It went with a cry of distress

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Finally, Oslo takes over municipality, which manages the legacy of Munch, our responsibility seriously. 1100 paintings, 15,500 graphic magazines, 4700 drawings and six sculptures get a good home. The museum will be five times larger than the old Munch Museum on Tøyen. Much more of the art will thus be available to many more. The opening opens a new chapter in the dissemination of Munch’s art to interested parties from all over the world.

Together with the Opera and the new main library, the museum completes Bjørvika as a new cultural district in Oslo with exciting culture and architecture. The location near the country’s largest public transport hub ensures that the museum is easily accessible.

It still held on going wrong. For a long time, the city council in Oslo could not agree on how the art should be managed. Because several parties changed their minds along the way, there were constant rematches. In meeting after meeting, the museum in Bjørvika was first adopted, then rejected and then re-emerged. Despite broad agreement that the old premises on Tøyen with their settlement damage, water leaks and limited exhibition areas had long since become unsuitable as a museum, political games were destroying the new museum.

In the spring of 2008 it looked bright. The then Minister of Culture Trond Giske and City Councilor Erling Lae presented a cultural policy barter that placed the new National Museum on Vestbanen and the new Munch Museum and the new main library in Bjørvika, next to the Opera. The city council gave its approval and an architectural competition was announced.

Climate research is doing better

A unanimous jury pointed to Lambda, land purchases and financing were approved. Everything was ready for the new Munch Museum, but then two unusual things happened.

The Labor Party wanted omkamp. Despite the fact that the city council had on two occasions decided that the Munch Museum should be located in Bjørvika, the Labor Party, which wanted a new museum on Tøyen, refused to give up. The course of action was unusual and contrary to how one has traditionally behaved after losing a location discussion in Oslo. In comparison, the Conservatives both locally and centrally supported the Opera, after the Storting approved Bjørvika a few years earlier and voted down the Conservatives’ proposal for the West Line.

Secondly, Carl I. Hagen returned to Oslo politics as the FRP’s mayoral candidate. After the election in 2011, Carl I. Hagen became group leader. He made sure that the FRP withdrew its support for the Munch Museum, contrary to the agreement internally in the Conservative / FRP City Council of NOK 200 million extra for elderly care if the FRP supported the two cultural buildings in Bjørvika.

This is how children become terrorists

At the same time, Conservative city council leader Stian Berger Røsland stated that it was inappropriate to shelve Lambda. The result was that Frp left the city council, while Venstre and KrF went in.

In November of the same year The Labor Party, the Green Party, the Socialist People’s Party, the Red Party and the MDGs, who together hold a majority in the city council, held a joint press conference at Tøyen where they presented an agreement to scrap Lambda. Instead, work should start all over again with two options; one on Tøyen and one on Tullinløkka.

Both were now to be investigated, but without any real chance that the parties behind would ever agree. The parties agreed that they would block Lambda in Bjørvika, but completely disagreed on what should come instead. Since there was no majority for anything, everything stopped. The prospects for a worthy museum of Munch’s art were bleak.

The following year, Norway’s first torchlight procession in support of an art museum was held. The train went from City Hall to Bjørvika and demanded that Lambda be built. In the time that followed, there were many discussions between the politicians in the town hall about the deadlocked situation.

OMG. Relax, folks

The conversations that eventually took place between SV and Høyre were so sensitive that they initially took place at the politicians’ homes, outside the town hall. In May 2013, the Munch-Tøyen agreement was presented where the Conservatives, Liberals, KrF and SV agreed to build Lambda and implement a significant boost for Tøyen. Thus, the majority was secured, and work resumed.

The agreement led to a very strained relationship between the Conservatives and the Progress Party. The FRP, which did not want to spend money on the Munch Museum, broke off budget cooperation with the bourgeois city council and announced that they were no longer a friendly opposition party. One week later with the revised budget 2013, the city council therefore had to go downhill skiing in the city council with a changing majority for various budget items.

Disturbed way to more wealth

And when the city council’s budget meeting was set six months later, for the first time since 1996, there was no majority for a budget. The Conservatives, Liberals and KrF City Council were consequently prepared to resign. Only after a break in the meeting, immediately before the vote was to begin, was it possible to reach an agreement.

After the left won the local elections in 2015, there were strong forces in the Labor Party that once again wanted a rematch, also city council leader Raymond Johansen spoke in a way that created uncertainty about the realization of the museum, but SV put its foot down. In February 2016, it became clear that the construction of the Munch Museum continued.

The new Munch Museum has been carried forward by a political alliance of the Conservatives, Liberals, KrF and SV. Three politicians in particular made the Munch Museum possible. Former city councilor Erling Lae who started it and elected Bjørvika, current mayor Marianne Borgen who despite disagreement in her own party and considerable pressure from the Labor Party cut through and former city councilor Stian Berger Røsland who stood firm on the project despite the Progress Party repeatedly threatened to overthrow the city council he led.

Adds predation on nature

Both Borgen and Røsland put the management of the world heritage ahead of short-term political considerations.

Edvard Munch has described how he on a walk got inspiration for the world’s most famous work of art. “I felt a great endless cry through nature.” Oslo Municipality’s treatment of Munch’s art in recent decades can just be described as a big, endless scream.

When the museum now opening, the endless scream has finally subsided. Congratulations Stian, Marianne, Erling and Oslo!

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