Art & DESIGN the exhibition Left: Peter Leonard Henriksen, a crew member of Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram, in 1893. Their (failed) plan was to follow sea currents and drift over the North Pole along with the ice Below: Eisberg, 1982, an oil on canvas by Gerhard Richter Previous page: Arctic, 2002, landscape by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, channels the spectral mystery of the North Pole A 1909 magazine cover shows explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, who each claim to have reached the North Pole first material with art from all disciplines. That such a show about the Arctic should take place in Denmark is no surprise. Along with the seven other members of the Arctic Council – Canada, Finland, Iceland , Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States – the country stands to profit greatly from the area through its ties to Greenland, which is rich in natural resources and larger than all of Western Europe combined. Often minimised on two-dimensional maps, the sheer scale of the Arctic, along with its barrenness, fuels its transcendent aura. But that mystique is ewroding . Temperatures in the polar region are rising more than twice as fast as the global average, the sea ice is disappearing and new shipping routes are available. The Arctic is increasingly open for business. Change will happen quickly. In 2010, only four commercial vessels carrying 111,000 tons of cargo passed through the Northern Sea Route. In 2012, there were 46, freighting 1.26 million tons. A new record is likely this year. But the curators aren’t in ter ested in taking a political stance on any of these issues (no images of a despondent polar bear stranded on a too-small ice floe here). “I [consider] the goal of museums to increase complexity, whereas the political concern is often to reduce complexity,” says Louisiana director Poul Erik Tøjner, sitting in his office in a wooden boathouse behind the museum. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors make up the wall facing the sea, offering an unobstructed view across the Øresund, which laps at the narrow dock extending from his door. Off in the distance, Sweden’s silhouette stretches to the north. “We’re a kind of meta-moral or meta-political institution,” Tøjner continues. “We provide the knowledge or sensorial experience or history of a given topic so people can see or sense things here and then talk about them.” The first part of the exhibition explores the Arctic’s sublime beauty, starting with a series of dramatic landscapes from the British photographer Darren Almond. “We really wanted to start with just the landscape – no statement or anything,” says co-curator Mathias Ussing Seeberg. From there, the show is divided into sections that examine the Arctic’s offerings for the scientific community, and the way “southerners” have portrayed the native population through, for example, films like Robert J Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, from 1922. The show will also cover the allure for explorers – seeking the Northwest Passage, or simply glory – as well as cartographers, going back to Gerardus Mercator, who in the 16th century pictured four islands around the North Pole (see overleaf, top right). “What you don’t know, you imagine,” explains Seeberg. “Nobody had been Photos from top: Photographer unknown, National Library of Norway, Oslo, bldsa_q3c085; gerhard richter 82 CENTURION-Magazine.COM
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