An international search for a new leader of Oslo’s Munch Museum is over. City officials found him in Bergen.
Stein Olav Henrichsen, age 56, has most recently been head of Bergen’s Opera and led the merger of Opera Vest and Den Nye Opera. He’s an educated musician and has for many years championed new music and led the Ultima festival.
Now he’s switch over the art world, heading the new Munch Museum and Stenersen Museum in Oslo, due to join forces and move to new quarters near Oslo’s Opera House on the waterfront at Bjørvika.
As head of the Munch Museum he’ll be in charge of the vast collection of paintings that Norwegian artist Edvard Munch left to the City of Oslo when he died in 1944. City officials had said they wanted to get the “best leaders” they could and think they’ve found him in Henrichsen.
“He’s not an art historian, but there’s no lack of art history competence at the Munch Museum,” Torger Ødegaard, the top city politician in charge of cultural affairs, told newspaper Aftenposten.
Henrichsen will also be in charge of a jubilee exhibit at the museum in 2013, to mark the 150th anniversary of Munch’s birth.
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