Oslo, Norway  – The exhibition “Munch’s Laboratory. The Path to the Aula” is the Munch Museum’s contribution to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the University of Oslo. The museum’s project takes Edvard Munch and the 1911 celebrations as it’s historical basis. The Chancellor of the University, Waldemar Christian Brøgger, had great ambitions following the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905. These plans included a new festival hall (The “Aula”) with monumental decorations. Munch was interested in the project, but in 1909 when the competition was announced, he was not among the invited artists. Nevertheless, he started some preliminary ideas and managed to position himself as a participant. The 1911 jury could not agree on a winner, but after a long and exciting process Munch eventually won the competition in 1914, and in 1916 he was able to install his experimental, expressionist monumental paintings in the Aula. “Munch’s Laboratory. The Path to the Aula” will be on view at the Munch Museum through January 9th 2012.

With time, the boldness of Munch’s pictures has faded and today it’s difficult to understand how radical and controversial they were at the time, or the important role they played in Norwegian cultural politics between 1909 and 1916. There was a great deal of prestige to the project, the first major public art commission after the dissolution of the union in 1905. Among both artists and art commentators, it was seen as a symbol of Norway’s future as a “cultural nation”. Through the long process Munch produced over 144 paintings on canvas, many in monumental size as well as a number of works on paper. In order to work on such a large scale Munch had to invent new, effective techniques.

On his estate “Skrubben” at Kragerø he built a large outdoor studio to work. This exhibition provides a unique opportunity to look at Munch’s technique and methods of working. Other artists of Munch’s generation, such as Gustav Klimt, Puvis de Chavannes and Max Klinger also chose to work for institutions such as universities, museums, libraries, and also met the challenge of creating images understandable to a wider audience. We often have the opportunity to see these images as a part of an architectural environment, but it’s rare to come close to an artist as he visualizes and develops ideas for a public decoration. This exhibition and catalogue presents as wide as possible Munch’s sketches, drafts, new ideas, variations and alternative proposals to the Aula decorations. A large conservation project of the Aula sketches has been carried out in the museum parallell to the work with the exhibition.

The Munch Museum opened its doors to the public in 1963, a hundred years after the artist’s birth. The building was designed by the architects Gunnar Fougner and Einar Myklebust. The museum currently includes galleries, a children workshop, seminar rooms and an auditorium, as well as photographic and conservation studios, offices and a library. Central to the museum is the lecture hall, which is also used for exhibitions, concerts, theater performances and film screenings. The entrance hall also contains a well-stocked museum shop and a café. Edvard Munch’s bequest to the City of Oslo comprised around 1,100 paintings, 15,500 prints covering 700 subjects, 4700 drawings and six sculptures. In addition, nearly 500 plates, 2,240 books, notebooks, documents, photographs, tools, supplies and furniture were included. Munch’s extensive collection of letters was later bequeathed to the museum by his sister, Inger Munch, along with a significant number of original works, particularly from the 1880s. This and other gifts, has meant that the museum currently houses well over half of Munch’s paintings and all his graphic designs.

This puts the Munch Museum in a unique position internationally and provides an excellent basis for special exhibitions in the museum and extensive exhibition activities all over the world. The facilities are also used by researchers and students from home and abroad. There is a susbtantial; education Section working towards the museum’s presentation of Munch’s art to a wide audience. The section is responsible for teaching services for schools, guided tours, audio tours, movie promotion, website, documentary exhibition events in the museum, to name a few. The Conservation department consists of a studio for paper, and a studio for painting. The staff takes care of the museums’ preservation work and perform technical research, conservation and restoration. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.munch.museum.no