Press release —
Ali Smith on Edvard Munch – The Door of the Story
1 July – 10 October 2027.
A pioneering encounter between one of today’s most inventive writers and one of modern art’s most singular figures.
Step into the imagination of one of the most distinctive writers of our time.
What happens when the endlessly inventive novelist Ali Smith turns her gaze to the art of Edvard Munch? In The Door of the Story, Smith brings her singular literary vision to Munch’s work, uncovering unexpected connections and details – narratives that might otherwise remain unseen.
Moving beyond familiar interpretations, Smith invites audiences to see Munch anew. Iconic works take on fresh meanings, while lesser-known paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints open doors to surprising narratives. Through Smith’s eyes, Munch’s art becomes a landscape of possibility, revealing its subtle, enduring and ever-renewing power to spark the imagination.
Unprecedented in its conception, The Door of the Story unfolds simultaneously as an exhibition and a book. Across seven rooms at MUNCH, visitors follow a fictional journey that develops throughout Smith’s book, whose structure draws on discoveries in Munch’s own library. Excerpts from the book, read by Smith herself, accompany visitors along the way, creating an intimate dialogue between the written word and the visual image.
The result is an exhibition that blurs the boundaries between fiction and visual art, inviting audiences to experience Munch through the eyes of a writer whose work is renowned for its curiosity, formal inventiveness and capacity to make unexpected connections. Playful and thought-provoking, The Door of the Story offers a new way of encountering both an artist and the act of looking itself.
The exhibition features 83 works from MUNCH’s collection, including paintings, prints, drawings and watercolours by Edvard Munch, alongside postcards and photographs. Several of the works on paper have never previously been exhibited.
The Door of the Story is curated in collaboration with Trine Otte Bak Nielsen (Senior Curator, MUNCH). The accompanying book is published by MUNCH Publishing.
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Ali Smith on Edvard Munch – The Door of the Story
Floor 3, MUNCH Museum, Oslo
01.07.2027–10.10.2027
About MUNCH
MUNCH is home to the world's largest collection of world-renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944). The museum’s new building, designed by Estudio Herreros, opened on Oslo’s waterfront in 2021, and houses several galleries and performance spaces over 13 floors. Tone Hansen has been its director since October 2022.
MUNCH presents an exhibition programme of modern and contemporary art alongside its collection displays. Recent group exhibitions have focused on Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Nordic Modernism. The contemporary programme includes the MUNCH Triennale with an emphasis on the relationship between art and new technologies, and SOLO OSLO, a series of annual solo exhibitions that showcases emerging artists on the Oslo scene. MUNCH also presents solo exhibitions with a range of internationally established artists, and a series of performance commissions. In 2024, the museum inaugurated the MUNCH Award honouring artistic freedom of expression.
About Ali Smith
Visual art has long been a recurring presence in the writing of Ali Smith (b. 1962, Inverness). Her fiction is rich with references to art and artists, approached with a characteristic combination of incisive curiosity, intellectual playfulness and an instinct for unexpected connections.
Smith has described her encounter with Edvard Munch as a gamechanger for her writing. Her engagement with the artist began with So in the Spruce Forest, an essay written for the catalogue accompanying MUNCH’s acclaimed exhibition Trembling Earth (2024). The essay was praised for the originality of Smith’s approach, with one critic observing: “It is a stroke of genius to ally with Smith, who in her highly original – alert and personal – approach to Munch’s work shakes off any stiffened clichés” (Ulekleiv, ‘Grønnskjær i blikket’, Kunstavisen, 3 May 2024). The essay was subsequently published as a standalone book by MUNCH Publishing.
Smith is the author of numerous award-winning books, including Artful, How to Be Both, the Seasonal Quartet, Gliff and Glyph. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times, she has received some of the most prestigious honours in contemporary literature, including the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Orwell Prize and the Dublin Literary Award.
