Collection display

The museum has three permanent exhibitions:

• The Chinese Collection - Norway’s largest collection of Chinese art.
  
• People and Possessions - 500 Years of Art and Design. 
  
• The Singer Collection - European and Asian ornamental items and furniture.

The collections
Of the museum’s extensive holdings, only a few selected works are on display in our permanent exhibitions. The rest are on loan at home and abroad, or in storage in one of Permanenten’s exciting, well filled magazines.

The collections consist of approximately 33,000 Norwegian and European artworks from the l6th century until today. First and foremost are items from the domestic sphere, such as dresses and other textiles, ceramics, glass, furniture and silver.

Highlights
One highlight is the rich and distinguished collection of Bergen crafted silver, created by the especially gifted silversmiths of the oldest craftsmen’s guild in the country. The collection of Chinese Buddhist marble sculptures and Dreier’s Bergen prospectus from early 1800s are also worth viewing. The brightest jewel, however, is Ole Bull’s beautiful Gasparo da Salo violin from 1562, with the famous head carving by Benvenuto Cellini.

Contemporary decorative art and design
Although the collections’ historic parts are mainly from before 1840, the museum’s initial preoccupation was with collecting contemporary decorative art; this it has resumed doing in recent years. The result is a limited but exquisite collection of national and international decorative art from ca. 1900, and an extensive and representative collection of Norwegian contemporary decorative art and design from the last 30 years.

By: Kari Skarprud Pettersen
6-2 2009