Munch on the Move

Available for over a year

There is a growing trend of art exhibitions crossing continents. In this week’s In the Studio, arts journalist Susan Stone goes behind the scenes of Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth, which starts at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, in the US state of Massachusetts, moves to the Museum Barberini in Germany and then continues its journey to the Munch Museum in Norway’s capital Oslo. The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is best known for his expressionist painting The Scream. A pastel version of it fetched $ 120 million when it was last auctioned in 2012, making it the most expensive piece of art ever sold at an auction. Unlike previous Munch exhibitions, which have revolved around his psychology and biography, this exhibition, for the first time, looks at his landscape paintings, revealing a very different side of artist and showing the vivid colours he used. Presenting this exhibition on both sides of the Atlantic: In the US, then in Germany and Norway, makes this ground breaking show open up to a wider audience. But what does it take for an exhibition to go on a journey? How does it change when moving to another venue with a different size and layout and what adjustments are made for the audience in a different country? The Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany grants the BBC exclusive access to witness what happens behind closed doors, when art works worth millions move across countries and are installed when security measures are yet to be put in place. Susan speaks to curator Jill Lloyd and reveals the people who act away from the limelight, but are the movers and shakers when it comes to getting a painting to on the road: the registrars of each museum and the couriers, often highly qualified paintings conservators, who are responsible for the art works their museum has lent to the exhibition. Producer: Sabine Schereck Executive Producer: Andrea Kidd