Highlights from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

I have been wanting to visit this museum ever since I moved to Denmark but was told it is absolutely necessary to visit in conjunction with good weather, as the outdoor aspects are as much a part of the experience as the indoor. Sun has been an elusive character since it disappeared some time after June, so I lucked out last weekend when I happened upon the combination of a toddler-free day and late summer sunshine.

An enjoyable train ride spent reading Murikami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (why not go all the way and overload on modern) and I arrived in the town of Humlebæk on the Zealand coast. Contrary to my earlier assumption, the museum's name has nothing to do with the American state or anything Creole for that matter. It is derived from the name of the villa that housed the original museum. Built and named in 1855, its owner was (un)fortunate enough to be married to three women over the course of his lifetime, all named Louise.

The expansion of the museum beyond the original villa has been a work in progress since the museum's opening in 1958. Referred to as "a masterpiece of Danish modernist architecture" it showcases themes that reverberate through Danish culture and society, like human-scale design, creature comfort, texture and bringing nature inside.

Okay, I'm a little obsessed with stairwells...

 The landscape figures just as prominently as the architecture and a large lawn sloping down to the sea is complemented by a secluded Lake Garden and scattered small, quiet spots to sit and contemplate throughout the grounds.

Taking its cue from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Louisiana's broad definition of modern art includes architecture, film, design, photography, music and other mediums. Originally, the museum opened with the purpose of showcasing Danish modern art, but it expanded relatively quickly to encompass international art and has since drawn artists whose reputation and renown solidifies its position as a well-respected exhibition venue.

The museum's own permanent collection comprises over 3,000 works of art from such artists as Picasso, Giacometti, Warhol, Calder, and Baselitz.

Giacometti sculptures

At the time of my visit, the museum featured a large exhibit called LIVING that took up the majority of the indoor exhibition space. The last in a series Frontiers of Architecture, this installation explores how we live from both an architectural as well as anthropological perspective. 'Case studies' highlight different themes and development within specific communities, while at the same time exposing broad and overarching concepts in how we live, communicate and create. The exhibit also featured an amazing diversity of mediums, from the recreation of physical structures, to photography, to video, to performance art, to electronic art and more.

Who says kids can't enjoy architecture?

Light cells as interactive art

West 57th, Danish-designed addition to the NYC skyline

Me, as a house.

Equally as impressive was the museum's attention to childrens' experience of modern art. The 'children's wing' was not merely an afterthought, but architecturally interesting and integrated with the rest of the museum. The activities were thoughtful and playful, engaging and educational. As with many of my experiences in Denmark, someone really took some time to consider things from a child's perspective.

Child's representation of their 'dream home'

One way to give your kid a 'modern perspective'

Spectacular weather, a thought-provoking exhibit and one of the most beautiful places I have had the pleasure of wandering through in a while. And finaly, if you're as into food as you are art, be sure to stop by the cafe... Well worth it.

Highlights from the Frilandsmuseet

Over the long, long Easter vacation, I ventured to the northern 'burbs of Copenhagen to the town of Kongens Lyngby to visit the Frilandsmuseet, or Open Air Museum, with my son and some of his toddler buddies. The Frilandsmuseet is part of the Nationalmuseet system and is an open air museum displaying three hundreds of years worth of Danish farms. The cool thing about the buildings is that they are actually real homes, mills, barns and outbuildings from around the country, taken apart brick by brick and rebuilt instead of replicas. They even contain period furnishings, tools and farm implements. There are of course the requisite docents in period dress and bucolic meadows full of farm animals for the children to chase.

Stepping back in time

The museum covers 86 acres and, needless to say, given the attention span and endurance of our pint sized companions, we saw only a small portion of all there was to see. A horse-drawn carriage ride helped us cover more ground and was also a great way to convince our reluctant children to stop throwing stones in the millpond.

The most terrorized chickens in all of Denmark

The museum was founded in 1897, making it one of the oldest of its kind, with some buildings dating back to 1650. Represented are dwellings from all around the country, as well as the Faroe Islands, and the former territories in northern Germany and southern Sweden.

For those of you who just went "Faroe-wha??" they are a group of islands situated halfway in between Great Britain and Iceland in the middle of essentially nowhere. With a population of only about 50,000 people, this autonomous province of the Kingdom of Denmark is another country within a country. If you're into expat reads and want to learn more about the Faroes, check out the fictional novel Far Afield.

An early Vestas prototype

Apparently Danes of yore were a hungry bunch, leading to an interesting, but unrelated, commentary on trends in Danish height. As evidenced by the picture below and reported by Good Morning America, modern Danes are quite tall, with the average male standing 6 feet and the women not far behind. I've been told I'm tall for a Korean, but in Denmark that makes me a little taller than really short. Americans used to tower over the free world, but we have slipped in recent decades and now can only lord over residents of malnourished countries like North Korea.

All in all, the museum was a beautiful place to visit on a warm spring day to learn a little more about the history of the country I'm calling home for a while.



A great time was had by all. Well, everyone except maybe these poor geese running for the cover of the bushes...



You may be fast, little one,
but we are faster...



 

Highlights from the Glyptotek

It is a general rule that people do not tend to behave like tourists in the places in which they live. I often wonder why that is - a grass is greener thing? An actual indifference to our familiar surroundings? Are the museums of other cities and countries inherently more interesting than the ones available to us on a daily basis? Or do we just assume that once we live somewhere we'll eventually get around to seeing the sights only to get swept up and carried away by life?

I figure my time as a Copenhagen "newbie" is due to expire somewhere around this summer so I have decided to try to apply myself to seeing "the sights" before the jaded enui sets in and I forget how to be wide-eyed and awestruck. In this vein, I set out to see the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Below is some interesting information about this museum along with some of the highlights from my tour.

The Glyptotek owes its existance to Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of Carlsberg Breweries. A prolific of antique art and sculpture, he donated his sizable collection to the Danish State and City of Copenhagen in 1888. Currently, the museum's collection includes over 10,000 works of art, including the most significant collection of Rodin's sculptures outside of France, an extensive number of French Impressionist and post-Impressionist as well as Danish Golden Age paintings, and a wide array of antique sculptures from around the Mediterranean.

The day of my visit, the museum featured a temporary exhibit of 70 studies in bronze by the French artist Edgar Degas. While most famous for his paintings, he often used wax sculpture to study movement as it related to some of his favorite motifs such as dancers, horses in motion and women in their morning routines. Below, I believe he may have been the first artist to capture a woman trying to get into her "skinny jeans".

The museum is also home to an astounding number of busts covering a wide period of time. Eerily realistic faces peer at you from across time, so lifelike that you imagine they might start up a conversation at any time. In a room of Roman statues I swear heard, "So a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum..." Below, a bust of the Roman emperor Caligula - who knew a sociopathic tyrant could be such a hottie?

While Caligula managed to save his face - at least in the Glyptotek - many of the other statues did not. This has resulted in a small "nasotek" or collection of lost noses.

My husband has been threatening to grow a handlebar mustache. I suppose it could always be worse. He could have seen this guy and gotten inspired...



I came across this bust among the Egyptian antiquities. I have heard conspiracy theories that the pyramids were built by Martians and never gave them much credence... until now?



Stay tuned for my next tourist excursion - a walk to the top of the Round Tower, once one of Copenhagen's tallest building and a working observatory.