At a crossroads in the middle of his career, preeminent American artist Jasper Johns found his way forward in part by looking to the work of Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch. This November, VMFA presents a groundbreaking exhibition that examines how Johns mined Munch’s work in the late 1970s and early 1980s as he moved away from abstract painting towards a more open expression of love, sex, loss, and death.

Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss, and the Cycle of Life assembles more than 120 paintings, drawings, and prints in once-in-a-lifetime combinations to trace the route Johns traveled in relation to Munch’s work. Organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in partnership with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the exhibition was conceived and organized by John B. Ravenal, Executive Director of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and former Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the VMFA.