National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design

The National Museum (Norwegian: Nasjonalmuseet, officially the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design) is a museum in Oslo, Norway which holds the Norwegian state's public collection of art, architecture, and design objects. The collection totals over 400,000 works, amongst them the first copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream from 1893. The museum is state-owned and managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. The National Museum was established in 2003 by the merging of the Museum of Architecture, the Museum of Industrial Art, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the National Gallery of Norway. In 2022, the museum opened its new building at. New building A cohesive new building was a precondition for establishment of the National Museum in 2003, by which time the facilities housing the other museums destined to be consolidated there had all been determined to be too small. Architecture competitions for expansion at Tullinløkka were previously held in 1972 and 1995 but were inconclusive. In the spring of 2008 the government decided that the new building for the National Museum would be located at Vestbanen in place of the old Oslo West Station train station at Aker Brygge . It was originally planned to. Collections of the National Museum The National Gallery Main articles: National Gallery (Norway) and Paus collection The old National Gallery building, completed in 1882 The National Gallery was established in 1842 as the Norwegian States Central Museum for Visual Arts . Since 1882 its location has been on Universitetsgata in Oslo, in a building designed by Heinrich Ernst and Adolf Schirmer. The building's exterior and interior was listed by Riksantikvaren (Cultural Heritage) in January 2012. Art historian Jens Thiis was director of The National Gallery between 1908 and 1941. Thiis was internationally oriented and purchased.