The Icelandic Folk and
Outsider Art Museum

The Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum was founded in 1995 by Níels Hafstein and Magnhildur Sigurðardóttir. For over 30 years the museum’s founders have been passionately committed to collecting artworks by artists who have hitherto been seen as outside the cultural mainstream, often also called naïve or outsider artists who have a real and direct connection to an original creative spirit; true, unspoiled and free. The museum is unique in Iceland, initially collecting artworks by all major contemporary folk artists and autodidacts in Iceland, forming the core of the collection, while also gradually acquiring an excellent collection of art by professional artists, whose works cohere with exhibition and collection policies. It is of importance that all the artworks presented are on an equal footing, in exhibitions as well as the collections. The core collection consists today of thousands of artworks and sketches by over 300 artists, dating from the mid-19th century to the present.