Vigeland Museum

The museum occupies the studio complex built by the city for Vigeland's use in 1924. He lived and worked here until his death, and his apartment in the building is preserved as he left it. The working spaces — the modelling rooms, the plaster workshop, the large hall where full-scale works were prepared for casting or carving — give visitors a direct sense of the industrial scale of his project and the collaborative nature of the work, which required teams of assistants to execute the larger pieces.

The plaster models on display are the most valuable part of the collection for those interested in sculpture as a process. Vigeland worked primarily in plaster, then handed the models to stonecutters (for the granite works) or bronze foundries (for the cast pieces). The plasters preserve the marks of his hands and tools in a way that the finished outdoor sculptures do not, and the scale range — from small preliminary sketches to full-size models — shows his process of development.

The drawings and woodcuts are less well-known but deserve attention. Vigeland was an accomplished draughtsman, and his studies of the human figure — erotic, tender, violent, comic — show a range of emotional register that the monumental public sculptures sometimes obscure.

The museum is free on Sundays. Located at Nobels gate 32, a 10-minute walk from the western entrance of Vigeland Sculpture Park. Open Tuesday through Sunday.