The Icelandic Art Center is pleased to announce that Reykjavík-based artist Ásta Fanney

Sigurðardóttir will represent Iceland at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di

Venezia in 2026.

Conference on Contemporary Art Policy in Iceland held by the Ministry of Culture and The Icelandic Art Center. The keynote speaker at the conference is Mikkel Bogh, Professor at the Copenhagen University and former Director at the National Gallery of Denmark and former Rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Mr. Bogh will give a talk on cultural policy, the new museum reform in Denmark and new understandings of what museum practice is and can be. The conference is held in The House of Collections at the National Gallery of Iceland, Monday December 9 between 15:00-17:00.

Sunday the 24th of November marks the last day of the Icelandic Pavilion this year at the Venice Biennale in Italy. Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir´s exhibition "This is a Very Large Number (Commerzbau)" has been on view for seven months. The exhibition will open again in Iceland in February, at the National Gallery of Iceland.

Austria's representative at this year's Venice Biennale is the artist Anna Jermolaewa. She was born in the Soviet Union in 1970 but fled the country at the age of nineteen and settled in Austria. She was one of the founding members of an opposition party in the Soviet Union and one of the editors of a newspaper that was highly critical of the authorities. Jermolaewa and her colleagues were thus involved in a criminal case where they were accused of inciting opposition to the authorities and of spreading propaganda and that is why she decided to escape the country.

Submissions for nomination proposals are now open for the Icelandic Visual Art Prize, set to be awarded for the eighth time in 2025. 

In recent years, there has been significant progress in terms of diversity and accessibility within the art world, which has historically been rather homogenous. Western exhibition spaces have traditionally been dominated by works from cisgender, heterosexual, non-disabled white men. However, this mindset has been shifting and improving over the past few decades, thanks to individuals and projects dedicated to promoting inclusion within the art world.

In October 2025, the Sequences art festival will take place for the twelfth time. The curator of the festival is Daría Sól Andrews.