Scandinavia House

On the Arctic Edge — Artists Explore the Far North
2022-10-21 12:00 - 2023-01-28 18:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Opening October 21 at Scandinavia House, On the Arctic Edge — Artists Explore the Far North presents three contemporary photo-based artists whose work traverses the regions of the Arctic Circle to probe themes ranging from time and memory, to landscape and the built environment, to science and mythology, to our changing climate: Marion Belanger, Clare Benson, and Steve Giovinco. Each artist is an ASF Fellow having received financial support from the American-Scandinavian Foundation from funds donated by Scandinavian Seminar
Photographer and Interdisciplinary artist Clare Benson’s series Until There Is No Sun is a poetic investigation of the Arctic’s duality: the relationships between light and seeing, earth and sky, science and ancient myth. Over the span of nearly a year living in the far north of Arctic Sweden, Benson worked alongside space physicists, Sami indigenous reindeer herders, and scientist studying the eyes of Arctic reindeer to capture photographs, videos, and collected artifacts, exploring how weather and time have worn and carved a world that slowly turns its back to the light. Included in the exhibition, the video work A Thousand Suns is a time-lapse capture of images made by an All-Sky Camera looking up through the roof of the Swedish Institute for Space Physics (IRF) in Kiruna. Photographs on view include her Seasonal Adaptations in the Eyes of Arctic Reindeer, which portray how Arctic reindeer adapt to extreme changes in sunlight through a shift in their tapetum lucidum, a mirror-like tissue behind the retina.
Marion Belanger photographs the cultural landscape, particularly where geology and the built environment intersect, exploring concepts of persistence and change and ways that boundaries demarcate differences. A recipient of awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, whose photographs are included in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, her series Rift/Fault studies shifting land-based tectonic edges of the North American Continental Plate in Iceland and California.
Examining their unpredictable and uncontainable behavior — immune to any human efforts of control — Belanger’s series pairs images from the Mid-Atlantic Rift in Iceland with those captured along the San Andreas Fault, allowing for a dialogue between the wild and the contained, the fertile and the barren, the geologic and the human, in a way that questions the uneasy relationship between geological force, and the limits of human enterprise. Published in the 2017 monograph Rift/Fault (Radius Books), author and art critic Lucy Lippard writes in her introduction that Belanger “comments on the visible and the invisible, acknowledgement and denial, examining, in the process, the ‘dangerous disconnect,’ where so-called ordinary lives play out in the shadows of potential cataclysm.”
NYC-based fine-art photographer Steve Giovinco’s lyrical night landscapes in the recent series Inertia look at the land, ice, and communities of Southern Greenland. An MFA graduate from Yale University School of Art whose work is collected by museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Giovinco traveled to locations including Narsarsuaq, a small remote town lying in the shadow of glaciers, to capture vast scarred landscapes; shrinking icebergs and ice floes; desolate villages; and four hundred-year-old Norse ruins; all marked with minimal traces of human intervention. Photographed through the hours of changing light at dawn, twilight, or nighttime the vistas are haunted, luminous, magical and at times devastating.
Each artist is an ASF Fellow having received financial support from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, which since it began over a century ago has awarded over 5,500 fellowships and grants to Americans and Scandinavians. This exhibition is made possible due to the generosity of the Inger G. & William B. Ginsberg Support Fund, the Virginia Barron Tayloe Bequest, the Bonnier Family Fund for Contemporary Art and the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.
About the Artists
Clare Benson is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of family history, tradition, science, and mythology. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona and her BFA from Central Michigan University. In 2014-15 she was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Arctic Sweden, where she worked alongside space scientists and indigenous Sami reindeer herders. Her first book The Shepherd’s Daughter was published in 2017 by Photolucida, in receipt of the Critical Mass Book Award. Benson’s work has been featured in exhibitions, screenings, and publications across the U.S. and internationally.
Marion Belanger is interested in the concepts of persistence and change, and in the way that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly in regards to the land. She has been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a John Anson Kittredge Award, an American Scandinavian Fellowship, Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and has been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, at the Virginia Center for the Arts and at Everglades National Park.
Marion Belanger earned her MFA from the Yale University School of Art where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and a BFA from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Her photographs are included in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Gallery of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography.
Steve Giovinco is a New York City-based fine-art photographer, who focuses on creating images of couples with himself and lyrical night landscapes. His work is collected by many museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has exhibited widely in galleries and received his MFA from Yale University School of Art. His new photo series Inertia looks at the land, ice and communities in Southern Greenland including the tiny remote town Narsarsuaq, population 158, which lies in the shadow of glaciers.

