Katuaq Cultural Centre, Nuuk Art Museum and Modern Nuuk

While Nuutoqaq (the Old Colonial Harbour) preserves eighteenth- and nineteenth-century timber heritage, central Nuuk around Imaneq, Aqqusinersuaq, and Kissarneqqortuunnguaq showcases how contemporary Greenlandic and Nordic architects, painters, and sculptors interpret Arctic light and Inuit tradition. Two landmark cultural venues within a 10-minute walk of each other anchor the modern heart of the capital.

Katuaq Cultural Centre (Grønlands Kulturhus)

Inaugurated on 15 February 1997 as a joint initiative of the Greenland Home Rule Government, Nuuk Municipal Council, and the Nordic Council of Ministers, Katuaq ("The Drumstick" used on a traditional Inuit frame drum, qilaat) was designed by the Danish architectural firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen. The L-shaped building is fronted by a soaring, backward-leaning undulating timber screen clad inside and out in golden Siberian larch that ripples across the central pedestrian plaza in tribute to the curtains of the aurora borealis. Behind this curved wooden screen, a day-lit foyer wraps around three freestanding white geometric volumes shaped as a triangle, a square, and a circle:

• Hans Lynge Hall: Named after the celebrated Nuuk-born writer, painter, and sculptor Hans Lynge (1906 to 1988), the main auditorium seats 508 people for symphony concerts, theatre, international Arctic conferences, and first-run cinema screenings, complemented by an 80-seat studio theatre.
• Exhibitions, NAPA, and Cafétuaq: The complex houses the Nordic Institute in Greenland (NAPA), rotating contemporary art exhibitions in the foyer, and Cafétuaq, one of the liveliest daytime meeting spots in Nuuk Centrum for coffee, open-faced sandwiches, and Greenlandic specialities.

Immediately adjacent to Katuaq stands Nuuk Center (NC), designed by KHR Arkitekter and opened in 2012 as Greenland's first indoor shopping centre with underground parking, alongside the parliamentary chambers of the 31-member Inatsisartut.

Nuuk Art Museum (Nuuk Kunstmuseum)

Founded on 22 May 2005 by local entrepreneur and collector Svend Junge and his wife Helene inside a converted former Seventh-day Adventist Church at Kissarneqqortuunnguaq 5, the 600-square-metre Nuuk Art Museum was donated to the citizens of Sermersooq Municipality and formally inaugurated on Greenland National Day, 21 June 2007. Its permanent collection of roughly 250 paintings, watercolours, drawings, and prints and 50 sculptures explores the dialogue between outside European artists who travelled to Greenland and indigenous Greenlandic creators. Highlights include more than 150 luminous oil paintings by Emanuel A. Petersen (1894 to 1948), works by Harald Moltke, J.E.C. Rasmussen, and Christine Deichmann, soapstone and walrus-ivory tupilak figures including carvings by Simon Kristoffersen, and modern pieces by Hans Lynge, Anne-Birthe Hove, Pia Arke, Buuti Pedersen, and Miki Jacobsen. Pick up the museum's audio artwalk guide to follow public bronze and granite sculptures back down to Kolonihavnen.