Press release -
Exhibitions at Nationalmuseum 2025
This coming year, Nationalmuseum will continue to deepen visitors’ understanding of popular artists in its collections, collaborate with other Nordic and European museums, and feature contemporary artists in its temporary exhibitions.
The following exhibition themes and artists will be showcased in 2025.
Bonnard and The Nordic Countries
20 February–18 May 2025
Art in Focus Spring 2025 begins with an exhibition on Pierre Bonnard, one of the most influential French artists of the early 20thcentury. Bonnard was a master of colour. In shimmering images, he captured the people and environments closest to him – his home, family, garden, bustling neighbourhood, and the view of the sea through his window. Nationalmuseum’s exhibition is the first on Bonnard in Sweden in over seventy years. It includes around 70 works by Pierre Bonnard, as well as a number of works by Nordic artists inspired by Bonnard. The project is an international collaboration, with artworks on loan from museums such as the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The exhibition is organised in partnership with the Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway, where it will welcome visitors after its time in Stockholm.
Ernst Billgren
10 April–28 September 2025
Ernst Billgren has been one of Sweden’s most renowned artists since the 1980s. His art has a strong connection to art history. For the exhibition at Nationalmuseum, Billgren has created new suites of paintings reminiscent of the landscapes and animal and still life paintings from the Baroque period. They have a cinematic quality, with the motif changing from image to image. Some of Billgren’s new works are inspired by the museum's own collections, with the artist combining elements from different paintings to create entirely new compositions.
The Left Shore
12 June 2025–11 January 2026
The Left Shore exhibition brings together filmmaker Johan Renck and photographer Anders Petersen. The exhibition centres around a still image film by Renck that is based on Petersen’s black-and-white documentary photographs. The film is accompanied by newly composed music. The exhibition also includes a suite of original photographs by Anders Petersen, which were part of his series on Swedish prisons and inpatient mental health institutions. Johan Renck has been working internationally as a director for many years and has received acclaim for the TV series Chernobyl and the feature film Spaceman, and for directing David Bowie’s last two music videos. Anders Petersen has been considered one of Sweden’s leading photographers for decades. His most noteworthy projects include images of the Café Lehmitz bar in Hamburg. Petersen’s images are characterised by a documentary style and the photographer’s desire to get close to the people he portrays.
Hanna Hirsch Pauli. The Art of Being Free
19 June 2025 – 11 January 2026
Hanna Hirsch Pauli is one of the most ‘famous unknown’ painters in Nordic art from the turn of the twentieth century. She painted iconic works, including a groundbreaking portrait of her artist friend Venny Soldan in the Parisian studio they shared, and the atmospheric outdoor scene Breakfast Time inspired by French impressionism. A considerable part of Hirsch-Pauli’s oeuvre is still unknown to broader audiences, though. The painter’s fascinating life story too remains largely uncharted territory. The more than 120 artworks on display, which span a period of over 60 years, range from famous paintings created during her breakthrough period in the 1880s to symbolist landscapes, intimate portrayals of her family, interior scenes depicting the artist’s powerful network of women, and self-portraits created at the end of her life. Drawing on new research and sensational archival findings, Nationalmuseum will present the first-ever comprehensive monographic exhibition of Hanna Hirsch Pauli’s work in the summer and autumn of 2025.
More Information
For more information, contact press@nationalmuseum.se or ring +46 8 519 544 00.
Press images are included at the bottom of the press release.
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Nationalmuseum is Sweden’s museum of art and design. The collections comprise some 700 000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, drawings and graphic art from the 16th century up to the beginning of the 20th century and the collection of applied art and design up to the present day. Nationalmuseum is a government authority with a mandate to preserve cultural heritage and promote art, interest in art and knowledge of art.