This exhibition is made possible due to the generosity of the Inger G. & William B. Ginsberg Support Fund, the Virginia Barron Tayloe Bequest, the Bonnier Family Fund for Contemporary Art and the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Swedish Advanced Beginner 1
2023-01-09 18:10 - 19:10, 2023-01-12 18:50 - 19:50, 2023-01-19 18:50 - 19:50, 2023-01-26 18:50 - 19:50
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this winter at Scandinavia House! In this course held in-person at Scandinavia House and offered remotely via Zoom, students will continue to perfect their previous learned skills and pronunciation, while also expanding into more complex sentence structure. Furthermore, the students will be asked to express their opinions or beliefs in simple discussions related to Swedish life within the themes studied. The students will be required to read a literary book over the course of the semester.
At the end of the semester, students will know:

How to connect main and sub-clauses
Adverbs denoting position or destination
The concept of depiction

Students will be able to:

Talk about people, computers, food and things done and wished for in the past.

Prerequisite: Swedish Beginner 3 level or equivalent. Instructions for remote learning will be emailed upon registration. For questions about language levels, please contact Malin Tybahl. Tuition is $499 ($449.10 ASF Members); 15 hours total class time over 8 weeks.
**There will be no classes from Thursday, February 16 through Monday, February 27 (winter recess); classes will resume on Thursday, March 2.**

Swedish Beginner 2
2023-01-09 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-16 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-23 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-30 19:20 - 21:00
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this winter at Scandinavia House! In this course for those who are still new to Swedish but have a basic knowledge of sentence structure, greetings, times and numbers, and basic vocabulary, students will learn sentence structure in sentences with more than one verb, placement of adverbs, plural endings, conjugation of adjectives, objective and possessive pronnounncs, and the past tense. Various cultural aspects will also be highlighted during the course. This class will take place as hybrid learning, with classes offered at Scandinavia House and online via Zoom.
At the end of the semester students will know:

How to structure sentences with more than one verb
The conjugation of adjectives
The past tense

Students will be able to:

Talk about their families and things they’ve done or do, as well as make future plans and purchase items.

Prerequisite: Beginner Swedish 1 level or equivalent. Instructions for remote learning will be emailed upon registration. For questions about language levels, please contact Malin Tybahl. Tuition is $499 ($449.10 ASF Members); 15 hours total class time over 9 weeks.
**There will be no class on February 20 & February 27 (winter recess).**

The Employees by Olga Ravn
2023-01-10 18:00 - 20:00
Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club, now online! Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. On January 10, we’ll be discussing The Employees by Olga Ravn, who discussed the novel with us in May 2021 with translator Martin Aitken.
In the near-distant future, millions of kilometers from Earth, the crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made; those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy; loved ones who have passed; shopping and child-rearing; our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly living.
Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
“A powerful and philosophical sci-fi experiment from a near-distant future, exploring what it means to be human and alive.”– Børsen
About the Author
Olga Ravn (b. 1986) is a Danish novelist and poet. Her novel Celestine appeared to critical acclaim in 2015. She is also a literary critic and has written for Politiken and several other Danish publications. Alongside Johanne Lykke Holm, she runs the feminist performance group and writing school Hekseskolen.

Swedish Beginner 1 - Winter
2023-01-10 18:10 - 19:10, 2023-01-12 20:00 - 21:00, 2023-01-17 18:10 - 19:10, 2023-01-19 20:00 - 21:00, 2023-01-24 18:10 - 19:10, 2023-01-26 20:00 - 21:00, 2023-01-31 18:10 - 19:10
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this winter at Scandinavia House! In this course held both in-person and as remote learning for those completely new to Swedish, students will learn the very basics of Swedish structure and pronunciation while also discussing cultural aspects of Swedish life. This class will take place as hybrid learning, with Tuesday sessions online only (via Zoom) and Thursday sessions both online and in-person at Scandinavia House.
At the end of the semester, students will know:

Structuring statements and questions
Greeting people
Numbers and how to tell time

Students will be able to:

Talk about themselves and how they spend their days.

