[ May 2019 ] I do not know many famous people from Norway, but I know Munch, the painter.
The National Gallery where there are paintings of Munch was unfortunately closed for renovation work to improve the safety, so we went all the way to the Munch Museum which is away from the city centre by metro.
Both the metro and the Munch Museum are free if you have the Oslo Pass.
We did not have a chance to show our Oslo Pass to anyone at the metro, though.
Because we already had walked a lot on the day in the castle and in the museum, first thing we did at the Munch Museum was to have a rest at the café near the entrance.
And I tried the ‘Scream’ cake there.
To be more precise, this was an ordinary cake which had a piece of chocolate with the picture of ‘Scream’ (the most famous painting of Munch) on it, the speciality for this café.
It cost as much as 82 Krone (£7.60, €8.20, $9.20), but at least it was tasty with the nice light pastry.
Apparently some of the paintings were stolen from this museum in the past, so the security was tight now and we had to leave our large bags in the lockers downstairs.
Everything was automated, which was OK, but it did not work well, so we had to call someone to come and open the locker.
I nearly panicked at that moment.
Anyway, now we went into the museum and looked at the paintings.
Apparently Munch was a prolific painter and after his death in 1944, more than 20000 works were left.
Because he did not have a wife or children, all were donated to City of Oslo.
According to the information board there, this museum was opened in 1963, but they did not maintain well and it became damaged, so the Japanese petroleum company, Idemitsu Kosan helped them.
I see, Norway is the oil producing country, so Idemitsu and Norway are connected.
Idemitsu is still supporting this museum now, too.
There were guards standing by the two paintings, ‘Scream’ and ‘Madonna’ which had been stolen in the past.
We were allowed to take photos of the paintings, which was good.
There are a few versions of ‘Scream’ and the one we saw here was fairly small but with the lovely deep colours.
I liked some of the pictures which I had not known, for example, ‘The Sick Child’ and ‘Children in the Forest’.
Also I noticed some quite violent pictures as well, such as ‘Murder on the Road’.
By the way, at the museum shop they were selling many post cards and some of the post card pictures were not included in the exhibition.
My husband said that because there were so many works, they exhibit them in turns.
They were exhibiting not only his paintings, but also some posters and goods sold in foreign countries.
Talking about the goods, I was surprised to see that they were selling baby clothes with ‘Scream’ printed on them.
I understand that ‘Scream’ is a painting which is expressing people’s inner anxiety.
Would you dress your baby in the clothes with it?
Anyway, I bought a shopping bag of ‘Scream’ as well as the eyeglasses cloth.
