Friday in Oslo: the MUNCH Museum

Having spent the better part of a week in transit from my home in Pittsburgh to Oslo, and from Oslo to Bergen and back, I took advantage of having the AirBnB to myself Friday morning to lie in bed on my phone for an exorbitant amount of time before getting up for breakfast (above: leftover toast that RE couldn't eat, passionfruit-flavored Skyr [eh], and an entire box of Johannisbeeren [red currants]). I worked a little on my computer in the living room getting ready for the conference that was the whole reason for my trip to Norway before my hostess returned from her doctor's appointment and we said our good-byes. I hopped onto a tram into the center of the city, where I stored my luggage at the main train station for the day and then sat in front of this phallic monument to "the family" to eat a lunch I had packed from the grocery store trip the day before.

Then it was on to the main attraction: MUNCH, the museum dedicated to Edvard Munch (1863-1944).

The first museum dedicated to his work opened for the centennial of his birth in 1963 in a different part of Oslo. When the city decided to revitalize its inner harbor, Spanish architect Juan Herrero won the design competition with his 13-story-tall rectangle that from certain angles gives the impression of a top hat that is leaning slightly. (A Norwegian critic apparently derided it as the world's largest collection of guard rails!) Here are views of the Ferris wheel from below and above (opera house to the right, below). 

The top two floors are a restaurant and bar, and I figured I had a basic grasp of the European art history that would be presented on the 11th floor, so I started on 10 with what was supposed to be a family-friendly art exhibit, "You are what you is" by Japanese-Brazilian textile artist Kiyoshi Yamamoto, now based out of Bergen. The colorful fabric panels strung up on wires "danced" back and forth, and the gray "hillside" allowed visitors to sit higher to appreciate the large-scale work.

I was feeling kind of silly, but I also found the dissonant soundtrack irritating. Then it was on down to floor 9 for "METAATEM" by German artist Kerstin Brätsch (1979- ), a much edgier installation.

Above: a series of Rorschach-like prints sometimes looked like aliens or monsters. Below: the bench and several large free-standing walls were constructed of cardboard and paint. I sat to flip through the booklet and watch a photo montage she made with another artist the involved using paint and tape to appear to alter the shape or contour of their faces and bodies into different characters.

"Atem" is the German word for "breath." These paintings on large translucent panels wafted slowly in a breezeway from one room to the next, where I found this pond with glass eyes.

On the 7th floor, a neat 3-dimensional exhibit called "Edvard Munch Shadows" describes the artist's life through objects and images displayed around a mock-up of his home. Some of the details needed to be repaired or updated, but I liked the idea. I skipped his "monumental" paintings on 6 and the museum offices on 5 for "Munch Infinite" on the 4th floor, a large exhibit of many rooms organized by themes such as family or gender or landscapes. I hadn't realized he was such a prolific drawer and painter.

He often depicted the same subject multiple times (see below).

Of course you can see "The Scream" on display, but did you know that there is no definitive version? He never made an oil painting of "The Scream"; instead, it's a series of drawings or prints. At any one time, there are 3 versions hanging up in a small, 4-sided tabernacle, with text on the 4th wall. However, due to the degrading effects of light, only 1 is ever uncovered at a time; every 30 minutes, little doors automatically open / shut to reveal 1 of them, except the printed version(s) are shown twice as often, because the charcoal drawings are more fragile.

I was really sorry that my visit was mistimed for the opening of a new exhibit, "Lifeblood" on the 3rd floor. It examines the intersections of Munch's life and work with contemporary medicine (his mother kept his vaccination records!), and  I was even sorrier that the conference I attended didn't do a better job of advertising the lunchtime talks, because I caught only the last 10-15 minutes of a presentation on the development of the exhibit. However, the website is very good, so I was able to get a lot of the content now that I missed then. Munch's father was a physician, and his brother studied to be one before dying of pneumonia. Munch himself was often ill (mentally, physically, from overwork and too much drinking), and his mother and sister both died of tuberculosis.

I thought "The Sick Child" might make a good teaching piece, but despite being one of his repeated motifs (as he processed the death of his sister when she was 15 and he was 13), there was no postcard of it was available in the gift shop. At this point it was time to walk to the immigrant neighborhood where I had spent my first night in Oslo to begin the European Conference on Social Medicine.