Christen Sveaas' Art Foundation
The exhibitions at Kistefos are developed in collaboration with the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation and are often based on works and artists represented in the foundation's collection.
Christen Sveaas Art Foundation was established by Christen Sveaas in October 2019. The goal of the foundation is to manage, protect, convey and lend artworks from the foundation’s collection to increase interest in modern and contemporary art.
Around 800 artworks were donated to the foundation from Christen Sveaas’ private collection in 2020. Additional donations in recent years have increased the foundation’s total number of works to over 850.
An important goal for the foundation is to make the collection more accessible for a wider audience. The foundation therefore collaborates closely with Norwegian and international institutions on temporary exhibitions, long-term loans and collection displays.
Commissioning and contributing to new essays as well as ensuring works are reproduced in exhibition catalogues and other publications are important parts of this mission, and help keep the works visible and relevant for new generations.
From the exhibition Tracing Absence. Photo: Vegard Kleven
About Christen Sveaas
Christen Sveaas (b. 1956 in Oslo) is a Norwegian businessman, art collector, investor and donator who has collected art and antique Norwegian silver for more than 40 years. In 1996 he founded the Kistefos Museum on the grounds of his grandfather Anders Sveaas’ old wood pulp mill at Jevnaker, Norway. The wood pulp mill was active from 1889 until 1955 and is still intact. The museum has one of the largest sculpture gardens in Europe, an industrial museum and two exhibition spaces for contemporary art. The museum building The Twist, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), opened in 2019. Christen Sveaas is a founding member of The Metropolitan Museum International Council, in addition to being Honorary Trustee of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a Global Patron of Art Basel.
Sveaas developed an interest in art and collecting at an early age. Among his first acquisitions were paintings by Harald Sohlberg, Johan Christian Dahl, Frits Thaulow and Gustav Wentzel. The collection was extended through the acquisition of works from the Norwegian realism, modernism and post-war movements. The collection became more international in the 1990s, when several Norwegian galleries extended their exhibition programs beyond the border. Howard Hodgkin, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Keith Haring and Ross Bleckner have been key artists in the collection since the 1990s.
After the new millennium, Sveaas began to follow the practices of artists such as Edward Ruscha, Marina Abramović, Gilbert & George, David Salle, Lari Pittman, Bjarne Melgaard, Adrian Ghenie, Andreas Gursky, Louise Bourgeois, Ida Ekblad, Paulina Olowska and Hurvin Anderson. Christen Sveaas still holds an important private art collection that continues to grow.
