Thirteen floors of a leaning tower that Oslo voted against, holding almost everything Munch owned when he died.
When Edvard Munch died in 1944 at his house at Ekely outside Oslo, he left everything he still owned to the city.
Everything turned out to be around 1,150 paintings, 17,800 prints, 7,700 drawings, six sculptures, his letters, his photographs, his printing plates and his furniture. It is by a very long way the largest collection of any single artist held by one institution anywhere.
The building
MUNCH opened in October 2021 in Bjørvika, replacing the 1963 museum at Tøyen.
It is a thirteen-storey tower by the Spanish practice estudio Herreros, clad in perforated aluminium, with the upper section leaning forward towards the fjord.
Oslo did not want it. A 2016 consultative referendum on the site went against it. Critics called it a hotel, a filing cabinet and worse, and the argument ran for a decade.
Having opened, it works better than its detractors expected. The upper floors give views across the fjord that are part of the experience, the light-controlled galleries let genuinely fragile work be shown, and the vertical arrangement means you climb through the collection rather than trudge along it. The exterior remains divisive and probably always will.
The Scream, and where the other ones are
This is the question everybody asks, so:
Munch made four versions of The Scream — two paintings and two pastels — plus a lithograph.
MUNCH holds one painting and one pastel, and shows them in rotation with the lithograph. Only one is on display at a time, for conservation reasons.
The National Museum holds the 1893 painting — the famous one, the one in every reproduction.
The fourth is in a private collection.
Both of the public ones have been stolen. The National Gallery’s in 1994, recovered within three months. MUNCH’s in 2004, taken off the wall at gunpoint in daylight, recovered damaged in 2006. The security is now considerable and unobtrusive.
What else is here
Nearly everything. Madonna, Vampire, The Sick Child, Puberty, The Dance of Life, the Frieze of Life works, and hundreds of paintings almost nobody has seen reproduced.
The prints are the underrated part — Munch was one of the great printmakers, cutting woodblocks apart and reassembling them in different colours, and the museum shows the process with the blocks alongside.
There are also contemporary exhibitions on the upper floors, a bar with a view, and a shop.
Practical
Charged, and not cheap — but Norwegian museums generally are not. Under-18s go free, which is a nationwide rule and worth knowing.
Three hours does it properly. It is next to the Opera House and the Deichman library, and the three together make a full day in Bjørvika.
Ekely, where he lived and died, is in the western suburbs and his studio survives; Ekebergparken across the water is where he is said to have had the experience behind The Scream.
More Museums
The National Museum
The largest art museum in the Nordic countries, opened in 2022, holding the version of The Scream you know.
The Viking Ship Museum
Closed. The best-preserved Viking ships in the world are behind hoardings until the new museum opens.
The Fram Museum
The ship that went furthest north and furthest south, indoors, and you can walk all over it.