The Vigeland Museum is the sculpture museum of Oslo.

Our responsibilites and ambitions are two-folded. The Museum is dedicated to Gustav Vigeland. The main responsibilities is to take care of the heritage of Gustav Vigeland towards the public, and to preserve this for the coming generations. The majority of the Museum's exhibition space is a presentation of Vigeland's oeuvre.

Gustav Vigeland.

In addition to this, the Museum's ambition is to be the most interesting venue for presenting art within the three dimenional field. Since starting with temporary exhibitions on contemporary and modern art, the Museum has, over the recent years, become more focused on this specific kind of art, i.e. sculpture and installation, and video based art. The Museum puts an emphasis on presenting a variety of these artistic expressions, and striving to keep it on a high qualitative level.

In 1919, the City Council in Oslo decided to build a new studio for Gustav Vigeland at Frogner. The final contract, signed in February 1921, stated that Vigeland would bequeath all his works to the City Council in return for the right to continue using the studio until his death. It was also decided that the studio would become a museum to house Vigeland’s works after his death, and to build an apartment on the 2nd floor of the building.

In 1924 Vigeland moved into the apartment at Frogner where he was to lead a quiet and uneventful life with his wife Ingerid. He was completely absorbed by his work and was seldom seen outside the studio. In the evenings he preferred to sit in the library drawing, reading or making woodcuts.

Vigeland was associated with many highly skilled craftsmen; both plaster casters, stone masons, and smiths. The number of craftsmen in residence varied depending on his needs. They helped build the iron armatures inside the sculptures and roughly covered the larger sculptures with clay according to the sketches. His assistants also carried out plaster casting and stone masonry. The efforts of these assistants were decisive for the realisation of the Vigeland Park.

Vigeland lived at Frogner until his death in 1943.His studio was reopened as a museum in 1947. At present the museum has approximately 1,600 sculptures, 420 woodcuts and 12,000 drawings, in addition to a collection of the artist’s notebooks, several thousand letters and his large library and collection of photographs.

fonte: @edisonmariotti #edisonmariotti
http://www.vigeland.museum.no/en/museum/history