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Your Excellencies,

Dear friends and guests.

Thank you for the invitation to open this exhibition.

I have opened several exhibitions in my years as a Minister of Culture. Sometimes, there are those that hit a bit harder.

Those that reach into the times we live in and poke at us.

This is that kind of exhibition.

We know that we live in unsettling times.

Unrest. Geopolitical tensions. Misinformation, algorithms and polarization. War, conflict and death.

We cannot be naïve.

We have to prepare.

And we must be resilient in the face of these challenges.

Again. Never settle with unsettling times.

However, at the same time, important and existential questions arise.

Questions that can be uncomfortable to face.

Questions that cannot be ignored.

Questions that maybe art is best equipped to ask, for us.

This is exactly what makes art so powerful.

Art gives us new glasses. New feelings, new thoughts. We see things from new and different perspectives. We are moved.

And artists – painters, authors, musicians alike – have always given us perspectives on war and peace. 

What better place to showcase and discuss some of this art than here, in the Nobel Peace Center?

An exhibition with three centuries of evocative art on war’s brutality asking us the question – “has the world truly changed?”.

From the 1800s to today. From Francisco Goya to Yoko Ono to Barbara Kruger.

They visualise human emotion, fears and hopes.

And the role of language, rhetoric, propaganda and misinformation.

Just as relevant to highlight today as when George Orwell published “1984” in the late 1940s.

So. A big thank you to the Nobel Peace Center, to curator Asle Olsen and all the contributing artists.

For moving us.

For challenging us and asking these questions.

For teaching us about war and its victims, but also about the brave people who have made our world more peaceful.

I am quite sure this exhibition will move many.

Thank you!

I hereby declare the exhibition “War is Peace?” open!