Munch's summer house was not far from my family's summer home, in Åsgårdstrand. He spent every summer there between 1889 and 1905, fell in love with the pretty town and with a married woman, Milly Thaulow (Mrs Heiberg).

The Shore of Love (Kjaerlighhetens Strand) is the 2010 summer exhibition at Haugar museum in Tonsberg. It's a rare treat and one of the biggest Munch exhibits ever held outside of Oslo or Bergen.  The images are familiar to Munch fans – the lovers, the girls on the beach, the big Norwegian moon spreading light across the water.

Andy Warhol was a great fan of Munch.  He first saw the work at a gallery in New York in 1982.  Both men lost a parent at a very young age, and both, it seems were obsessed with death.  His paintings and silkscreens are inspired by Munch's The Scream, Madonna and Self-portrait with Skeleton Arm.

The opportunity to see Munch and Munch by Warhol so close to us, so close to where he spent so many magical summers, seems to have a touch of kismet to it.  My grandfather took me as a child to the Munch museum in Oslo – he saw it as a duty and a pleasure – but neither of my children have seen a Munch up close. 

I watched them excitedly discussing each painting, as thrilled by him as I am. (Warhol is "neat" – that brilliant, descriptive word the Americans use – but he doesn't tug on my heartstrings like Munch, doesn't come from the same dirt as we do.)

Bumble Ward is a blogger and writer living in Los Angeles.  She grew up with a Norwegian mother and an English father and spent every summer on an island in the Oslo fjord.   www.misswhistle.com