The arts belong to everyone

Openness instead of exclusivity

For a long time, the tacit aspiration of many institutions in the arts sector was to puzzle their audiences – irritate, provoke and form a small group of enlightened insiders. This attitude no longer holds true today. If these institutions want to stay socially relevant, they need to change – become more open, more inclusive, more democratic and create spaces that enable exchange instead of preventing it.

Our approach

We support institutions from the art, literature and design fields in communicating their programs and content in an understandable and accessible way. In workshops and interviews with the institutions’ staff, we help unearth the core of an exhibition or an institution: What is it really about? Why now? And what should the audience take away?

From the answers to these questions we develop a clear narrative – one that picks up the audience where they live, think and feel. And we create a matching design for websites, social media or print products. So content and form go hand in hand.

Our expertise

At Nansen & Piccard, we love the arts in all their expressive forms: mainstream and underground, highbrow and lowbrow, literature and cinema, painting and design – digital or analogue. Many of our editors and authors come from the feature pages of print media or the arts sector and have actually published books themselves. We can break aesthetic theories down to the essentials – and at the same time talk to artists, designers and curators at eye level. We can trace the broad lines of a collection or shed light on the historico-cultural background of a single colour.

Ahead of the field through diversity and depth

In our work, we often find that cultural institutions are reluctant to communicate. But a direct approach never means giving up intellectual aspirations. And there’s so much to tell.

Special places
Cultural institutions are places of exchange – where different milieus, experiences and world views come together. Such spaces are irreplaceable for a society.

Special topics
Issues discussed here are rarely even found elsewhere. Perspectives created here enable new views on aesthetics, society and history. This is where boundaries are broken down and new things tried out.

Special work
We like working in the arts sector because it’s where people think deeply about the present and the future. We feel at home where wild thinking is permissible and desirable.