Nils Ohlsen received the Konrad Mägi Foundation Award 2023
Nils Ohlsen, director of the Lillehammer Art Museum, is the winner of the Konrad Mägi Foundation Award 2023.
Together with Pilvi Kalhama, director of the EMMA Museum, Nils Ohlsen curated the solo exhibition “Konrad Mägi – Estonia´s Great Painter” in Lillehammer, displaying more than 100 Mägi´s paintings, ranging from landscape paintings to portraits and still lifes.
The exhibition attracted remarkable audience attention and significant media coverage in Norway.
The Konrad Mägi exhibition was named as one of Norway´s eight most important art events of the past year by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
Nils Ohlsen is an art historian who has worked as museum director, head of research and curator in several museums.
He has said that “The way Konrad Mägi uses colours and structures his paintings is fantastic. He interprets nature in an entirely unique figurative language. Konrad Mägi is a breath-taking modernist on the same level as Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner”.
The Konrad Mägi Foundation Award is given to an individual or collective who have significantly contributed to the promotion of the life and work of Konrad Mägi (1878–1925), the most important painter in the Estonian art history. Previous award winners include the EMMA Museum director Pilvi Kalhama (2022), film director Marianne Kõrver (2020), designer Tõnis Saadoja (2019) and art historian Eero Epner (2018). The prize amounts to €5,000.
The festive award ceremony took place on November 1st, in Tartu, where an international conference on the 145th anniversary of the birth of Konrad Mägi was held at the Heino Eller Music School.