No prerequisites required. Instructions for remote learning will be emailed upon registration. For questions about language levels, please contact Malin Tybahl. Tuition is $499 ($449.10 ASF Members); 15 hours total class time over 8 weeks.
**There will be no classes from Thursday, February 16 through Tuesday, February 28 (winter recess); classes will resume on Thursday, March 2.**

Swedish Advanced Beginner 2
2023-01-10 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-17 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-24 19:20 - 21:00, 2023-01-31 19:20 - 21:00
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this winter at Scandinavia House! In this course offered remotely via Zoom by Scandinavia House, students will now be ready to work more in depth with structure in various sub-clauses. They will learn how to use the reflexive possessive pronoun and more specific ways to express future tense while slightly more fact-based texts are introduced. The course also includes cultural elements in regards to social and family life, as well as education that will be discussed.
At the end of the semester, students will know:

Indirect speech
Reflexive possessive pronouns
The future tense

Students will be able to:

Talk about their education and future plans, and retell stories shared with them.

Prerequisite: Swedish Advanced Beginner 1 or equivalent. Instructions for remote learning will be emailed upon registration. For questions about language levels, please contact Malin Tybahl. Tuition is $499 ($449.10 ASF Members); 15 hours total class time over 9 weeks.
**There will be no classes on February 21 or February 28 (winter recess).**

Swedish Intermediate 3
2023-01-11 18:30 - 20:10, 2023-01-18 18:30 - 20:10, 2023-01-25 18:30 - 20:10, 2023-02-01 18:30 - 20:10
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this winter at Scandinavia House! In this course based on conversation and grammar, students will now deal with finesse and formal language. Instead of expanding our writing, we will focus on condensing. Discussions will span traditions, Vikings and lore, unwritten societal norms, leadership, work and family structures as well as poetry. This class will take place online only via Zoom.
At the end of the semester, students will know:

How adjectives and participles can function as nouns
Sub-class without som or har/hade, and structure with unstressed objective pronouns
Idiomatic expressions and the use of her or all

Students will be able to:

Discuss poetry and literary writings, various family structures through history and how to conduct work applications and interviews in Sweden.

Prerequisite: Swedish Intermediate 2 or equivalent. Instructions for remote learning will be emailed upon registration. For questions about language levels, please contact Malin Tybahl. Tuition $499 ($449.10 ASF Members); 15 hours total over 9 weeks.
**There will be no class on February 15 or February 22 (winter recess).**

A House Made of Splinters
2023-01-11 19:00 - 21:00
The Nordic & Baltic Oscar Contenders series at Scandinavia House continues this season with a screening of the Danish documentary A House Made of Splinters (dir. Simon Lereng Wilmont, Denmark, 2022), which has now been shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
In this war-worn and impoverished corner of Eastern Ukraine where addiction casts along shadow, there sits a safe haven for children temporarily removed from their parents. A House Made of Splinters follows three kids awaiting their fate: will they go back or move on to a new home, while as a group of dedicated social-workers create small moments of joy and respite from childhoods all but lost.
Filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont returns with a follow-up to his acclaimed first feature, The Distant Barking of Dogs, offering a unique look into how the long-term consequences of war on a society already under strain impacts the most vulnerable. His is a poignant and deeply intimate portrait of a remarkable way station filled with care, support, and trust for a group of kids who are in desperate need of more.
This screening will take place in-person at Scandinavia House in Victor Borge Hall.

About the Director
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Simon Lereng Wilmont graduated as a Documentary Film Director from The National Film School of Denmark in 2009. His first feature documentary film The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017), premiered at IDFA and was awarded Best First Appearance. It has since then won 35+ awards worldwide, among these the McBaine Documentary Feature Award at San Francisco’s SFFILM Festival, it was nominated for a European Film Award (EFA 2018), an Emmy (2020), and shortlisted for an Oscar (2019).
The film also won a Peabody Award (2020). As a director, his films also include Dormitory Master (2009), Above Ground, Beneath the Sky (2008), Chikara-The Sumo Wrestler’s Son (2013) and The Fencing Champion (2014).

