40 years since the founding of Hafnarborg

On Thursday, 19 October at 6 p.m., we will celebrate the opening of an exhibition of selected works from the Hafnarborg collection, to mark the 40th anniversary of the museum's foundation. Every collection reflects the values of its founder. This applies equally to a private collection or a public institution with a long history. The collection reflects what mattered to whoever laid its foundations – whether from personal interest and audacity, from an inner need, or by chance. When a collection becomes part of a community, one could say it acquires a life of its own, but it also says a great deal about the community to which it belongs and with which it grows. About the spirit of the age and people's changing tastes, about materials and emphases, about ideas and ideals.

The Hafarborg collection comprises nearly 1600 works.

The Harbour Museum was established by a deed of gift presented to the City of Hafnarfjörður on 1 June 1983 by the couple Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and Sverrir Magnússon, who ran the Hafnarfjörður Pharmacy and lived at 34 Strandgata, where the museum is now housed. The couple's deed of gift stipulated, among other things, the institution's role, which was to promote the general artistic and cultural life in Hafnarfjörður by operating an art museum, as well as providing a concert venue for concerts and other related activities. Their founding gift included nearly 200 works of art by many of the pioneers of Icelandic visual art, and Hafnarborg's collection has continued to grow ever since, now numbering almost 1,600 works.

The exhibition features a selection of works the collection has acquired since 2008.

The collection grew particularly rapidly in the early days, when it was common practice for artists to pay rent for the use of exhibition spaces in the form of art donations, although this arrangement was later discontinued. Subsequently, the collection can be said to have grown in a more targeted manner, for example with the establishment of the Hafnarborg Art Council, which now operates under a current acquisition policy from 2009. The exhibition also invites visitors to reflect on the development of the museum and its collection within the cultural landscape of the years following the 2008 economic crash and up to the present day, when we see similar signs in the air today to those that could be discerned then – boom and bust – which in turn raises questions about the value of art and culture for society as a whole, not least for future generations. The exhibition presents a selection of works acquired by the collection since 2008 – over the past fifteen years – by artists such as Egil Sæbjörnsson, Georg Guðni, Guðnýju Rósu Ingimarsdóttur, Harald Jónsson, Hildigunni Birgisdóttur, Ingólf Arnarsson, Ingunni Fjólu Ingþórsdóttur, Philipp Valenta, Sirra Sigrúnu Sigurðardóttur and Unu Björgu Magnúsdóttur. Some of the works have not previously been exhibited at Hafnarborg. The curator is Hólmar Hólm.

Free entry – all welcome