Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús
Exhibitions
Erró – Graphic Art, 1949 – 2009
For the first time the general public are able to view Erró’s graphic art spanning half a century. The exhibition is the result of three years’ work researching and registrating the artist’s entire collection of graphic pieces, undertaken by Danielle Kvaran, the exhibition curator. These works of art reveal a variety of techniques, including stamp-prints, lino and wood cuttings, etchings, lithographs and silk-prints. It is in the latter that Erró has focused more on digital printing. Most of Erró’s graphic art is based on his older works, such as his paintings, collages and drawings. Erró has collaborated extensively in workshops with a variety of different graphic artists, as well as with printers and publishers of his works in France, Italy, Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. On display until 25.08

Robert Smithson - The Invention of Landscape
Broken Circle/Spiral Hill
Robert Smithson (1938-1973) is best known as a pioneer of the Land Art movement. This exhibition focuses on his only earthwork in Europe, Broken Circle/Spiral Hill. Created in Emmen, Holland in 1971, the project followed Smithson’s iconic earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970), and was finished only two years before his untimely death in a plane crash. The exhibition offers an insight into almost every artistic medium that Smithson used. His drawings, photographs, letters, and a film that he was working on when he died, document the process of planning and constructing the earthwork, and give an insight into Smithson’s visionary concept of “Land Reclamation.”  Films about three of his other earthworks—Spiral Jetty, Mono Lake, and Swamp—will also be shown to give a further insight into Smithson’s career. On display until 14.04

Ívar Valgarðsson – Spill
Spill by Ívar Valgarðsson comprises three murals of drips of paint which have trickled onto the floor in Gallery A at the Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús site, plus three photographs. Ívar focuses a digital microscope camera, designed for scientific research, on the paint-drips, and projects the images onto the walls in real time – as a kind of magnified digital paintings of the drips. In this way he draws attention to the paint that has been spilt. He makes use of the painter’s mistakes, when painting the walls of the space, by returning the drips to the wall. Spill is, like Ívar’s previous works, well-considered and lyrical. The artist is enchanted by the creativity embodied in the formation and development of the manmade environment – high-tension cables transporting electricity from one region to another, splashes of oil on the street, layers of paint on walls, or, as here, drops of paint which have dripped to the floor. Ívar is thus attracted above all to the mutability, and the cycle, of materials and ideas. Ívar’s works are installations, in which he often uses projectors and photographs, as well as a variety of industrial materials. On display until 14.04

Erró and the Seven Teapots
This exhibition is the first public exhibition of a series of seven ceramic teapots with decorations conceived by Erró at the instigation of art-publisher Stéphane Klein. These works, imposing in size, are displayed with some of the large Erró paintings that served as their models. The pots, as well as the canvases, are gifts to the Reykjavik Art Museum from the artist. Curated by Danielle Kvaran. On display until 20.04

Reykjavík Art Museum – Kjarvalsstaðir
Exhibitions
Kjarval Complete
The exhibition Kjarval Complete will offer the opportunity to see hundreds of works by Jóhannes S. Kjarval, one of Iceland’s leading artists of the 20th century, from the collection of the Reykjavík Art Museum. The exhibition, which opens at Kjarvalsstaðir on 21 December, will be hung in the manner of the salon, with pictures from floor to ceiling, in no particular order. The exhibition will bring out unexpected juxtapositions, disregarding all themes, periods, subjects and chronology. The viewer will approach Kjarval’s work without any guidance, and look into the artist’s world on his/her own terms. The Reykjavík Art Museum has presented the Kjarval collection in many different ways, through themed shows, retrospectives and group exhibitions. The Museum’s Kjarval collection comprises 5,392 works: 5,159 drawings, 188 paintings, and other works. On display until 20.05

Zoom Out - A showroom of artworks in transit
This unusual exhibition will give visitors a rare opportunity to see the Reykjavik Art  Museum’s vast collection of Icelandic art. Artworks in a variety of media will be shown in a constantly changing display over a three month period. The exhibition hall will be in state of a perpetual flux, as art handlers constantly install new works and remove others, even as visitors roam through the gallery space. This is an opportunity to get an unedited view of Icelandic art, for everything will be brought out of storage and displayed without curatorial pre-selection. On display until 28.04

The National Museum of Iceland
Exhibitions
The Making of a Nation - Heritage and History in Iceland
The National Museum’s permanent exhibition includes some 2,000 objects dating from the Settlement to the present day and includes multi-media displays, telephone connections with the past, fun and education, games, information folders, and more. A tour of the permanent exhibition is a remarkable journey through time that begins in the ship of the settlers and ends in a modern airport.

