The ultimate guide to 2023’s must-see art exhibitions in Scandinavia

Cultural institutions across the region have prepared a compelling line-up of exhibitions for 2023. So if your New Year’s resolution is to become an avid gallery-goer or a cultural connoisseur, then we have quite the array of options. From a joyous celebration of Norwegian folk costume at The National Museum in Oslo to a timely study of climate change at Trondheim’s Art Museum, this year's exhibition set is more eclectic and dynamic than ever, honouring coveted international names and traditions while shifting our gaze to topics of the future.

Here are the must-see exhibitions for the year ahead.

'What If? Alternative Futures' is a contemporary art exhibition exploring different interpretations of the future, based on The Weak Signals data project started by Sitra, Finland’s innovation fund. As you slowly meander through the gallery, prepare to be met with an array of multimedia art, from video installations to sculptures, all of which aim to challenge existing assumptions and conceive of different futures.

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Through themes surrounding worklife, nature and the metaverse, the works are curated to stimulate the eyes and the mind, inviting you to pause, reflect and think. Featuring seven emerging Finnish and international creatives, including Kiia Beilinson, Pasi Kärkkäinen-Tunkelo and Milla Kallio, the exhibition is also a good way to get familiar with Finland’s future design talents.

'What If? Alternative Futures' is at Design Museum Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland until March 12.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art often makes it onto our Copenhagen itinerary – both for its ever-impressive smorgasbord of art and for its glass corridors and lush green surroundings, which make for excellent aimless wandering. With that in mind, the space is the perfect host for Gauri Gill’s most extensive exhibition to date.

"Far away from India’s urban centres, Gill has been exploring the daily lives of India’s rural population for more than two decades, seeking to give a voice to the vulnerable and often overlooked of modern India," through her photography, the exhibition's introduction explains. A common thread in all her works is "the desire to move outsiders of modern society in India – the forgotten, hidden, overlooked and outcast – into the centre of the picture."

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Encompassing photographs saturated in colour and monochrome tones, Gill plays with the medium of photography to transform a fleeting moment and feeling into something permanent. This exhibition presents works from Gill’s latest series ‘Acts of Appearance', presenting a new dialogue between reality and fiction through tales of loss, friendship and poverty. Her subjects are disguised in large papier-mâché masks crafted by artists from communities in Jawhar, Maharashtra. It’s through this symbiosis of photography, craft and culture, that Gill presents a scarcely seen perspective of marginalised communities in modern India.

'Gauri Gill' is at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark from January 26 until April 4.

The Danish fashion industry has long been heralded as a pioneer of responsibility. Recent years have seen an increase in circular fashion production with brands including Ganni, Stem and Jade Cropper launching environmental initiatives, and with Copenhagen Fashion Week’s implementation of sustainability requirements across the value chain, an exhibition that explores the very topic couldn’t have come at a better time.

The exhibition 'Beautiful Repair' unites art and fashion, offering a podium to the power of recycled materials, dead stock and sophisticated mending techniques, while simultaneously exploring how to breathe new life into clothes to provide fertile ground for novel aesthetic expressions. The exhibition features works by a host of artists and fashion designers, some for the first time in Denmark, including Zadie Xa, Rasmus Myrup and Elina Heilanen.

'Beautiful Repair' is at Copenhagen Contemporary in Copenhagen, Denmark from February 1 until September 3.

If a grand tour of Scandinavia's spectacular landscapes is out of the question for you in 2023, you can still experience its greenery in painterly form at Stockholm’s Naturalmuseum.

'The Garden' brings together almost 300 paintings, applied art and sculptures from the museum’s collections, with canvases tracing the evolution of how gardens have been portrayed and designed across six centuries. The exhibition is vast in its social themes as well as lustrous in its colour, and features impressionist masterpieces by Van Gogh and Monet as well as contemporary interpretations by Peter Frie and Emma Helle.

'The Garden' is at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden from February 23 until January 7, 2024.

Exploring alternative food futures and climate change, 'More Meat Less Meat' tackles some of society's most pivotal environmental questions: what is meat and how should we eat? The exhibition centres around the understanding that reducing meat consumption is critical for respecting planetary boundaries, ensuring global food security, and improving human and animal health, but is a task that remains partly ignored. It makes for one of Trondheim Art Gallery’s most intriguing exhibitions in recent years.

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Engaging with the viewer through multi-sensory artworks by Chicks On Speed and The Centre for Genomic Gastronomy, as well as physical interactions with plants, animals, music and computers, the exhibition prompts sincere reflection and a hands-on approach. If you’re left with compelling thoughts you can’t quite keep to yourself, there’s also the opportunity to contribute your ideas for a New National Dish at the end of the experience. There will be invitations to tasting evenings to test alternatives to meat, along with talks and lectures about the research linked to the themes in the exhibition.

'More Meat Less Meat' is at Trondheim Art Museum in Trondheim, Norway from February 15 until May 1.

“Interest in Icelandic huldofolk is on the rise,” says Davina Catt when discussing the country's fascination with elvish creatures. While elves are believed to be caretakers of nature, legends of trolls, ghosts and other unworldly beings still roam the land.

