Our facade during American Artist´s exhibition The Monophobic Response, 2025. Photo: Evelina Elere / Kunsthall Trondheim
Who We Are, and What We Do
Art museums, artists’ studios, commercial galleries, and public art installations each serve distinct yet complementary roles in a regional cultural ecosystem. Museums preserve cultural heritage through their collections, artists’ studios foster hands-on creation, and galleries connect artists to markets. Together, they create a landscape that invites participation from people of all backgrounds. Kunsthalls occupy a unique position within this ecology.
If museums are oil tankers – powerful, resource-rich, but slow to maneuver – Kunsthalls are tugboats: small but mighty, nimble and responsive. While museums chart the established course of art history, we navigate the immediate currents of contemporary expression as they develop. We don’t merely respond to these cultural movements, we amplify them.
Kunsthall Trondheim serves as both gateway and interpreter, connecting our city to international art currents while translating global dialogues into local relevance. Unlike art museums that primarily document completed artistic journeys, we engage with living artists at crucial developmental stages – particularly during the vulnerable mid-career transition, where institutional support often falters. Where commercial galleries may avoid challenging work that doesn’t translate to immediate sales, we embrace artistic risk. We bring the academic framework and critical networks to champion meaning beyond market value. While museums define the canon, Kunsthalls, such as ours, expand it to ensure more voices are heard.
Through this work, we build and distribute something essential: the critical validation, intellectual framing, and institutional partnerships that transform artistic innovation into recognized cultural value. Artists who work with us gain not just visibility, but the conceptual foundation and institutional legitimacy that collectors, galleries, and museums recognize as markers of lasting significance. By providing resources and community at pivotal career moments, we generate benefits that ripple throughout the arts ecosystem – sustaining viable careers and enriching the cultural life of our city.
At Kunsthall Trondheim, we believe art expands perspectives and contributes to public debate about societal values and experiences. By nurturing the free exchange of ideas, art makes democracy more vibrant. We also believe in art’s transformative power to build community as a response to contemporary challenges – from polarization to loneliness and to environmental crisis – and we work to ensure artists’ voices are heard while giving expression to our communities’ needs. Being seen and heard, after all, is not merely a kindness, it is a matter of public health.
Kunsthall Trondheim strives to be an inclusive institution. We offer cutting-edge exhibitions, art courses for children and youth, and professional development for young adults. Our program also includes performances, film screenings, concerts, dinners, and conversations with artists and other makers. We collaborate closely with our neighbors in Trondheim’s Cultural Quarter and with organizations across our city, the region, and internationally.
After a successful pilot, Kunsthall Trondheim opened its doors in 2016 in the city’s former fire station. We have two floors of dedicated gallery space and a swing space designed for accessibility – wide doors and corridors, elevators, good lighting, clear signage, and comfortable areas for viewing art, attending talks and workshops. In 2024, we converted one of our former exhibition galleries into a dedicated space for outreach, education, and events. This investment continues to bear fruit as we expand our educational and community programming by leaps and bounds each year.
Kunsthall Trondheim is a Limited LiabilityCompany owned by Trondheim Municipality and Trøndelag County Council, established on their initiative. Together with the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Equality, they are our most important supporters. We also receive essential support from private donors, companies, foreign governments and non-government organizations, and foundations. This mix of funding keeps our programs strong and stable.
Supporters
Board members
- Anne Kathrine Slungård (styreleder)
- Ragnhild Rokstad
- Hasan Daraghmeh
- Michael Høiskar Kahn
- Nina Cathrine Karlsen
- Mari Sanden
- Vibeke Hay Wold
- Alexander Roberts
Institutional collaborators
- Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto
- Arts at CERN
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Environmental Humanities Researcher School, Trondheim
- University of Westminster, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), London
- The Seed Box, an environmental humanities collaboratory at Linköping University
- The MIT Press
- KADIST
- Art Hub Copenhagen
- Swiss Institute New York
- Tropical Papers
- State of Concept Athens
- Office for Contemporary Art Norway
- Accelerator
- Canal Projects
- Blindeforbundet
- Unge Funksjonshemmede
- Trondheim Ramm
- Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York
- O—Overgaden
- Index
- Trondheim folkebibliotek
Copyright
National and international copyright laws protect the works of art presented on this website. The artworks may not be reproduced or made public in any way, analog or digital, without permission from the right holders/BONO. Please contact BONO (Norwegian Visual Artists Copyright Society) in order to obtain a license.
Annual Reports and Financials