To mark the launch of Oak volume 8, Kieran Long, director of ArkDes in Stockholm and Hanne Mugaas, director of Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway, share their daily inspirations from across the globe and the Nordics

Two Nordic curators who are profoundly rethinking their discipline are Kieran Long and Hanne Mugaas. In Stockholm, the role of architecture and design in confronting the 21st century’s most urgent problems is being considered by Long, a British curator who is the new museum director of the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (ArkDes). In Stavanger, a small port city in western Norway, Hanne Mugaas, the curator and director of Kunsthall Stavanger, has returned home from New York City to shake things up.

Long has been revolutionary in his approach to radical new forms of design, and pugilistic in his defence of the social aspect of design and architecture’s ability to build a better world. Mugaas’s focus is on internet art, digital vernacular culture and female artists who have been unfairly under-covered – that has seen her host everything from a night with Russian punk feminists Pussy Riot to a defining show about the second-wave feminist movement in Norway. Together Long and Mugaas are responsible some of the region’s most interesting and boundary-pushing spaces across the increasingly intersecting worlds of art, design and architecture.

To mark the launch of Volume 8: Breaking New Ground, Oak invited Long and Mugaas to create a visual diary of their recent inspirations. From Sweden’s secret architectural history, to snapshots from an exhibition on the underseen Austrian artist Kiki Kogelnik, the curators pulled together a mood board of their recent influences. To see more, follow @long_kieran and and @kunsthall_stavanger.

Read our exclusive interviews with Hanne Mugaas and Kieran Long in Oak volume 8. 

This is part of a new project with The Nordics – an initiative exploring the global resonance of the Nordic region. In the upcoming weeks, Oak will host a visual dialogue between Mette and Rolf Hay and we will sit down with creative leaders from volume 8 for a series of podcasts and short films that will bring the new issue to life through inspiring discussions.