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Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition  2020

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An international peace conference, live from the Nobel Peace Center, with four Nobel Peace Prize laureates, decision makers and leading experts on food security. 

A hunger crisis is rarely an accident

An open wound

It is 6,6 centimetres in diameter, weighs in at 196 grams and is cast in gold. On its face, a portrait of Alfred Nobel and on its reverse, three naked men holding around each other’s shoulders as a sign of brotherhood. This is what the medal, which is one of the world's foremost symbols of peace and reconciliation, has looked like for 120 years.

On the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, 10 December each year, a new copy is awarded. The nominee receives a large sum of money from the fund created by businessman and inventor Alfred Nobel, but it is only when the medal and the diploma that comes with it have been awarded that the recipient can call themselves a Peace Prize laureate.

When the Norwegian Parliament's newly established Nobel Committee created a medal competition in 1901, the 32-year-old artist Gustav Vigeland was at the beginning of his career. He had made his debut as a sculptor a decade earlier, but was still experimenting with his work and struggling to make a living. Together with the architect Henrik Bull and the artists Gerhard Munthe and Eilif Peterssen, he was offered NOK 200 to take part in the competition to design what would become the Norwegian version of the Nobel Medal.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee had some clear requirements for the design of the medal. While its face was to be decorated with Alfred Nobel's portrait, year of birth and death, the competition participants were also asked to draft an image that could suitably symbolize […] 

The deadline was short and Vigeland started the task immediately. Concerned that the medal shouldn't appear too stern, he modelled the figures without sharp outlines and allowed the lettering to flow out to the edges. "By doing so, I think I have given the Medal a more loose and free impression”, Vigeland 

Vigeland was used to working in large formats, and his medal draft was made of plaster and measured over 40 centimetres in diameter. The Swedish engraver Erik Lindberg scaled it down to medal format, and the new medal was ready for the award ceremony in 1902. (photo of Vigeland with the plaster model)

In October every year, Mint of Norway in Kongsberg receives an important assignment; it has to cast that year's Nobel Peace Prize medal. Not until after the year's Peace Prize has been announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee does it become clear which name will be engraved along the edge of the medal, and whether one, two or three medals will be made. The mould has looked the same since 1902, and since 2015 the medal has been cast in fair-traded and traceable "Fairmined" gold from Colombia.

The Fairmined certification assures that responsible working conditions and environmental considerations are adhered to. And in the gold mines of Colombia, the rock is blasted with dynamite, which Alfred Nobel invented in the 1860s.

Gold for the medal is transported to Mint of Norway, where it is pressed and polished, and its edge inscribed with the name of the prize laureate and year. A case for the medal is made by a bookbinder who also makes the binding for the Peace Prize diploma. Then the medal is transported to the Nobel Institute, where it is safely kept in the vault together with the diploma until December 10, the day when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo City Hall. 

Where the medal will be kept after the presentation is up to the Peace Prize laureate themselves. Some keep it at home, others lend it to a museum. There are also many cases of Peace Prize medals that have gone astray. The Nobel Medal to Artistide Briand, who received the award in 1926, was sold to a French museum in 2008. But a few years later it was stolen and it has never been recovered.


Shirin Ebadi (Nobel Peace Prize 2004) was robbed of her medal in 2009. According to the laureate herself, the medal was confiscated by the Iranian regime, something they denied. The medal was later returned, following international pressure

Thieves also stole Kailash Satyarthi's medal in 2017, three years after he received the award. But the thieves only got away with a copy. The real medal was in safe keeping at a museum. The copy was also quickly returned to its rightful owner.


After Doctors Without Borders had celebrated its Peace Prize with a fitting party after the prize banquet in 1999, the medal disappeared without a trace. It was recovered mysteriously the next morning, full of bite marks from people who wanted to check if it was real.

Only two Norwegians have received the Nobel Peace Prize: Christian Lous Lange (link to bio-text) in 1921 and Fridtjof Nansen the following year. When the Nobel Peace Center was to be established in 2005, Anne Kjelling worked as a Main librarian at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. She was an acquaintance of Christian Lous Lange's grandson, Viggo Lange. He told her that the medal had been inherited by Christian Lous Lange's son Halvard Lange, Viggo's father, and was now in the safe at the law firm where Viggo worked. The Main librarian and Lange's family thought it was a good idea to lend the medal to the new Peace Center, which was created to tell the story of the Nobel Peace Prize. And so it came to pass that one of two Norwegian Peace Prize medals ended up on a stand inside the Nobel Peace Center, built in the former Vestbane railway station. In the autumn of 2021, exactly 100 years after Lange received the award, the Nobel Peace Center opened a new exhibition in which the medal is the main focus. Today, audiences can see the medal in all its golden splendour.

The Nobel Peace Prize Medal

A prize for democracy and freedom of speech

An exhibition about food, war and the World Food Programme. 

Hunger and war is closely linked together, and food can also be a weapon of war. Destruction of crops and starvation of certain groups of people have been used as strategies in conflicts throughout history. I today's conflicts in Syria and Yemen, control over the food supplies is an important means of power. When the World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2020, it was for it's work to combat hunger, but also because the organisation is contributing to peace by providing food asstance to millions of people affected by war and conflict. 

For this year's Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition, one of Africa’s leading photographers, 

, has been commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center to make a photo series on food in war and conflict. In ten powerful photos she illustrated ten differnet countries and conflicts where food is used as weapon. 

Read the stories behind the Peace Prize Exhibition 2020

The Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2020 also tells the story about the World Food Programme and their work. In June and July, the short documentary Hunger Ward, abouth the health workers fighting hunger on the frontline in Yemen, is shown as a part of the exhibition. 

During the summer, the audience can take part in the creation of an art work inside the exhibition. In artist Espen Henningsen's installation "To Build from Above", the audience is invited to draw and write on textiles, answering the question: What does food mean to you?

"I want the installation to become a place where people can reflect over the importance of food for stability and peace in the world", says Henningsen. 

The material will eventually become a curtain, inspired by the Syria curtain made by the artist Elisabeth Harr. It refers to how curtains and carpets are being used as a shield from snipers in Syria. 

"The curtain also symbolises how food aid can help protect the population in conflict areas", says Asle Olsen, curator at the Nobel Peace Center.  

The Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2020 opened in a digital version 10 December 2020, the same day as the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP). The physical exhibition will open 29 May, after the center has been closed for six months due to the corona restrictions. The exhibiton is also showing the story and work of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate WFP. 

The exhibition will be available until 29 November 2021. 

The exhibition is supported by Yara International (Nobel Peace Prize Celebration Partner 2020), Canon (print partner) and Bergesenstiftelsen.

A prize for democracy and freedom of speech

The Nobel Peace Prize Medal

Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2020

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PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS

The Nobel Mystery

Nobel Peace Prize Exhibition 2020

The Medal Chamber

2021 Nobel Peace Prize celebration

A hunger crisis is rarely an accident

An open wound

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