Related: How Icelanders' belief in elves is helping win environmental battles

In light of this, Reykjavík Art Museum explores these great Nordic myths through a major art exhibition at Ásmundarsafn in collaboration with one of Iceland’s greatest sculptors, Ásmund Sveinsson. As a pioneer of Icelandic sculpture in the 20th century exploring materiality, natural laws and cosmic dimensions, Sveinsson’s work is easily recognisable. In this exhibition, his work is presented in dialogue with contemporary artist Sigga Björg. She is widely known for her imaginative drawings, installations and videos, creating a world full of horror and humour for the eyes and mind.

'Ásmundur Sveinsson and Sigga Björg: Breath on a Window' is at Reykjavik Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland from February 3 until May 7.

The 13,000 square metre National Museum in Oslo finally opened last spring, and as the largest museum in the Nordics, it houses over 6,500 works including an enviable archive of art by the ineffable Louse Bourgeois.

Born in 1911 with French and American heritage, Bourgeois is one of the greatest figures in contemporary art with a career spanning over eight decades. Bourgeois’ work explores themes surrounding anxiety, the home, body parts and childhood trauma. Issues of patriarchy, sexuality and womanhood are often seen at the focal point.

Over 100 works by Bourgeois from each phase of her career will be displayed in the Light Hall, accompanied in dialogue with other prevalent artists including Ana Mendieta and Wilfredo Lam. Bourgeois’ hanging installations such as 'Arch of Hysteria' (1993) and paintings including ‘Roof Song’ (1947) are set to be show-stopping additions to the exhibition.

'Louise Bourgeois' is at The National Museum in Oslo, Norway from May 6 until August 6.

For many Norwegians, the bunad, kofte, solje and other forms of national costume are heavy with symbolism. They are famously known for eliciting feelings of belonging and nostalgia, but less often discussed are the feelings of exclusion that they can inspire. In collaboration with Valdres Museum, Oslo's National Museum is launching a touring research and exhibition project decoding the traditions of folk costumes from a norm-critical perspective.

Taking a closer look between the seams, "Queering Folk Costume" asks “how are colours, cuts, and the norms of use defined and determined? And how does the contemporary political landscape influence the expression and evolution of these traditions?” The first instalment of the ongoing exhibition will put six contemporary artists in dialogue with traditional crafters and historians across Norway and Sápmi. The exhibition will take viewers on a journey through Norwegian cultural history and the societal role of clothes.

'Queering Folk Costumes' is at Valdres Folkemuseum in Valdres, Norway from 23 June.

Artist Touko Laaksonen, famously known as Tom of Finland, is widely recognised as one of the 20th century’s most influential artists for his deeply intimate illustrations of the male figure and homoerotica. For the first time ever, this retrospective at Kiasma Museum in Helsinki presents an unprecedentedly extensive view of the life and times of Tom of Finland, with work spanning six decades.

Related: Exploring Tom of Finland’s leather-clad stronghold on fashion

“In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself”, Tom once said. As a master whose influence can be detected in the work of many leading cultural figures including fashion favourite Jean-Paul Gaultier, Tom's work and the exhibition in general leaves one with a sense of optimism and curiosity for life, encouraging visitors to reflect on learnings from social progression and what still needs to be done.

'Tom of Finland' is at Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, Finland from April 28 until October 29.

This year, Moderna Museet is celebrating women, chronicling the stories and works of female artists who emerged across the Nordics to make waves in the industry during the 1980s. Translated from the Swedish "Sömnlösa nätter", the exhibition title is taken from Teresa Wennberg’s video installation 'Nuit Blanche' from 1983. This was a period where the economic crisis and the fear of HIV and AIDS were prevalent, and where the art market repelled experimentation, but at the same time celebrated what was already popular while the Cold War came to an end. This contradictory period of transition, between the political 1970s and the form-wise stricter 1990s, is felt here in the first exhibition in the new Moderna Museet’s collection curated by Anna Tellgren.

Alongside Barbro Bäckström’s anatomical sculptures and Eva Löfdahl composite futurism, international artists such performative photographer Cindy Sherman as well as male colleagues including the king of pop art Andy Warhol are featured. The exhibition is a celebration of culture through visual commentary, both satirical and sincere, that certainly becomes a memorable experience, one that encourages you to think about the power of art as a communicative tool.

'Sleepless Nights' is at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden from February 28 until January 14, 2024.

‘I Väntan på Himmelriket’ or 'Waiting For kingdom Come' explores the religion Laestadianism through the works and personal gaze of artist Nina Varumo, in an exhibition which sets the movement – from its roots to its contemporary revival – against the juxtaposing “profanity” of modern society.

Varumo, whose familial history with the movement permits a singular insight into these contrasts, approaches topics of faith and identity, relationships and family through a collection of works that culminates in a thought-provoking cultural reflection. A reflection on the trials of earthly life in the face of a singular aim: to claim the reward of stepping into heavenly eternity.

‘Waiting for heaven’ is on at the Västerbottens museum, Umeå, until 1st October