Music on Park Avenue with Per Tengstrand—The Romantic Piano: Chopin, Liszt and Schubert
2023-01-19 19:30 - 21:00
Music on Park Avenue returns this fall! The series presented by Scandinavia House and Per Tengstrand welcomes audiences back to Victor Borge Hall beginning in October for another season of its popular performances. Held monthly on Thursday evenings, concerts will begin at 7:30 preceded by conversation by Tengstrand about the pieces and composer.
On January 19, Per Tengstrand starts off the new year with a recital featuring music of three romantic composers: the lyrical Chopin, the virtuoso Liszt, and the intimate Schubert.
Schedule & Ticketing
SCHEDULE
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Beethoven’s Waldstein & Appassionata
Join us for the first concert of three in the fall celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven following the 250th anniversary of his birth in 2020. Tonight’s performance includes two iconic sonatas — both popular but also so different.
Thursday, November 17, 2022
Tengstrand & Opus: Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto
Hear what is perhaps the most beautiful and original of Beethoven’s piano concertos, with Per Tengstrand joined by musicians from Opus at Princeton University.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Premiere of Beethoven and the Freedom of the Will documentary
Film & Concert with Per Tengstrand and Hana Mundiya, violin
See the World Premiere of Tengstrand’s documentary about the power of Beethoven’s music: during his days, through historic events as well as its importance today; followed by a performance with violinist Hana Mundiya, who is featured in the film.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
The romantic piano: Chopin, Liszt and Schubert
Per Tengstrand starts off the new year with the music of three romantic composers: the lyrical Chopin, the virtuoso Liszt and the intimate Schubert.
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Tengstrand & Opus: The Grieg Concerto
A crown jewel in Scandinavian classical music, Edvard Grieg’s beautiful piano concerto, with Per Tengstrand and strings from Opus at Princeton University.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Masterpieces for Cello and Piano: Per Tengstrand and Robin Park
The artistic director of Opus, cellist Robin Park, will join Per Tengstrand on stage to play some of the great works written for cello and piano by Beethoven and Rachmaninov, both famed and less known discoveries.
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Tengstrand & Opus: The Tchaikovsky Concerto
One of the most famous works of music in history will end the season in a fascinating and dynamic arrangement for piano and string quartet.
PASSES
SERIES PASS
$120/$96 ASF for members
A ticket to all seven performances in the series.
About Per Tengstrand
Per Tengstrand has firmly established himself as one of today’s most exciting pianists. He has been described by The Washington Post as “technically resplendent, powerful, intuitively secure,” and by The New York Times as “a superb Swedish pianist” whose recital “was rewarding, both for its unusual programming and for his eloquent, technically polished performances.”Tengstrand is the subject of the acclaimed Swedish documentary The Soloist, directed by Magnus Gertten and Stefan Berg (Sweden, 2003), which was featured at the International Festival of Cinema and Technology in New York.
In 2005 he was decorated by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden with the “Litteris et Artibus” Medal for outstanding service to the arts. During the pandemic, Per started making music documentaries which were viewed and appreciated by people all over the world. As this line of work will continue, the documentary Beethoven and the Freedom of the Will is planned to have its world premiere at Scandinavia House in 2022.

The Fantastic Art of Paper-Cutting
2023-01-22 12:00 - 15:00
Back by popular demand, celebrated Danish paper-cutting artist Torben Jarlstrøm Clausen returns for a workshop on creating wonderful paper-cut beings! Clausen, who has held paper-cutting workshops in Denmark, Japan and the U.S., has created a magical paper-cut universe inhabited by beings previously confined inside the paper. “I can sense that the beings are in the paper, but at the same time they are sad. After some help from the scissors, they travel around happily in our diverse world,” Clausen explains of his artwork.
In this online workshop held via Zoom, Clausen will share his techniques and guide viewers through creating their own paper-cut magic. Participants will also explore the paper-cut artwork of renowned storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, and hear about Clausen’s own journey to becoming a paper-cutting artist. The class will be limited to 30 participants to allow for audience interaction.
The class will take place as virtual instruction over Zoom; students should supply their own materials to cut alongside Clausen. Skill is beginner-level and above.
Materials:

Sharp pair of scissors
Five pieces of any color paper sized approximately 4 x 4 inches (approximately the thickness of printer paper)
Five pieces of any color paper sized approximately 1 x 2 inches
Additional paper to use as needed

About the Instructor
Torben Jarlstrøm Clausen started as a paper-cut artist in 2004. Since then, he has exhibited over 110 places in the U.S., Japan, and Denmark and has held numerous workshops in the same countries.Clausen lives in Odense, Denmark, which is the birthplace of world-famous fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen, who was also a very skilled paper-cut artist. Torben Jarlstrøm Clausen seeks with his paper cuts to maintain and renew this old paper cut tradition, which Hans Christian Andersen was an exponent of almost 200 years ago. Learn more on his website, Facebook page, Etsy shop or follow him at @JarlstroemPaper (Twitter) and @JarlstroemPaperArt (Instagram).

