International Munch conference in Oslo

From 18 to 21 September 2013 the international “Edvard Munch and/in Modernism” conference will be held in Oslo. About 100 Munch researchers and others with an interest in Munch from Norway and abroad are expected to attend. The conference is open to all who are interested in Munch.

The main speakers are professor emeritus Reinhold Heller from the University of Chicago (USA), Professor Francis Frascina from Keele University (UK) and Dr. Susan Greenberg Fisher from The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation in New York (USA).

There will be contributions from distinguished Munch scholars, who will present new perspectives on Munch’s position in the history of modernism. The conference reopens the debate on modernism in general, and specifically on how Munch’s art, career and legacy can be viewed in a historiographical and theoretical perspective.

“Virtually since the start of his international career, Munch has been seen as an isolated figure,” says the National Museum’s curator Mai Britt Guleng, who is also one of the conference organisers. “The conference will contribute to illuminating how Munch has been both written into and left out of literature on the history of modernist art.”

The conference is being held in cooperation between the National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design, the Munch Museum and the University of Oslo. It is linked to the ongoing research collaboration “Munch and Modernity” and to the major “Munch 150” retrospective exhibition currently taking place in Oslo, arranged by the Munch Museum and the National Museum to mark the 150^th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

Read more about the conference here and more about “Munch 150” on the exhibition website.

Contact information

Project leader: Birgitte Sauge, birgitte.sauge@nasjonalmuseet,no, tel.: +47 21 98 21 51 / +47 47 28 64 85. 

Organising committee: Patricia Gray Berman (professor at Wellesley College (US) and the University of Oslo), Øivind Storm Bjerke (professor at the University of Oslo), Jon-Ove Steihaug (acting chief curator at the Munch Museum) and Mai Britt Guleng (curator at the National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design).

Press contact: Eva Engeset, eva.engeset@nasjonalmuseet.no, tel.: +47 46 95 01 02.