Oslo’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design finally has an opening date.

The much-anticipated project from Italian-German architect Klaus Schuwerk will open on June 11th of next year, more than a decade after being named the winner of an international competition to upgrade facilities for the 18-year-old institution located along Oslo’s historic Vestbanen harborfront. 

The museum will begin welcoming visitors this summer for guided tours to the new building, which will display more than 5,000 works of art in a 90-room, two-story building that features an art library, cafés, and an open-air roof terrace as part of a scheme that will also reduce the museum’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

A new sculpture atrium will center the plan surrounded by the new exhibition hall and gallery spaces staggering upward into a brilliant alabaster light hall that sits on top of a stone plinth made up of the museum’s first two floors, allowing for access to the terrace and rooftop gardens which offer visitors views of the surrounding city hall and famed medieval Arkerhus Fortress. The Norwegian slate-covered facade will represent a marked upgrade over the previous building’s 19th-century brick and brownstone structure which closed in January of 2019 and is currently undergoing a conceptual study led by Snøhetta.

The 54,600-square-meter museum will be the largest such institution in the region once it is completed.