Research and advanced studies are an integral part of the National Museum's range of activities. The National Museum holds Norway's most important collection and documentation of art, architecture, design and decorative art. The Museum is therefore responsible for an extensive range of source material for the study of Norwegian art and culture. This material is of both national and international interest.
The National Museum's research tasks are twofold:
* The Museum will make available its collections, documentation and its accumulated knowledge of the collections and the museum for research purposes.
The Museum collections, documentation and archive material is available for study purposes and can be accessed by contacting the research room and the documentary archive. Information about the collections is also to be found in both published and unpublished catalogues that are made available by contacting the research room and the library. In addition, both the library and the documentary archive have extensive collections of published and unpublished material regarding Norwegian and international art, architecture, design and the decorative arts.
* The Museum's own research activities will be based upon the museum collections and within the fields relevant to the Museum's work.
A major part of the research carried out at the National Museum is related to the exhibition programme, and is mediated through this activity. Exhibition catalogues are therefore an extremely important part of the museum's mediation and research work. Another important research area is the work carried out on cataloguing the collection.