information from the National Nordic Museum

This month, the National Nordic Museum in Ballard opened a new exhibition online featuring the work of more than 50 high school students from Ballard High School, Garfield High School, Nathan Hale High School, and Roosevelt High School. Experimental Selfies: Students Respond to Edvard Munch’s Photography was conceived by the Museum’s educators as a way for students in Advanced Placement 2-D Art and Design (Photography) classes to investigate the work of Edvard Munch, displayed at the National Nordic Museum last fall. The Advanced Placement program in 2-D Art and Design is equivalent to a one-semester, college-level introductory course with an emphasis in digital photography. 

“Throughout the year, our programs and exhibitions team has found ways to engage new and diverse audiences locally, nationally, and internationally,” said Executive Director/CEO Eric Nelson. “The work done by the students themselves is fabulous. It is tremendous to see these photos presented on the Museum’s website.”
 
The collaboration between museum educators and high school students commenced with a virtual tour of The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography, led by the exhibition’s curator Dr. Patricia Berman, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art at Wellesley College. With the Museum’s closure in November due to the COVID-19 surge, plans continued to present the students’ work online in a virtual exhibition.
 
Celebrated for his paintings, prints, and watercolors, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) experimented with both still photography and early motion picture cameras. The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch's Photography displays his photographs and films in a way that emphasizes the artist’s exploration of the camera as an expressive medium. By probing and exploiting the dynamics of “faulty” practice, such as distortion, blurred motion, eccentric camera angles, and other photographic “mistakes,” Munch photographed himself and his immediate environment in ways that rendered them poetic.
 
As per their artist statements, the students reacted to the show as a whole, creating their own “faulty” practice using phones, apps, or cameras while photographing family, messy rooms, pets, and other moments in their lives.
 
“Munch captured scenes of his private life with his handheld Kodak cameras, but he challenged the conventions outlined in the accompanying instruction manuals,” said Leslie Anne Anderson, Director of Collections, Exhibitions, and Programs at the National Nordic Museum. “Like Munch, the art students make use of the technology at their fingertips to convey the reality of their lives in new ways.”
 
The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography opened October 29 at the National Nordic Museum, 2655 NW Market Street, Seattle. The exhibition will be available for viewing when the Museum is allowed to reopen in 2021. Experimental Selfies: Students Respond to Edvard Munch’s Photography is currently available at nordicmuseum.org/exhibition/experimentalselfies

For artist statements and complete photos, please see https://www.nordicmuseum.org/exhibition/experimentalselfies
 

January 2021 Munch Online Programming at National Nordic Museum

Registration and more information for these online events can be found at nordicmuseum.org/calendar.
 
Head to Head—Edvard Munch, August Strindberg, and Photographic Self-Representation
Virtual Lecture, January 14, 6pm to 7pm PST
In this talk, Linda Rugg, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and Professor of Swedish Literature at UC Berkeley, will discuss the relationship between Edvard Munch and August Strindberg and the relationship of both artists to photographic self-portraiture. They both used themselves as experimental objects, writing autobiographies and fictional journals, creating self-portraits in photography and in paint.
 
Caring and Curing—Edvard Munch in the Clinic, 1908–09
Virtual Lecture, January 21, 6pm to 7pm PST
Allison Morehead, Associate Professor of Art History and in the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queen's University, explores the world of the early 20th century clinic through Munch's photos of himself during a stay at private nerve clinic in Copenhagen (1908–09). The result reveals not only one artist's experience, but also a new kind of medical institution for caring and curing.

More on The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch's Photography

On loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, the 46 prints in the exhibition and the continuous screening of Munch’s films are accompanied by the camera models that Munch used, as well as contextualizing panels and others that examine Munch’s photographic exploration. Similar to the ways in which the artist invented techniques and approaches to painting and graphic art, Munch’s informal photography both honored the material before his lens and transmuted it into uncommon motifs.