The Rollins Museum of Art announced their acquisition of Sunday Without Love, a video work by internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. This makes a significant addition to its Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art ahead of the opening of its new museum building in 2028.
The single-channel video, just over 19 minutes long, will be featured in the museum’s inaugural exhibition in its forthcoming $29 million, 32,000-square-foot facility. The exhibition will be organized around the theme of love, which was directly inspired by Kjartansson’s work.
“This is an exciting milestone for the museum,” said Leslie Anderson, the Bruce A. Beal Executive Director of the Rollins Museum of Art. “Bringing this work into our permanent collection deepens our ability to engage audiences with emotionally complex, performance-based art by one of the most important artists working today.”
Inside Sunday Without Love
Sunday Without Love premiered publicly in the fall of 2025 at Luhring Augustine gallery in New York City. The video is based on a live performance originally commissioned by TRANSART25 and staged in Renon, Italy, in Sept. 2025.
The piece draws inspiration from an old postcard Kjartansson keeps on his refrigerator, showing people in traditional folk costumes gathered in a rural setting with one of them holding a jazz guitar. The artist recreated this scene with nine other performers dressed in similar attire, singing in a lush, pastoral landscape.
The music, adapted by Kjartansson and collaborator Davío Pór Jónsson, comes from a 1996 German song by Rocko Schamoni. Its refrain, translated as “You learn to live without love,” creates a tension between the serene countryside visuals and the emotional weight of the lyrics.
Critics have described the work as blending romantic longing, quiet melancholy, and philosophical acceptance, while also referencing classical pastoral painting and traditional balladry.
About Ragnar Kjartansson
Born in 1976 in Reykjavík, Ragnar Kjartansson is best known for large-scale performance works that contain music, theater, humor, and emotional vulnerability. Blurring the lines between visual art, theater, and music, his work often unfolds over extended durations and involves ensembles of performers, musicians, and collaborators. His practice often balances sincerity with irony, as well as beauty with absurdity.
His works often feel simultaneously grand and intimate, epic in scale yet rooted in personal feeling. Recurring themes in his art include longing, heartbreak, absurdity, devotion, and the nature of human connection.
Among his most celebrated works are The Visitors (2012), a multi-channel video installation where musicians perform simultaneously in different rooms of a historic house; A Lot of Sorrow (2013), where he repeatedly sang a single line while progressively weeping; and Bliss (2019), a multi-year project exploring romantic ideals and disillusionment.
His work has been shown around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Barbican Centre in London, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He represented Iceland at the 2009 Venice Biennale and has received prestigious honors such as the Ars Fennica Award in 2019.
About the Rollins Museum of Art
Located in Winter Park, the Rollins Museum of Art holds more than 6,000 works spanning from ancient to contemporary art. It is also one of only four American Alliance of Museums-accredited museums in the greater Orlando area.
Founded in 1885, Rollins College is Florida’s oldest recognized college and consistently ranks among the top regional universities in the South. The college serves more than 3,100 students annually across undergraduate and graduate programs.