Oslo National Museum of Art. The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo is a Norwegian state-owned museum It was established on 1 July 2003 by the merging of the Architecture Museum, Art Industry Museum, National Exhibitions, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the National Gallery of Norway. Its directors have been Sune Nordgren, Anne Kjellberg, Allis Helleland, Ingar Pettersen, Audun Eckhoff and Karin Hindsbo. Chairmen of the board have been Christian Bjelland, Svein Aaser and Linda Bernander Silseth. The National Museum collects, preserves, displays, and conveys the country's most extensive collection of art, architecture and design. The collection has up to 400 000 works. The museum holds regular exhibitions of works from their own collection and revolving collections of borrowed and owned works. The museum's exhibition areas in Oslo are Nasjonalgalleriet, Museet for Samtidskunst. It also exhibited at Nasjonalmuseet-Arkitektur and Kunsindustrimuseet until it closed on 17 October 2016. The exhibition programme includes travelling exhibitions from within and outside the country. In 2015 the museum had 602,546 visitors. The current director, Karin Hindsbro, started in 2017. Free entry is available, daily, in late 2019, and every Thursday after that. Check website for exact details. Click on official website, under external links. A new building to house the National Museum is being constructed on Vestbanen The building will open in 2020, The National Gallery is closed temporarily from 13 January 2019 until the new National Museum opens. The gallery will serve as storage for the collections until its move to the new National Museum. The Museum for Contemporary Art was last open on 3 September 2017. A large portion of the collection will be shown at the new National Museum. The contemporary art will for the first time ever be presented in a collection in partnership with design, crafts, and older art. This will be the biggest and most important exhibited collection in Norway. Exhibits will be evaluated, photographed, and conserved before they are packed away and relocated to storage, and eventually to the new museum. This is extensive work and a large part of the preparations for the new National Museum The Art Industry Museum closed on 16 October 2016 due to preparations for the relocation into the new National Museum. The New National Museum at Vestbanen In the spring of 2008 the government decided that the new building for the National Museum would be located at Vestbanen in place of the old Oslo West Station train station at Aker Brygge. It is planned to open in 2020. In November 2010 the German architecture company Kleihues + Schuwerk won the international architecture competition with the project Forum Artis. A cohesive new building was one of the preconceptions for the establishment of the National Museum in 2003. Just ten years after Norway's first public art museum was completed, the museum's administration realized the National Gallery's building was too small, other museum buildings were also in need of bigger more satisfactory premises. The same thing goes for all the exhibitions of the National Museum: Art Industry Museum, the Architecture Museum, and the Museum for Contemporary Art. Architecture competitions for expansion at Tullinlokka were previously held in 1972 and 1995 but didn't lead to anything. In spring 2012 the pre-project was completed and delivered to the culture department. The government presented the project on 22 March 2013 with a price of approximately 5.3 billion Norwegian kroner. On 6 June 2013 the Stortinget decreed the new building to be within a cost frame of 5,327 billion kroner. The new National Museum will have an exhibition area of 13,000 m 2 and will be the largest art museum in the Nordic Countries. The National Museum and Statbygg have together established the information centre Mellomstasjonen. Up until the museum opens you can get to know the building project and the plans for the new museum, as well as participate in breakfast meetings, artist's discussions and many other things. The building has been widely derided by critics, who have said it resembles a prison and described it as the national prison. The National Gallery The National Gallery was established in 1842 as The Norwegian States Central Museum for Visual Arts. Since 1882 its location has been on Universitetsgata in Oslo, in a building designed by Heinrich Ernst and Adolf Schirmer. The building's exterior and interior was listed by Riksantikvaren in January 2012. Art historian Jens Thiis was director at The National Gallery between 1908 and 1941. Thiis had an international outlook and bought a series of central works for the museum's collection.