Hunting High and Low: 25 years with a-ha

Exhibition October 20, 2010 - January 29, 2011

National Library of Norway

Pop history was written in 1985: The Norwegian group a-ha went straight to the top of the Billboard chart with the single Take On Me. This is the only time a Norwegian band has achieved a first place ranking on what is perhaps the most important hit list in the world. This feat was also the start of a long and successful international career, unequalled in the history of Norwegian popular music.

Now, 25 years after their breakthrough, a-ha has decided to wrap up their career as a band. At the end of the road, the trio can look back on number ones in several countries, nine studio album releases, extensive tours of five continents, and some 35 million albums sold around the world.

In 1991 the band even made the Guinness Book of Records with a paying audience of nearly 200,000 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Contemporary groups such as Coldplay, Keane and Mew have on several occasions spoken of a-ha as one of their great sources of inspiration.

The National Library of Norway, through the exhibition Hunting High and Low: 25 years with a-ha, aims to highlight different periods in the band's career from the time of their breakthrough until today. The National Library has one of the world's most extensive a-ha collections, comprising music videos, sound recordings and photographs along with various forms of printed material from all over the world. Using this collection as a starting point, the exhibition will mirror several - sometimes conflicting - aspects of a group that over the course of nearly three decades has navigated a diverse musical landscape.

In connection with the opening of the exhibition on Wednesday, October 20, 2010, an international conference will be held, entitled Living a Boy's Adventure Tale: musical interactions in the decades of postmodernism.