Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

The garden and façade of the building facing the sea of the Øresund sound.
Established	1958
Location	Humlebæk, Denmark
Type	Art museum
Collection size	3,500
Visitors	702,426 (2023)[1]
Founder	Knud W. Jensen
Director	Poul Erik Tøjner
Chairperson	Lars Henrik Munch Dorte Mandrup-Poulsen (vice)
Architect	Jørgen Bo Wilhelm Wohlert Claus Wohlert
Public transit access	Humlebæk Station
Nearest parking	On site
Website	louisiana.dk

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,^[a] also known as just Louisiana, is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, 35 km (22 mi) north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, dating from World War II to the present day; in addition, it has a comprehensive programme of special exhibitions.^[2] The museum is also acknowledged as a milestone in modern Danish architecture, and is noted for its synthesis of art, architecture, and landscape, such as was showcased in an installation entitled "Riverbed" shown in 2014–2015. It has been called a "Danish beacon in the international art world." The museum occasionally also stages exhibitions of work by the great impressionists and expressionists, such as Claude Monet, who was the focus of a major exhibition in 1994. It has between 600,000–700,000 visitors per year, 17–33% of whom reside in nearby Sweden.^[3][4][5][6]

The museum is included in the Patricia Schultz book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and ranks 85th on a list of most visited art museums (2011). In late November 2012, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art launched Louisiana Channel, a web-TV channel contributing to the development of the museum as a cultural platform. In 2013, the museum's music department launched Louisiana Music, a web page dedicated to musical videos produced by the museum in collaboration with world-famous musicians.

The museum is located by the Øresund coast in the North Zeeland region, some 30 km (19 mi) north of central Copenhagen and 10 km (6 mi) south of Elsinore. From the regional train station in Humlebæk, it takes 10–15 minutes to walk to the museum.^[7]

A few times a year, we read in the newspapers that now some city or municipality wants to have its own Louisiana, and there's only one reply to that: Even if you can create a building, you cannot create a Knud W. Jensen.

— Jørgen Sthyr, New Carlsberg Foundation, 1968

The history of the museum goes back some 170 years. The name of the museum is derived from the first owner of the property, hofjægermester Alexander Brun, who named the estate after his three wives, all called Louise. Brun built the villa in which the part of the museum resides in 1855.^[8] A hundred years later, in 1955, businessman and cheese wholesaler Knud W. Jensen purchased the by then abandoned villa and surrounding property after being snubbed of the opportunity to purchase land around Rungstedlund for his planned museum; this was reportedly due to the sellers objection on the grounds of modern art not being art. Jensen had been interested in art and literature since the 1940s, but after acquiring the publishing company Gylendal in 1952, his interest in art materialized; Jensen founded the Art at the Workplace association, leasing artworks to companies for the enjoyment of their employees.^[9] Meanwhile, he found conventional art museums at the time to be alienating and uninviting, citing the National Gallery of Denmark as a typical example.^[10][11][12] As Jensen felt that these buildings' grandiose architecture didn't fit for modern art, he aimed to create a museum with an "appropriate atmosphere" wherein people "...feel obliged [...] to approach the works of art." He has further stated a great sense of inspiration from American museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art.^[13]

I have not been able to learn much about Alexander Brun, the Master of the Royal Hunt who built Louisiana in 1855, but enough so that I can form a picture of him. He was married three times, and each time he found a girl named Louise, which was perhaps a fashionable name then. It's a good story, which has also been told many times. It was natural to preserve this lovely name. I could not very well call it Humlebæk Museum of Modern Art or Jensen Museum instead. People would die laughing. So, better to let them smile at the curious and poetic name “Louisiana”, which most people thought had something to do with the state of Louisiana in America.

