Pushwagner in New York: A Cross-Border Collaboration

One of the highlights was seeing the original Soft City drawings from 1969 to 1975. This is one of Pushwagner’s five major works. It is the first time Soft City has been exhibited in its entirety in the United States, at the request of the museum’s Art Director Massimiliano Gioni.

The trip brought together participants from museums, publishing and the cultural sector, and showed the amount of planning and coordination that lies behind international exhibitions, book publications and related events. The team from Ræder Bing have extensive experience advising international stakeholders in art culture and museums, and were able to draw on expertise in areas including art loan agreements, publishing agreements, copyright and insurance.

The New York program included a breakfast reception at the residence of the Royal Norwegian Consul General in New York, initiated by Ræder Bing together with the Pushwagner Foundation. During the event, Magnus Ødegaard spoke about the Pushwagner court case in 2009, in which Pushwagner won back his art from a former partner, and about the success Pushwagner went on to experience in the following years. Hanna Norum and Sunniva Nicole Rebbestad shared their experience working on the agreement for the loan of Soft City and from ensuring the quality of the insurance terms for the loan.

The team from Ræder Bing were also invited to the editorial offices of the literary magazine The New York Review of Books, known for its in-depth writing on literature, culture, economics, science and society, and for its publishing arm New York Review Books and the imprint New York Review Comics. To mark the exhibition of Soft City at the New Museum, the publisher has arranged a new printing of Pushwagner’s iconic graphic novel, which was first published in the United States in 2016. Pushwagner was among the first creators the publisher approached when it launched its initiative focusing on graphic storytelling.

The trip concluded with the public reopening of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. For the Pushwagner Foundation, the opening represented an important milestone, with 88 original drawings exhibited alongside works by artists such as Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí and Hannah Ryggen, with a new edition of the  Soft City novel available in the museum shop.

The team from Ræder Bing is pleased to have contributed to the process of lending artworks from the Pushwagner Foundation in Oslo to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and to negotiating an agreement for a new printing of Soft City in the United States. Cross-border cultural projects like this illustrate how collaboration across institutions and countries can help enable the realisation of important cultural initiatives.

Ræder Bing extends its sincere thanks to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Royal Norwegian Consul General in New York, the Pushwagner Foundation and The New York Review of Books, as well as everyone who helped make the collaboration possible, not least Esperanza Rosales from the gallery VI, VII. We would also like to congratulate the New Museum’s Art Director, Massimiliano Gioni, on an unforgettable opening and exhibition.