Keyboard Conversations® with Jeffrey Siegel — Musical Valentines
2023-01-26 13:30 - 14:30
Internationally acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Siegel returns for his ever-popular Keyboard Conversations® series at Scandinavia House. Each evening comprises an informal commentary on the music and its composers, a full performance of each work, and a short Q & A session. The accessible format enables audiences to build an understanding of classical music whether newcomer or seasoned listener.
Bask in a night of romance with a performance of love, inspired music from Grieg, Schumann, Liszt, and Mendelssohn.
Tickets to this event must be purchased in advance online at the link above. All attendees are required to follow all Scandinavia House safety protocols, including wearing masks in Victor Borge Hall and observing social distancing rules in signage. Please read our full safety protocols here. ASF is committed to providing an environment free from harassment or discrimination in the treatment of individuals and does not permit harassment or discrimination in any forms (whether racial, sexual, religious, orientation or others) within our building. Any visitors who do not abide by these policies will be required to leave. Read our our Non-Discrimination Policy here.
Tickets must be purchased in advance online at the link above.
About Jeffrey Siegel
A renowned pianist and a Steinway artist, Jeffrey Siegel has enjoyed an illustrious career. Born into a musical family, Siegel studied with Rudolf Ganz in his native Chicago, with the legendary Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School and, as a Fulbright Scholar, with Ilona Kabos in London.
He has performed with some of the finest orchestras in the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, Moscow State Symphony, the Oslo and Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestras, and NHK Symphony of Japan, among others. In the U.S., his engagements have included solo performances with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Siegel has also collaborated with many of pre-eminent conductors: Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, and David Zinman, as well as legendary maestros of the past, including Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Eugene Ormandy, Sir George Solti, William Steinberg, Klaus Tennstedt, and Yevgeny Svetlanov.
Siegel has also recorded The Power and Passion of Beethoven (Random House Audio, 2006); The Romanticism of the Russian Soul (Random House Audio, 2006); The Romance of the Piano (Random House Audio, 2006); An American Salute (Random House Audio, 2007); Music for the Young – and the Young at Heart (WFMT Radio, Chicago, 2008); and American Pianistic Treasures (WEDU, Tampa), to name a few.
The ongoing Keyboard Conversations® series flourishes in major cities throughout the United States, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Phoenix, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Dallas, Denver, and Washington, D.C. Some of these venues have presented Keyboard Conversations® for more than 30 years – testimony to Siegel’s artistry, innovative format, and loyal fans.

Collected Works
2023-01-28 13:00 - 14:00
This January, join us for a virtual book talk with Swedish author and psychologist Lydia Sandgren on her new book Collected Works. With moderator Emily Temple, she’ll discuss her compelling mystery and poignant bildungsroman about love, power, and art—and what leads us to make the pivotal decisions that change the course of our lives.
Martin Berg’s wife, Cecilia, disappeared years ago. His memories of their carefree college days seem ever out of reach, and the intellectual curiosities that once made him the object of her desire have given way to midlife uncertainty. The methodical and quiet life he’s made for himself and his adult children couldn’t be further from the one he dreamed of in his youth, when the manuscripts lying around his apartment were flush with promise and his ailing publishing house was still new.
Perhaps nothing reminds Martin of these failures more than his friend Gustav Becker, a wildly successful painter who’s returned to Gothenburg on the eve of his career-defining retrospective. Gustav, meanwhile, is hurting too. His obsession with Cecilia’s inexplicable disappearance had made his art hagiographic, fixated on her image.
When posters for Gustav’s retrospective plaster Cecilia’s face on major billboards across the city, Martin’s daughter Rakel learns a haunting fact that points toward her mother’s whereabouts. She and her brother chase this clue across time, memory, and Europe to discover why Cecilia abandoned her family, with the imagined hope that the question of what makes a person leave can ever be answered.
Registration is required. Please sign up at the link above. This event will take place as a Zoom webinar. Please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to info@amscan.org.
“[A] sweeping and complex drama of family, art, and sacrifice . . . Readers will be captivated.” —Publishers Weekly
“A richly evocative work from a major new talent.” —Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Lydia Sandgren is a trained psychologist and lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. Collected Works is her debut novel.
About the Moderator
Emily Temple is the author of The Lightness (William Morrow, 2020) and the Managing Editor at Literary Hub. She earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was the recipient of a Henfield Prize. She lives with her husband and daughter in upstate New York.