— Knud W. Jensen, The Spirit of the Place (Stedets ånd), 1994

Wishing to instead create a museum on a "human scale" that was close to nature, he first approached Jørn Utzon to design the museum; however, Utzon was already commissioned to design the now iconic Sydney Opera House, and so he declined.^[14][15] In lieu of this, he partnered up with architects Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo, who spent a few months walking around the property before deciding how a new construction would best fit into the landscape. This study resulted in the first version of the museum consisting of three buildings connected by glass corridors, which opened in conjunction with the museum as a whole, in 1958.^[12][15] The first exhibition had several faults according to Jensen himself, the building lacked climate control and the storage room was insufficient.^[16] The museum received criticism, from among others, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, who referred to the newly opened museum as "Cirkusiana".^[5] Jensen intended for the museum to be mixture between art, architecture, and nature; music, film, dance, and political debates would all take place at Louisiana. Critics posited that the other forms of entertainment would ultimately distract from the art itself, though Jensen stated that art was not the entire focus of the venue.^[10] The decision to have a café built into the museum was also controversial, Jensen stated in an interview that "good drinking and food is very important in connection with experiencing art."^[10][13] His personal ideas and ambitions largely steered the development of the museum, despite the existence of a board of directors.^[10] He has emphasized the idea of Louisiana as a cultural center, "I believe much more in the idea of a cultural center than [that] of a museum."^[13] Shortly after opening, Louisiana became known in the international art world for its at times controversial exhibitions; the museum has used the self-coined "sauna-princippen" (lit. 'the sauna principle'), a combination of uncontroversial "warm" and transgressive "cold" exhibitions.^[16][17] One such controversy was a Nam June Paik concert which ended chaotically and with largely negative reactions from the crowd. These controversies nonetheless garnered attention for Louisiana; Jensen expected 40,000 visitors in the first year, the museum received 200,000.^[14][5]

Up until 1959, the works featured at Louisiana were primarily Danish in origin. During Jensen's visit to the art exhibition Documenta II in Kassel, Germany, he saw the works Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and Henry Moore. He described it as a "Documenta shock", and decided to try and persuade the board of directors to start featuring international art at Louisiana. He eventually succeeded, despite the skepticism of the board; at the time there was no internationally inclined modern art museum in Denmark.^[10] The art exhibition affected him to such an extent that he organized the exhibition Works from Documenta just weeks after the show was hosted.^[18]

The decision to feature international art has later been hailed as "decisive" by art historian Kristian Handberg, and the exhibitions of international art have become a hallmark of the museum; it fostered a "new Louisiana", with new exhibition halls being constructed for the international exhibitions.^[19] Among these were Vitality in Art and Movement in Art, composed by Willem Sandberg, along with Jean Tinguely's manifesto Sketch for the End of the World. These exhibitions brought together contemporary artists from both the United States and Europe. Handberg has stated that the achievement of bringing Louisiana into the wider European circulation of international art exhibitions on the part of Jensen is a "remarkable" feat.^[20] Louisiana gained the status of state-authorized museum in 1968, and began to receive financial support from the Danish state. It had by this point begun to receive criticism from younger artists who considered the museum to be "old fashioned" and lacking the latest art. It has nevertheless continued to feature modern and contemporary art through its exhibitions, featuring the likes of Nouveau Réalisme, Pop art, and Minimalist art.^[10][21]

The collection of the museum includes several pieces made specifically for it, Roy Lichtenstein's Figures in Landscape was painted in 1977 following a visit to the museum. Similarly, Sam Francis created a series of paintings for the museum during his visit in 1979, and Jim Dine's painting for a specific room in the museum.^[10] In 2003 the museum was renovated for 50 million kroner in order to improve security and to reduce the risk of fire.^[22][23]

In 2013 the museum received harsh criticism after the decision to sell Knud W. Jensen's private villa for demolition, as it was deemed not necessary to the museum. Following the backlash, the museum instead chose to sell the villa on the condition that the buyer wouldn't tear it down.^[24][25] As of 2021 the museum has seen "uninterrupted growth" since 2006.^[26]

Each work demands to be seen without too much competition from other works of art and without a restrictive landscape setting.

