Image: Blaafarveværket
Blaafarveværket in Modum will open 'Jubileumsutstillingen – Norske høydepunkter fra Kode Bergen på Blaafarveværket' on 9 May 2026, presenting a broad selection of Norwegian art from KODE Bergen’s collection through 4 October. The exhibition is framed by one of the institution’s most important historical associations: Edvard Munch’s 'Morgen', painted during his five-week stay on Modum in 1884, and now returning to the site where the artist found the motif that helped set the course of Blaafarveværket’s modern exhibition history.
According to Blaafarveværket’s exhibition text, Munch was drawn to the strong colour contrast in the room where he encountered servant Thora Dahlen seated on a bed. The site describes the white bed, linens, shift, bedside table and curtains set against an intensely blue wall, a visual effect Munch was said to have wanted to capture. The work was completed in time for the 1884 Autumn Exhibition and is described by the institution as a breakthrough for the young artist. After first being secured by painter Frits Thaulow, the picture later entered the collection of Bergen collector Rasmus Meyer, whose holdings were eventually given to the city of Bergen.
Blaafarveværket’s own presentation says the exhibition brings Munch’s painting back to the place where it was made, as the centrepiece of a larger loan show from KODE Bergen. The institution links the exhibition to its 250th anniversary year and to the history of the cobalt industry at Modum, while also pointing back to the event in 1884 that, in its telling, underlies the museum’s exhibition tradition since the 1970s. The museum’s text does not present the show as a survey of Blaafarveværket itself, but as a presentation of key works from a major Norwegian museum collection in an historic setting.
The exhibition list is substantial and reaches well beyond Munch. Blaafarveværket says the display includes important works by Christian Krohg, Harriet Backer, J.C. Dahl, Theodor Kittelsen and Erik Werenskiold, alongside a long roster of artists spanning Norwegian art from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Named artists include Peder Balke, Hans Gude, Kitty L. Kielland, Eilif Peterssen, Arne Kavli, Ludvig Karsten, Henrik Sørensen, Per Krohg and others, suggesting a wide-ranging presentation of canonical and less familiar names from KODE’s holdings.
The exhibition has already been taken up by Norwegian art criticism. NRK’s review, published on 1 August 2026, described the show as a strange but solid anniversary choice, while still singling out several major works, including paintings by Edvard Munch, Christian Krohg, Harriet Backer and Kitty Kielland. Kunstavisen later noted that the exhibition’s strength lies in the way it combines familiar, less familiar and unknown works, and said the display includes around sixty works. That review also identified the exhibition as tied to Blaafarveværket’s 250th anniversary and described it as a corrective to a fixed national canon.
Blaafarveværket says a guided tour will be included in the ticket each Sunday at 12.30. The exhibition runs at Blaafarveværket, Modum, Norway, from 9 May to 4 October 2026.
