The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned Contemporary Art gallery in Oslo in Norway. It was founded and opened to the public in 1993.
The collection’s main focus is the American appropriation artists from the 1980s, but it is currently developing towards the international contemporary art scene, with artists like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, Tom Sachs, Doug Aitken, Olafur Eliasson and Cai Guo-Qiang. The museum gives 6-7 temporary exhibitions each year. Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art collaborates with international institutions, and produces exhibitions that travels Worldwide.
The museum created a stir in the international art world in 2002 when it purchased the American artist Jeff Koons’s monumental sculpture in gilt porcelain of the pop star Michael Jackson with Bubbles, his favorite chimpanzee, for USD 5.1m.
In 2012 the museum moved to two new buildings by Renzo Piano. The architect Renzo Piano is to design the new museum which will open 29 September 2012, and will consist of two buildings housing the museum’s permanent collection as well as temporary exhibitions.
The exhibitions was by Elmgreen and Dragset, called «Biography«. The second exhibition was «Diaspora» by R. B. Kitaj (1932-2007), and Jens Johannessen (f. 1934) was on the third exhibition.
