About the Project

The Munch Museum’s project related to Edvard Munch’s writings was initiated in August 2007. The resulting digital archive was launched in its first beta version 20 January 2011.

An annotated publication of the collected writings of Edvard Munch (1863–1944) has been in great demand, both in Norway and internationally. The Munch Museum wishes to make all of Munch’s collected letters, notes, exhibition lists, literary texts, and more, available on the internet as a flexible, searchable historical and critical primary source. The publication will be easily accessible for young students and other interested parties as well as satisfy the demands of scholars for accuracy. The volume of Munch’s texts is estimated at about 13,000 pages and consists of everything from literary diaries, letters and drafts of letters to exhibition lists, shopping lists and notes. The Munch Museum owns ca. 90% of the material.

The publication will consist of digital facsimiles and encoded transcriptions of the original manuscripts. The transcriptions will be reproduced diplomatically. This means that Munch’s own orthography will be reproduced as accurately as possible, so that all misspellings, cross outs and the length of the lines will be shown as they were originally written. In order to make the material searchable, it will be encoded according to name, place and date. In addition, the publication will be accompanied by commentaries, important art history and literary research topics, as well as links to relevant works by the same artist.

Munch’s texts represent unique educational and research potential. As opposed to other visual artists with a literary production, it is hard to distinguish between Munch’s literary and more private writing. The majority of Munch’s texts – the literary journals and letters – are an essential part of his rhetorical stress on the inseparable connection between life and art. The artist’s own childhood experiences, romances, friendships and intrigues are constantly referred to in his wide range of writings.

The project is financed with funds from Arts Council Norway, the Freedom of Expression Foundation and the City of Oslo’s Agency of Cultural Affairs.