The National Gallery of Iceland
Former ice-storage plant turned art museum, home to Icelandic masterworks and the odd unmasked forgery.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the National Gallery of Iceland follows chief conservator Olafur Ingi Jonsson through a gift of fourteen hundred paintings from a fish-industry magnate's collection in two thousand twenty-three, and the moment the brushwork on pieces credited to giants like Kjarval and Asgrimur Jonsson stopped adding up. It reaches back to an earlier case, a canvas sold at a Danish auction house under the name of painter Svavar Gudnason, and Iceland's quiet history of gifted forgers. You'll also hear how this building began in nineteen sixteen as a plant for storing ice, not art. Look closely at what hangs on the walls today.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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