Nordic noir. Wasn’t that a genre that had people abuzz back in the 00s? Its revival by the British Museum’s prints and drawings department as a title for an exhibition of modern and contemporary Scandinavian graphic art seems desperate. Forget our oldies like Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci – we’re all about new stuff by hot young Scandi artists! Maybe it’s understandable; after all the National Gallery is also moving in on modern art. But Nordic Noir shows just how far overeager neophilia can go wrong. A museum that specialises in history has gone fishing in contemporary waters and, like a lonely angler on an Arctic lake, has come up with absolutely nothing.
The big surprise is that most of the works here are not on loan. The British Museum owns them. It has “acquired” 400 examples of Nordic graphics with the support of the AKO Foundation. What’s that? It’s the cultural arm of AKO Capital, “one of Europe’s leading investment partnerships” managing “approximately $20.3bn across long-only and long-short equity funds”.
