Saturday, 11th of January
The Oslo National Museum is the state museum of Norway which holds the largest collection of art in the entire country. From Monet to Munch, the museum holds a large collection of Norwegian art as well as some art from other artists around the world. Edvard Munch, one of Norway’s most famous artists, has a large connection of his art, which was donated to the Norwegian state, held here. While there is an entire museum dedicated to Munch, many of his most famous works are held in the National Museum. This includes such works as “The Scream” (Shown below) and “Puberty”.
In addition to a large number of paintings, the museum also contains a large variety of other art. There are dresses from Norwegian royalty, a large collection of pottery and porcelain from the Middle Ages and beyond, interesting pewter work, wooden furniture from the 1300s, and many more interesting pieces of art. Furthermore, they have a whole exhibit on abstract art including some interacting pieces that provided a very interesting experience.
We were given a guided tour of much of the Norwegian art history portion of the museum which provided insight into how art has evolved in Norway throughout the years. Much of the Norwegian art was done by draftsmen as there was not an art school in Norway until the early 1900s. This led to many of the early Norwegian painters painting primarily landscape art so the museum has a large collection of huge paintings depicting the Norwegian countryside in extreme detail (shown below on the left). This evolved more into depictions of fairy tales due to the pioneering of artists like Theodore Kittelson who, in addition to painting, helped to transcribe traditional Norwegian fairy tales that were typically word-of-mouth only (shown below on the right).
The museum had a featured exhibit on the works of Else Hagen called “Mellom Mennesker” or “Between People”; a more contemporary and abstract Norwegian artist. Her paintings are from the time period following World War II and she is generally regarded as one of the first women in Norway to write large public works. While all of her works in the National Museum are fairly small relatively, she created many large works for public buildings. The most famous of these is “Samfunn” or “Society” which is located in the Norwegian parliament building. Many of her works challenge traditional values relating to gender, family, and daily life by using abstract shapes to highlight societal problems.
