed written descriptions and explanations of the works.
A third notable exhibition is “The Greenland”, a 34 minute visual meditation of a film. It presents as an ethereal transitory exploration of Greenland seasons in natural surroundings, accompanied by a soundtrack that vacillates between nature and electronic sounds? music? both? Misty ghostly alien green airlike visuals infiltrate and float through the images a great deal of the time. It is a bit serpentine as it winds through the landscape. The artist wrote that the green is the contradiction between nature and man’s greed. The film has become more pertinent in the face of melting of ice sheets and American imperialistic interests.
Not an exhibit, but the metal doors pictured below were eye catching.
We visited a second museum today, Iceland’s Punk Museum.
Don’t believe Trip Advisor. The museum is a cramped space that is likely about 20′ x 40′ and consists of a bunch of articles from wherever pasted to walls, a preponderance of hardcore punk style clothing a few badly produced videos, a few guitars, a drum set, a series of headphones hanging from the ceiling that let you listen to some of their bands. My Trip Advisor rating is one star. Advice save your 2000 krona/~17.00. That way you can buy one beer at a bar, and ride a bus. Next door to the museum we did stumble across a big surprise, a band playing “Latin Music”. They were part of a Saturday presentation by 3 restaurants, one of which is Reykjavik’s Mexican restaurant.
Adjacent to the pond I have shown pictures of is a vast green space. It appears to be where the Icelanders go on the weekends. It is part Viking games, part amusement park rides and a whole big lot of Food trucks. Walking past the mass of people had the feeling of a music festival – without the music. Very hectic.
While ruminating and writing the previous post I decided I made a mistake by not going inside an attractive sculpture garden. I rectified that mistake today. All the sculptures are by Icelandic artists and produced in the last 150 years. I had said enough is enough talking about sculptures, but here we go again.
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Impressive, the museum’s seem quite inspirational, and fun to visit.
Sounds like Iceland is so far a lot of fun.
The sculptures are impressive, and all by locals ?
So did they serve Mexican food?
Yes, all local sculptures. The art and history here is interesting. Needs a lot of time I believe to really sort it out. They had authentic Mexicans and Colombians there and the tacos looked quite authentic.