— Knud W. Jensen

The architecture of Louisiana is considered to be an instrumental part of the museum experience, and has been used as a point of comparison to other buildings.^[27] Architects Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo were contacted by Knud W. Jensen to design the new museum building. At first Jensen had contacted Jørn Utzon to design the museum, who himself owned a house in nearby Hellebæk. However, as Utzon was busy with working on his later successful design for the Sydney Opera House, he declined the offer.^[14] Wohlert and Bo's study of the property over the course of several months resulted in the first version of the museum consisting of three buildings connected by glass corridors, which opened in 1958 and is designated as the Nordfløj (North Wing).^[28] A clear source of inspiration for this building was the Kings Road House by Rudolph Schindler in Los Angeles, along with Richard Neutra's Bailey House in Pacific Palisades.^[14] The building was subsequently expanded with the addition of the Vestfløj (West Wing) in 1966 and again in 1971, collectively adding two more floors.^[28] The change in architectural direction with the expansion of the Sydfløj (South Wing) in 1982, is largely the result of the increasing size and dimensions of the works of art in the exhibitions. According to Jensen, large portions of the permanent collection had to be stored away for most of the year, as to make room for the temporary exhibitions; the much larger spaces of the South Wing are in that sense "tailor-made for the international collection", in Jensen's own words.^[14][16]

In 1976 the concert hall was inaugurated, connected to the North Wing.^[29] Its acoustics make it especially suitable for chamber music, but it is also used for other musical genres as well as a wide array of others events and activities such as debates, lectures and symposiums. The chairs are designed by Poul Kjærholm and the rear wall is decorated with paintings created for the site by Sam Francis.^[30] In 2007 began a project to produce concert films and musical clips directed by Stéphan Aubé. All the movies are available for free on the Louisiana Music website.

The museum has a wide range of modern art paintings, sculptures and videos dating from World War II to the present day, including works by artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Asger Jorn. The videos are often housed in room settings where the viewer is made to feel part of the scene being portrayed. Perched above the sea, there is a sculpture garden between the museum's two wings with works by artists including Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, and Jean Arp.

Louisiana used to display a collection of Pre-Columbian art. Consisting of more than 400 objects, the collection was a donation from the Wessel-Bagge Foundation in 2001. It is the personal collection left by Niels-Wessel Bagge, a California-based Danish dancer, choreographer, and art collector, who died in 1990.

The Louisiana Museum mounts temporary exhibitions, including installations such as Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's site-specific work "Riverbed", which was made specifically for the museum and shown from August 2014 to January 2015.^[31] The work was in three sections with a theme that related art, architecture and nature, in which a rocky riverbed was created to take up the museum's entire south wing.^[31]

The grounds around the museum contain a landscaped sculpture garden. It consists of a plateau and ground that slopes towards the Øresund and is dominated by huge, ancient specimen trees and sweeping vistas of the sea.

It contains works by such artists as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Max Bill, Alexander Calder, Henri Laurens, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Miró and Henry Moore. The sculptures are either placed so that they can be viewed from within, in special sculpture yards or independently around the gardens, forming a synthesis with the lawns, the trees and the sea.^[2] There are also examples of site-specific art by such artists as Enzo Cucchi, Dani Karavan and George Trakas.^[32]

Louisiana Literature festival is an annual festival that takes place at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Launched in 2010, the festival each year features about forty writers from across the world. They perform on stages around the museum and in the sculpture park, and attract more than 15,000 people each year.^[33]

• 1958 —1993: Knud W. Jensen^[34]
• 1995 —1998: Lars Nittve
• 1998 —2000: Steingrim Laursen
• 2000 —: Poul Erik Tøjner

Republic of Fritz Hansen is the Louisiana's main corporate partner through 2024.^[35] Realdania has supported Louisiana's architectural exhibitions since 2006. The new Carlsberg foundation has supported Louisiana's acquisition programme generously throughout most of the museum's history.^[35]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

• Louisiana Museum of Modern Art official website
• Louisiana Channel official website
• Louisiana Music official website

55°58′10″N 12°32′35″E / 55.96944°N 12.54306°E / 55.96944; 12.54306