museums and galleries online

/

Museums and galleries in the city are closed but, unless the situation changes and there are new instructions from the government, then the plan, at the moment, seems to be that they will reopen after 13th April.

For many of the museums and galleries this has meant that important temporary exhibitions have closed.

Some of the museums and galleries have boosted the material on their online sites so Designmuseum Danmark now has a Digital Guide; the site for Statens Museum for Kunst, The National Gallery in Copenhagen, has a new site SMK.OPEN and already had an amazing online catalogue of major works where you are welcome to download high-resolution images and the Louisiana Channel, from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, is a brilliant resource.

Designmuseum Danmark
Statens Museum for Kunst
SMK.OPEN
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Statens Museum for Kunst
Portrait of the Copperplate Engraver CE Sonne circa 1826
by Ditlev Blunck

the images on line have a brief text with information about the artist and their period to put the work in context …. select this image and that will take you to the gallery page and from there you can explore the collection

 

arkitekturens værksteder / architecture workshops at Louisiana - Tatiana Bilbao

/

From 18 October 2019 - this is the third in a major series of exhibitions at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art on arkitekturens værksteder - on the workshops, studios or offices of architects - to look at their approach to architecture and the very different work methods that carry them through that process from the development of ideas and then on to design and construction.

Tatiana Bilbao continues
at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gammel Strand 13, Humlebæk
until 5 April 2020

 

How to Build a Good City - Jan Gehl on Louisiana Channel 

/
 

If you don’t know Copenhagen well, or if you have not come across the work of Jan Gehl and his approach to planning in the city, then a good place to start is with How to Build a Good City - an interview with Gehl that was posted last year on Louisiana Channel.

I have been meaning for some time to post a link here to Louisiana Channel. This is an important and fascinating series of on-line films and long interviews from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and although, as you would expect, many of the interviews relate directly to exhibitions at the museum or to the works of artists in their collection, the films range widely in their subjects and locations … there are interviews with leading architects and designers, including several with Bjarke Ingels, a series of interviews about the work of Jørn Uttzon and an interview, posted recently, is with Kim Herforth Nielsen of the architectural practice 3XN about their designs for the new Fish Market in Sydney.

 

Louisiana Channel

ELEMENTAL at Louisiana

/
 
 

A dramatic exhibition and one of a series at Louisiana under an overall title Arkitekturens Værksteder / Architecture Workshops - ELEMENTAL profiles the work and the approach to architecture of the office in Santiago of Alejandro Aravena.

The process of design is here a main focus of the exhibition that begins with a display of sketch books - a primary stage in their design process. With excellent visuals, on small screens around the edge of the display, you can select a sketch book and explore the contents by swiping through the pages that include both notes and detailed drawings.

In conjunction with this are films running across three large images on a nearby wall that turn through sketchbooks page by page. 

The design process for this exhibition space - from initial ideas through to the construction of the final display - was treated like a specific design project by ELEMENTAL to explain their work process and philosophy. A series of large panels on a lower level of the galleries trace through the whole development of the exhibition from the first letter from Louisiana proposing the exhibition through to the construction in the space. It is rare, as a visitor to an exhibition, to be able to track in such detail the work involved in producing an exhibition on this scale and of this complexity.

There are separate areas with photographs forming a time line for projects and models showing the primary volumes and forms of major buildings. There is a sequence of photographs and drawings of the now famous social housing - half fitted out in the initial construction and half to be completed by the families at a later stage and a sequence of prototypes showing the development of the design of Silla Chair - an open source design. Under a huge suspended box, there is a film of the projects from a drone.

 

ELEMENTAL opened on 11 October 2018 and continues until 28 February 2019
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Alicja Kwade at Louisiana

/
 

Louisiana has a new work in the Sculpture Park - pars pro toto by the Polish / German artist Alicja Kwade with eight spheres carved in rock from different parts of the world.

There is an interview with the artist on Louisiana Channel

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art at 60

/

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

The entrance to the museum is through a 19th-century house - a private villa built in 1855 for Alexander Brun (1814-1893) that was set back on the east side of the coast road from Copenhagen to Helsingør - just north of Humlebæk - with extensive gardens looking out over the sound. 

It is said that the new museum was called Louisiana - because all three of the wives of Alexander Brun were named Louise - and the name was kept when the villa was purchased in 1955 by Knud W Jensen - a businessman, writer and patron of the arts who founded the new museum.

New buildings were designed by Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo with covered and glazed corridors that link three large, well-lit gallery spaces to the house and together form an arc around the north side of the main lawn.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opened in 1958.

the original house from the gardens (top)

plan of the house with the villa cross hatched and showing the low ranges of service buildings forming a forecourt
the first new buildings were a series of corridors stepping down gradually to follow a ridge between a lake or inlet to the west and the beach and sea to the east and retaining both the large lawn and mature trees

Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo photographed in 1958 standing in front of a brick wall that formed the side of what was initially the library - this is the side of the building that faces away from the sea and is now an area of terrace alongside the museum restaurant

the view out over the sound from the terrace of the museum restaurant (below) shows how important the landscape and the garden setting are for the museum

 

Louisiana Jubilæum 1958 / 2018 - the chair and the lamp designed by Vilhelm Wohlert

/

To mark the sixty years since the Modern Art Museum at Louisiana opened, the Louisiana Chair and the Louisiana Lamp have been re-released.

Both were designed by Vilhelm Wohlert who, with Jørgen Bo, was the architect for the museum and the chair and the pendant lamp can be seen in the museum restaurant that has been refurnished for the anniversary.

Louisiana Butik

 

  1. the Louisiana Chair displayed with the tall bar stools in the Butik at Louisiana

  2. the Louisiana Lamp in the Butik

  3. the chairs designed by Vilhelm Wohlert in the museum restaurant

  4. the taller stools with back rest in the museum restaurant

 

farve form stof / colour form texture

/

detail of 1025 Farben by Gerhard Richter 1974
Parrhesia, sculpture in papier mâché by Franz West 2012
and, in the background Para 1 by Morris Louis 1959

 

Works in this exhibition are drawn from the collection and they mark major themes in art since the Second World War looking at the use of vibrant colour that has an immediate impact and at the exploration of texture and of forms for sculpture that step well beyond realism or, rather, look beyond the realistic depiction of colours and shapes and forms from the natural world.

The exhibition in the lower galleries looks at two other major themes from art from the middle of the 20th century onwards … men and masculinity and war and conflict.


the exhibition farve form stof continues until 21 October 2018
at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gammel Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk

 

Månen / The Moon - From Inner Worlds to Outer Space

/
 

With more than 200 works including paintings, film, music, literature, photographs, maps and scientific instruments, this major exhibition looks at myths about the Moon; at the way the Moon has been shown in art and in scientific observations and study over centuries and leading to man landing on the Moon fifty years ago.

the exhibition Månen / The Moon continues until 20 January 2019

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,
Gammel Strandvej 13, Humlebæk