Thirteen years after being approved, Oslo’s MUNCH museum has opened, becoming one of the largest single-artist museums in the world, writes Christian House.
“It’s to some extent scary and on the other hand it’s very inspiring,” says Stein Olav Henrichsen, the director of the towering new museum dedicated to Edvard Munch by the Oslo fjord. Rebranded simply as MUNCH, it will open on 22 October following a decade of development drama, political U-turns and staggering logistical challenges. The result is one of the largest single-artist museums in the world.
Costing a reported NKr2.25bn ($260m), the environmentally considered design by the Spanish architectural firm Estudio Herreros is as dramatic a reaction to Oslo’s shoreline as Munch’s The Scream was in the late 19th century. With 11 exhibition halls spread across 13 floors and capped by a panoramic restaurant, it provides a colossal stage for Munch’s extraordinary gift to the city on his death in 1944: around 28,000 works—paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and photographs—along with his papers and personal effects. Since 1963, the collection has been housed in a low-lying, utilitarian building in the residential district of Toyen. The decision to move was prompted by the 2004 theft of two prized paintings, The Scream (1910) and Madonna (1894)... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper.
“It’s to some extent scary and on the other hand it’s very inspiring,” says Stein Olav Henrichsen, the director of the towering new museum dedicated to Edvard Munch by the Oslo fjord. Rebranded simply as MUNCH, it will open on 22 October following a decade of development drama, political U-turns and staggering logistical challenges. The result is one of the largest single-artist museums in the world.
Costing a reported NKr2.25bn ($260m), the environmentally considered design by the Spanish architectural firm Estudio Herreros is as dramatic a reaction to Oslo’s shoreline as Munch’s The Scream was in the late 19th century. With 11 exhibition halls spread across 13 floors and capped by a panoramic restaurant, it provides a colossal stage for Munch’s extraordinary gift to the city on his death in 1944: around 28,000 works—paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and photographs—along with his papers and personal effects. Since 1963, the collection has been housed in a low-lying, utilitarian building in the residential district of Toyen. The decision to move was prompted by the 2004 theft of two prized paintings, The Scream (1910) and Madonna (1894)... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper.