The Reykjavík Arts Festival has been held since 1970, biannually at first but every year from 2004. The festival was founded largely on the initiative of Vladimir Ashkenazy, who lived in Iceland at the time (he is still an Icelandic citizen though he no longer lives year round in the country). The festival’s traditional strength is in music and the performing arts, and the tone was set already in the first festival with contributions by Jacqueline du Pré and André Prévin. In 2005, however, the Reykjavík Arts Festival expanded into the visual arts and now, in 2008, the focus is again on the visual with more than twenty exhibitions of international and Icelandic artists. The opening weeks of the festival have been a great success.

The Reykjavík Art Museum houses the most extensive project with the Experiment Marathon Reykjavík. From May 15, the museum will become a laboratory in which leading artists, architects, film-makers, academics, and scientists will create an environment of invention through a series of installations, screenings, performances, and experimental films. The exhibition and related events, based on the similar events held each summer at the Serpentine Gallery in London, are curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist in collaboration with artist Ólafur Elíasson. Participants include Brian Eno, Carolee Schneemann, Erró, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Gustav Metzger, Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir, John Baldessari, Marina Abramovic and Ólafur Elíasson.

Other exhibitions include Halldór Ásgeirsson and Pau Armand Gette at the ASÍ-museum, Ernesto Neto at Gallery i8, Karl Holmqvist at the Living Art Museum, Rúrí at Start Art, contemporary Croatian art at Gallerí 100° and contemporary Chinese art at the Akureyri Art Museum. The National Gallery has mounted an exhibition in which Finnbogi Pétursson, Monica Bonvicini, Elín Hansdóttir, Steina Vasulka, and Franz West will “challenge the limitations and eccentricities” of the museum building itself, a rather ornate construction from the 1980s that has annoyed many curators and artists more inclined to work in “white cubes”. As usual, the festival spreads beyond Reykjavík, and in eastern Iceland Björn Roth (son of Dieter Roth and his long-time collaborator) have curated a series of exhibitions with contributions from Christof Büchel, Skyr Lee Bob, the PONI-collective, Guðni Gunnarsson, choreographer/dancer Erna Ómarsdóttir, musician Lieven Dousselaere, artists Hrafnkell Sigurðsson and Lennart Alvés, Paul Harfleet, Sara Björnsdóttir and sound artist Matti Saarinen.