Oslo has a rich and varied cultural life. Although it is an expensive city if you compare it to Paris or London, you can find lots of contemporary art collections and exhibitions mostly free.
Two of the several attractions I saw in my last journey were the Astrup Fearnley Museum and the Opera house.
Olafur Eliasson, Your Colour Memory, 2004
Anselm Kiefer, Zweistormland/The High Priestess, 1986-89
Cai Guo-Chiang, The Eagle has arrived, 2001
The Astrup Fernley Museum of modern Art is a privately owned institution opened in 1993 which has a large holding collection of Norvegian and International art and presents temporary exhibitions from the post-war period to our days. The collection include names such as Matthew Barney, Cindy Sherman, Gehrard Richter, Damien Hirst to name a few.
Current and future exhibitions are Indian Highway, an exhibition in progress in collaboration with Serpentine Gallery from the 02 April to the 06 September 2009 and Bjarne Melgaard "mid work" retrospective from 23 September 2009 to 02 January 2010.
On 15th June 1999 the National Assembly (Stortinget) approved the building of a new opera house in Oslo. In 2000, Norwegian architect firm Snøhetta was chosen as winner of the anonymous architectural competition. Groundworks began in 2003, and the Opera house has re-opened since April 2008.
The structure provides a total area of 38,500 m² and includes 1,100 rooms, one of which has 1,350 seats and another has up to 400 seats.
The materials, with their specific weight, colour, texture and temperature, have been vital to the design of the building. Snøhettas architecture is narative. It is the materials which form the defining elements of the spaces. It is the meeting of the materials which articulates the architecture through varied detail and precision.
In the operahouse, three main materials were specified as early as the competition entry: White stone for the ‘carpet’, timber for the ‘wave wall’, and metal for the ‘factory’. During the continued work on the project, a fourth material, glass, which allows for the exposure of the underside of the ‘carpet’, has been given specific attention.
http://afmuseet.no/
http://www.operaen.no/
