Art Oslo
Museums
One museum from many
The National Museum gathers collections that were once scattered across the National Gallery, the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The 2022 building beside the harbour brought them together for the first time, with around 6,500 works on permanent display drawn from a collection of more than four hundred thousand.
From icons to the present
The chronological route runs from antiquity and medieval church art through the golden age of Norwegian landscape painting to the international avant-garde. Its single most visited room holds Munch's original The Scream — the version most associated with the artist — alongside other key works from the 1880s and 1890s.
The Light Hall
Crowning the building is the Light Hall, a vast top-floor gallery wrapped in a translucent marble skin that glows from within after dark. Lit by 9,000 LED fixtures, it is reserved for major temporary exhibitions and has quickly become a landmark on the waterfront.
What to see
- The Scream and Munch's early masterpieces
- 19th-century Norwegian landscapes by Dahl and Tidemand
- Design and decorative arts across five centuries
- The glowing Light Hall on the top floor
A national collection, finally gathered under a single roof.
