Art in the Nordics, October 2026
October is a strong month across the Nordic capitals: proper new openings in Oslo and Stockholm, and enough already running in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Reykjavik to fill a long weekend in any of them. Here's where to go in each.
Oslo
"W̶o̶m̶a̶n̶ Painter", Nasjonalmuseet, 8 October to 7 February. The museum's own title crosses out the word "Woman", which is the show's whole argument: around fifty works by female artists who won professional recognition in Europe between 1550 and 1650, among them Artemisia Gentileschi and Lavinia Fontana, on loan from the Rijksmuseum, the Uffizi and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. See the show.
Lap-See Lam: Ombres, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, until 3 January. Shadow-play installations, video and new glass sculpture from the Swedish artist, built around her family's move from Hong Kong to Sweden. See the show.
Katharina Grosse: Black Bed, MUNCH, until 3 January. An immersive, sprayed-colour environment from the German painter who treats a room as the canvas, not just the walls. See the show.
Stockholm
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Tehran/New York, Moderna Museet, 3 October to 28 February. A retrospective of the Iranian artist's mirror-mosaic sculptures and drawings, made across four decades between Tehran and her exile in New York after 1979. See the show.
To the Sea!, Nationalmuseum, until 7 February. Over two hundred paintings, photographs and beachwear, Monet and Zorn among them, tracing a century of coastal holidaymaking. See the show.
The Defeated, Bonniers Konsthall, until 8 November. Nineteen artists responding to Peter Weiss's novel The Aesthetics of Resistance, new commissions shown alongside Weiss's own work. See the show.
Copenhagen
Jochen Lempert: Flora Incognita, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, until 21 February. The German artist trained as a biologist, and it shows: three decades of black-and-white photographs of plants, insects and birds, hung unframed in small, quiet clusters. See the show.
Henrik Vibskov: The exhibition, Designmuseum Danmark, until 21 February. Installation models and forty-four display cases on the fashion designer and artist's working methods, closer to a workshop than a retrospective. See the show.
Helsinki
Modern Classics: Elga Sesemann, Ateneum, until 8 August 2027. The first in a new series, and a good place to start: around eighty semi-abstract paintings by the Finnish artist, made out of wartime displacement and memories of a lost Vyborg. See the show.
Antti Tolvi: For Organ and Pause, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, until 10 January. A sound and light installation built round a continuous organ drone, broken by six scheduled live performances. See the show.
A Dream in Four Colours, Kiasma, until 10 January. A collection show across two floors, around fifty artists from Louise Bourgeois to Eija-Liisa Ahtila, much of it not shown at Kiasma in years. See the show.
Reykjavik
Erró: Remix, Reykjavík Art Museum, Hafnarhús, until 31 December. A full-career overview of Iceland's best-known pop artist: paintings, collages, video, all of it loud. See the show.
Alicja Kwade: Big Be-Hide, National Gallery of Iceland, until 1 November. An outdoor sculpture in stone, aluminium and a two-way mirror, sitting in the gallery's grounds rather than a room. See the show.
Janice Kerbel, i8 Gallery, until 7 November. Nine mosaic works, each a single letterform cast in glass smalti and stripped of anything it used to spell. See the show.
That's fourteen shows across five cities and not one of them needs an introduction from me. If a show here sends you home wanting something on your own wall, have a look at the gallery.
