Programme of the week
Event | 5 February 2026 – The Einar Jónsson Museum
Winter Lights Festival Opening
The Winter Lights Festival will be officially opened on Thursday, 5 February at 7:00 PM in the garden of the Einar Jónsson Museum. On this occasion, the museum will remain open until 10:30 PM, with free admission throughout the evening.
The festival will be opened by Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir, Mayor of Reykjavík. Logi Einarsson, Minister of Culture, Innovation and Higher Education, will also address guests, marking the recent merger of the National Gallery of Iceland and the Einar Jónsson Museum.
The festival’s opening piece is Synergy 2.0 by the art collective Mercury Maze Studio—Owen Hindley, Katerina Blahutova, and Þorsteinn Eyfjörð—which will premiere at the event. The work is an interactive video, light, and sound installation projected onto Hnitbjörg, the building that houses the Einar Jónsson Museum. Through a multi-layered interplay of light, sound, and movement, audiences are invited to explore the building’s architecture and the surrounding soundscape, blurring the boundaries between material and spirit.
Synergy 2.0 will be on view in the museum garden every evening of the Winter Lights Festival from 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM.
All are warmly welcome.
Winter Lights Festival - Opening!
Museum Night | 6 February 2026 🎉
At the buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland
Museum Night is just around the corner! The National Gallery of Iceland places great emphasis on offering a vibrant and tightly curated programme for Museum Night, and this year is no exception. Explore the programme below.
On Museum Night, all buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland will be open until 11:00 PM, with free admission from 5:00 PM onwards.
Museum Night | 6 February 2026 🎉
Museum Night | 6 February 2026 – National Gallery of Iceland
Snapshot Tours on Museum Night
📍 National Gallery of Iceland
Pari Stave, Curator at the National Gallery of Iceland, welcomes visitors on Museum Night and will lead short guided tours of four ongoing exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland on Fríkirkjuvegur:
5:30 PM Innocent bodies – Agnieszka Polska
6:00 PM Seas' Blue Yonder – Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir & Mark Wilson
6:30 PM Affinities of Form: Artistic Convergences in Iceland since 1970
7:00 PM The Architecture of Place – Donald Judd & Hörður Ágústsson
Please note: all tours are conducted in English.
On Museum Night, the buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland will be open until 11:00 PM, with free admission from 5:00 PM onwards.
Snapshot Tours on Museum Night
Museum Night | 6 February 2026
The Einar Jónsson Museum
Guided Tours on Museum Night
📍 Einar Jónsson Museum of Art
6:00 PM – Guided Tour of Einar Jónsson’s Works in Words and Music 🎼
Þóra Sigurbjörnsdóttir and Silja Pálmarsdóttir, specialists at the Einar Jónsson Museum of Art, guide visitors through selected works in the exhibition Spirit and Materiality. Joining the tour is flautist Hildur Arna Hrafnsdóttir, who will perform music inspired by the artworks, creating a dialogue between sound and sculpture.
7:00 PM – Synergy 2.0 Guided Tour 🗣️
On Museum Night, the art collective Mercury Maze Studio—Owen Hindley, Katerina Blahutova, and Þorsteinn Eyfjörð—welcomes guests for a guided tour of their work Synergy 2.0.
The work is an interactive video, light, and sound installation projected onto Hnitbjörg, the building that houses the Einar Jónsson Museum of Art. Through direct engagement with the work, viewers activate a connection between the physical and the spiritual, travelling through the building via digital mapping technology. Architectural structures are revealed as walls appear to rotate and the sculptures inside the museum seem to come alive.
On Museum Night, all buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland will be open until 11:00 PM, with free admission from 5:00 PM onwards.
Museum Night at the Einar Jónsson Museum
Museum Night | 6 February 2026
The House of Collections
The Rat Choir on Museum Night
📍 The House of Collections
▶️ 7:30 PM – The Rat Choir: Live Performance at The House of Collections🐀
Rats produce sixteen distinct sounds to express joy, many of them at frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. They give each other names and engage in social play governed by rules communicated through sound, living largely in darkness. Composer Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir has arranged and conducts a choral work for human voices based on these sixteen sounds.
On Museum Night, a group of women will perform this composition in the reading room of The House of Collections on Hverfisgata.
On Museum Night, all buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland will be open until 11:00 PM, with free admission from 5:00 PM onwards.
Facebook Event
Museum Night Programme
More about the Rat Choir
The Rat Choir at the The House of Collections
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and María Elísabet Bragadóttir
Museum Night | 6 February 2026
The House of Collections
Reading on Museum Night
📍 The House of Collections
8:30 PM – Reading: Götuhorn 📗
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, visual artist and poet, together with writer María Elísabet Bragadóttir, will read from the book Crossroads—a collection of poetic texts inspired by Icelandic visual art. The publication was released by the National Gallery of Iceland last year in collaboration with Reykjavík UNESCO City of Literature.
