Visiting the Munch Museum was one of my “must do’s” for Oslo. Like Jim, you may be wondering how many versions of The Scream did we really want to see.

But I’d read a favorable review of an exhibit of Munch’s landscape paintings, so I knew there was more to Munch than The Scream.

We started our Munch experience on day one of our trip with a stop at the Skybar of the Munch Museum. We never made it to a skybar in Bangkok (which is a thing to do), so we didn’t waste time on this trip. The view over the harbor was stunning, and we commented on the fact that a place like this would likely be packed in New York or New Jersey. We easily nabbed a table.

Though we’d just come from a long flight and had visited two other museums, we decided to pop in the Munch museum after our refreshment. Happily, the landscape paintings were back from their US exhibition, so we were able to tour those galleries and get in The Scream room.

The museum has three versions of The Scream – a painting, a lithograph and a pencil and crayon drawing. Because the works were created on cardboard rather than canvas they are especially delicate and can’t be displayed continuously. The three are rotated for display every thirty minutes using an ingenious use of sliding panels to make the switch. We saw the pencil and crayon drawing our first day, and had the gallery almost to ourselves.

We returned the next day to see more galleries. Once again, it was after a long day of touring, but we had the stamina to view six galleries of Munch’s other works and check out The Scream again. 

Luckily, this time we saw the painting. The gallery was much more crowded; I assume because it was a national holiday, and this was the only museum open. 

But it was worth the second visit. I was really taken with much of Munch’s work, especially the portraits. Not surprisingly, given the nature of The Scream, there are also a fair number of eerie paintings and woodcuts as well as monumental works that would fill an entire apartment.

You can see the influence of the Impressionists in Munch’s work, especially Van Gogh. There is even a painting titled Starry Night that obviously recalls Van Gogh.

After today, we’re off to a couple weeks of natural beauty, so I was happy to get in some manmade beauty before embarking on the main part of the adventure.