Icelandic photographers 1970-1990
Exhibition of photographs by 14 photographers, 9 men and 5 women, who worked with various types of photography during this 20 year period. The exhibition is intended to shed light on what photographers where dealing with at the time and highlights the major trends of this period. On display until 26.05

National Gallery of Iceland
Exhibitions
Old Treasures
The National Gallery of Iceland contains various artworks within its collection which too seldom are shown because of limitations of exhibition space. Often older art in the collection of the NGI is the victim of these restrictions, works of artists who are not protected by copyright anymore. These are numerous works by Icelandic and foreign artists who passed away before the middle of the Second World War. A part of these treasures is now on display in order to shed light on a part of the collection of the National Gallery of Iceland. On display until 05.05

Foreign Influences
A tenth part of the collection of the National Gallery is dedicated to foreign artists from all over the world, Scandinavia, Continental Europe, Great Britain, North-America and the Orient, to name some of the provenances. There is certainly an affinity between the works in the collection of the NGI and the stylistic influences pervading the Icelandic art scene. In the exhibition Foreign Influences, only works from after the Second World War are chosen, and although many were purchased and others donated, they reverberated the taste of Icelandic art lovers. On display until 05.05

Reykjavík Museum of Photography
Exhibition
Kvosin 1986 & 2011
Guðmundur Ingólfsson is one of the pillars of Icelandic photography today.  The exhibition Kvosin 1986 & 2011, a collaboration between The Reykjavík Museum of Photography and the Reykjavík City Museum, consists of photographs, taken 25 years apart. Guðmundur started the project in 1986, in occasion of the bicentenary of Reykjavík, which fuelled his interest in documenting the old town – following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Sigfús Eymundsson and Magnús Ólafsson, who were documenting the district a hundred years before. When we juxtapose his photos from two different times, we see clearly the changes that have taken place in downtown Reykjavík. We tend to think of the Kvosin district as unchanging and immutable, but at a closer look that is far from the truth. Buildings have disappeared, new ones have been built, streets and landmarks have changed. On display until 12.05

Gerðuberg Cultural Centre
Exhibitions
The Reader
Gerðuberg’s Collector’s Corner is the venue for displays of interesting collections in individual ownership. In The Reader, Sigrún Klara Hannesdóttir, bibliophile and former National Librarian, shares part of her souvenir collection with us. The items, covering a wide range of objects including statuettes, postcards, bookmarks, paintings and porcelain plates, are united by their theme: all show readers holding books. Collector: Sigrún Klara Hannesdóttir
Curators: Kristín Arnþórsdóttir and Þuríður Helga Jónasdóttir. On display until 21.06

Iðunn, the traditional poetry society
The traditional ballad and poetry society Kvæðamannafélagið Iðunn was founded on 15 September 1929.  It has functioned without a break ever since and is now one of the city’s oldest active societies.  From the outset, the society has been dedicated to the upholding, preservation and dissemination of Iceland’s ancient traditional poetry for coming generations.  Collection and recording of the live tradition have therefore been important parts in the society’s work.  Its archives contain sound recordings of rímur melodies and transcriptions of occasional verses and longer poems, and also published editions, manuscripts and of course the society’s own minutes and other records.  The society’s fixed meetings take place on the first Friday of each month from October to May. 

i8 Gallery
Exhibition
Seascape – Ragna Róbertsdóttir
Róbertsdóttir´s latest works are characterised by ambiguities of time and place. The work consists of natural materials gathered from the sea, including shells from Arnarfjördur in the remote Icelandic Westfjords. There the artist has been avidly collecting shells and has been drawn by the cycle that occurs as shellfish grow, develop their own unique form, and then decay into the homogeneity of the gravel and yellow sands that are characteristic of the fjord´s beaches. Róbertsdóttir´s collection and classification of shells has taken place over many years, and their display here has been executed with patience and meticulous attention – all for the brief moment of the exhibition. Róbertsdóttir also uses sea salt, both in its raw state  – as in one of her geometric wall installations – but also in pieces based upon the random crystallizations that occur through evaporation of water. On display until 09.03

Hafnarborg, Hafnarfjordur Centre of Culture and Fine Art
Exhibitions
Gravity - Björk Viggósdóttir
In her work, Björk Viggósdóttir uses various elements to engage the finest sensitivity of the senses to appeal to viewers’ imaginations. Björk often assembles multiple and diverse media, combining elements such as video, sound, light and sculpture that become an installation where imaginations are given free rein. On display until 17.03

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir
Sirra Sigrun Sigurdardottir’s work often seems to find its footing on a thin line between art and entertainment, catching the viewer’s attention without revealing careful artistic investigations into the color spectrum and principles of movement and space. Certain personal symbols bear reference to art history, the status the artist, statistical information, scientific theories and topographical contexts. Work evokes a response similar to a child’s sense of captivation by a magician’s illusions. On display until 17.03

Sigurjón Ólafsson Museum
Exhibition
Milestones
Exhibition with some of Sigurjón Ólafsson's key works from different periods of his prolific career as a sculptor. The oldest piece, a portrait-relief from Sigurjón's first year at the Academy in Copenhagen clearly displays the influence of works of art which Sigurjón had seen in Iceland. Visitors are then led through the Football period, Stone-sculpture period, the Iron Age, and the periods of Sheet bronze, Concrete Wall-reliefs and Drift-wood, with the aid of a text brochure by the sculptor's widow Birgitta Spur. On display until 14.04

Volcano House
Film show  
Cinema on Fire
The small island Vestmannaeyjar, watch the awesome power of red-hot lava, seemingly irresistible as it moves in slow motion, swallowing and crushing everything in its path. Like a sci-fi monster, you see it start to engulf a thriving community and the impending disaster as it edges to the harbour to destroy the only safe haven for the fishing fleet. Every boat is pressed into service to ferry the inhabitants to safety as they watch more of their lives disappear. Then, the 2010 eruption in Eyjafjallajökull that covered farms and villages in a deep layer of ash and an almost impenetrable fog, threatening, once again, the livelihoods of hard-working communities. A massive flood sweeps down the mountain, putting bridges along the main road linking the southern towns and villages at risk. Open daily from 09:00-23:00