Making sense of art and design industries

By Fourcade22

Value creation in arts and design industries is something that does not come to mind as being an important subject to the normal person in the street. But art and design makes a huge contribution to the society, both economical, socially and mentally.

It is a fact that these industries are one of the fastest growing industries in the country. If we take out the paper and magazine-business, it has a growth of 27%. Will it grow even larger in the future? And can for example the new Munch Museum help the value creation of arts and design industries in Norway?

The new Munch-museum are now in the finishing stages of the building progress at Bjørvika in Oslo, Norway. It was the Spanish company Estuido Herreros that designed the project. When the design of the building first came out, there were not many skeptical people about the design of the museum. But later on, in the project, there has been added steel plates outside the firstly planned glass windows. Which has caused an outrage in the Norwegian media. Architect Gaute Brochmann, editor in the journal “Arkitektur N” said that the building literally sucks and that it looks like a threatening black shadow.

But will the people of Norway think the same about this building in the future? Well, the finished design of the Munch-museum is not the most beautiful building in Oslo. But I am almost certain that the building will become somewhat iconic in the years to come. We can compare it to the strange building in New York called “The Vessel”. It has got a lot of criticism, but it gets people curious and attention. It’s the same with the Munch-museum. Yes, it has cost the taxpayers a lot of money, but I am sure that the people will get the money back in terms of interest about the building and the art that are going to be displayed in there. People from all over the world will come to visit this place and both admire and think what is really about this building.

When it comes to its placement, it is also perfect due to the fact that it is right next to the Opera House, which is already famous. That means that many tourists that wants so see the Opera House, will also find the new Munch-museum interesting. Both because of the strange building and that it has the world-famous painting “Skrik” in it. And by locating both of these important cultural buildings next to each other in such a great and central location, shows that Norway finds art and design industries very important. Something that will get a lot of internationally in the world of value creation in these industries.