OSLO, NORWAY.- In August 2007 the director of Statens Museum for Kunst, Allis Helleland, will become the new director of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo. The National Museum is facing important tasks, including a strengthening of the art-historical profile, further development of the organisation and the implementation of an important building project in the centre of Oslo.

In her 13 years as director of Statens Museum for Kunst Allis Helleland has led the museum into modern times, with a quality matching leading national galleries in Europe. She has opened the museum to the surrounding world by providing a framework in keeping with the time and constantly finding new ways of making art accessible to the public, so that it is to-day the leading art museum in Denmark.

"With successes like the striking extensions and renovations of the buildings, the opening of the new Statens Museum for Kunst in October, international research-based exhibitions on Rembrandt, Ring and Derain, the living Stage, with 400,000 visitor (the highest number of visitors to a Danish art museum), with the Egmont Knowledge Centre opening next April and with the goodwill of all parts of the Danish public, I feel that I have in many ways accomplished what I set out to do. Today the museum is a modern cultural institution with an appeal to contemporary users. Therefore I have found it impossible to decline the offer from Oslo, since the task is in many ways similar to the one I have solved here in Copenhagen: to create a new framework and fill it out together with my staff to the benefit of the Norwegian people", says Allis Helleland.

Christian Bjelland, Chairman of the Board of the National Museum in Norway says: "We have chosen a candidate with many years' experience with the running and building of a museum and with a large international network, and we think that this will strengthen the National Museum and our ambition to spearhead cultural life in Norway."

The Danish Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen says: "Allis Helleland has done a fantastic job to make the unique collection of Statens Museum for Kunst known to a new and broader public. Norway will have an extremely competent and energetic museum director. I hope that her appointment will strengthen the cooperation between Denmark and Norway in the field of art. And I am proud that the Norwegians have chosen a Danish solution."

Allis Helleland will leave her position at Statens Museum for Kunst by the end of July 2007.