In Crossroads, visual art and literature converge through the work of selected authors who drew inspiration from artworks featured at House of Collections.
Reading from the book Crossroads
Museum Night | 6 February 2026
National Gallery of Iceland
DJ Dóra Júlía & Spirits of Iceland on Museum Night
📍 The National Gallery
▶️ 8:00 PM – Gin Bar 🍸
Spirits of Iceland presents MÓA GIN. This is no ordinary gin—each bottle captures the untouched wilderness of Icelandic nature, distilled and bottled with care.
▶️ 8:00–10:00 PM – DJ Dóra Júlía 🎧
Come and dance! By popular demand, we invite Museum Night guests to dance their way into the evening as DJ Dóra Júlía sets the mood and keeps the energy high.
On Museum Night, all buildings of the National Gallery of Iceland will be open until 11:00 PM, with free admission from 5:00 PM onwards.
DJ Dóra Júlía & Spirits of Iceland on Museum Night
Event | 7 February 2026
National Gallery of Iceland
Krummi Kids’ Club
Art Workshop: Fantastic Flowers 🪻
Families are warmly invited to a fun and creative art workshop with Krummi Kids’ Club at the National Gallery of Iceland on Saturday, 7 February, from 2:00–4:00 PM.
During the workshop, we will step into Agnieszka Polska’s video work The Book of Flowers and experience a variety of flowers generated with the help of artificial intelligence. After exploring the artwork together, we will head to our art studio on the second floor and let our own flowers grow in imaginative, colourful, and creative ways.
Krummi Kids’ Club Art Workshop: Fantastic Flowers
Event | 8 February 2026
National Gallery of Iceland
Seas' Blue Yonder
Curator’s Guided Tour
You are warmly invited to the National Gallery of Iceland on Sunday, 8 February at 2:00 PM, where curator Æsa Sigurjónsdóttir will lead a guided tour of the exhibition Seas' Blue Yonder.
In Seas' Blue Yonder, artists Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson shed light on the complex relationship between humans and whales. For more than two decades, Bryndís and Mark have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research addressing ethical questions surrounding interspecies relationships—an issue of growing urgency in the face of accelerating species extinction.
Admission with a valid museum ticket.
Course 2026 – Einar Jónsson Museum
Adult Course
Drawing at the Einar Jónsson Museum
The Einar Jónsson Museum is a unique space, simultaneously the artist’s studio, exhibition gallery, and former home. Participants will explore Einar Jónsson’s visual world, from its largest sculpture — the museum itself — to individual works dispersed throughout its rooms and floors.
The course focuses on the fundamentals of drawing — form, line, and movement — working directly from observation. Emphasis will be placed on flow and creative drawing methods. The course is suitable both for beginners and for those wishing to deepen their drawing skills.
The course consists of two evening sessions, held on:
18 and 25 February, 5:15–7:00 pm
All materials are provided.
Instructor: Margrét H. Blöndal, visual artist
Information and registration here
Drawing at the Einar Jónsson Museum
Course 2026 – Einar Jónsson Museum
Adult Course
Perspectives on the Art of Einar Jónsson
Participants will explore the life and work of Einar Jónsson, a pioneer of Icelandic sculpture. The course is based on the book Seeing Souls, which places particular emphasis on the interpretation of the sculptor’s works. Attention will be given to the symbolic world of the sculptures and to how Einar Jónsson’s art reflected the national awakening and cultural discourse of his time.
The course offers participants an opportunity to view Einar Jónsson’s work in a new light and to gain a deeper understanding of his influence on Icelandic art history.
The course consists of two evening sessions, held on:
18 and 25 March, 5:15–7:00 pm
Instructor: Sigurður Trausti Traustason, former president of the board of the Einar Jónsson Museum
Information and registration here
Perspectives on the Art of Einar Jónsson
Museum Shop 2026 – National Gallery of Iceland
The National Gallery of Iceland Museum Shop is filled with carefully selected gift items, greeting cards, jewellery, posters, books, and more.
Among the treasures available in the museum shop are jewellery pieces by Finn Jónsson (1892–1993), one of the pioneers of Icelandic visual art.
On the occasion of the centenary of the National Gallery of Iceland, Finn and his wife Guðný Elísdóttir donated more than 800 of Finn’s works to the museum in 1985. This remarkable gift included, among other items, silver objects as well as the tools and casting moulds used in gold- and silversmithing.
In celebration of the centenary of the Icelandic Goldsmiths’ Association in 2024, the National Gallery of Iceland commissioned silversmith Óttar Gauta Guðmundsson to reinterpret these works as exquisite contemporary jewellery.
Sólon Íslandus - linen tablecloths, runners, and napkins