SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark
SMK - The National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst) is Denmark’s largest art museum, featuring outstanding collections of Danish and international art from the past seven centuries. SMK is located just off of Copenhagen's Nørreport station. Here you can experience special exhibitions, the royal collections, guided tours, performances, art talks, concerts, workshops and much more.
At the SMK you can enjoy the grand masters of art history along with cutting-edge contemporary artists and the rising stars of the art scene. No other museum in Denmark shows such a rich and varied selection of art – from the European classics of the Renaissance to the overwhelming diversity of modern and contemporary art. Here you will find gems by artists such as Mantegna, Nolde, Anna Ancher, Derain, Rubens, Matisse, Hammershøi, Munch, Abramovic, Danh Vo and Elmgreen & Dragset.
SMK is especially famous for its beautiful collection of Danish Golden Age art, the country’s most comprehensive collection of Danish contemporary art – and one of the world’s best Matisse collections.
Photo: Paul Skovbakke
Photo: Adam Moerk
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Photo: Paul Skovbakke
Photo: Laura Stamer
Photo: Laura Stamer
Photo: Paul Skovbakke
Photo: Ordrupgaard
Photo: Ordrupgaard
Ordrupgaard
ORDRUPGAARD – AN INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM DESTINATION
You will find Ordrupgaard in scenic, peaceful surroundings just 10 km north of Copenhagen. The museum offers a unique array of world-class art, design and architecture. The park has art to enjoy, too.
Monet, Degas, Gauguin – and Hammershøi
At Ordrupgaard, you can explore one of Northern Europe’s most important collections of French Impressionism, featuring leading figures like Monet, Degas and Gauguin. In addition, visitors can enjoy an exquisite collection of Danish art focusing on Vilhelm Hammershøi and his contemporaries – as well as a succession of special exhibitions.
Finn Juhl, Zaha Hadid and Snøhetta
You can also visit the former home of furniture designer Finn Juhl. Here his iconic furniture enters into a lively dialogue with the great Danish artists of modernism, just like when Finn Juhl lived here. Star architect Zaha Hadid and the award-winning design studio Snøhetta have also made their imprint on Ordrupgaard.
Art in the open air
In the park, you can explore works by leading contemporary artists. All visitors can give their inner child free rein, because here you are welcome to run, jump and climb on the art. Of course, you may simply prefer to settle on the lawn and enjoy the many sensory impressions offered by the scenic park. Ever since the couple who founded Ordrupgaard, Wilhelm and Henny Hansen, moved here in 1918, a pleasant, informal atmosphere has infused this place. It still does, making the museum popular with all generations.
In the café, the chefs conjure up dishes from fresh Nordic ingredients to provide pit-stop refreshments with breathtaking views to green parkland.
Temporary exhibitions:
AI WEIWEI – WATER LILIES #1, 31 May 2024 – 19 January 2025
Ai Weiwei, a highly celebrated voice in the world art, has set up his installation Water Lilies #1 (2022) at Ordrupgaard. This spectacular work comprises more than 650,000 Lego bricks and, with an impressive length of fifteen metres, it is Ai Weiwei’s biggest Lego work to date. The enormous installation reconfigures one of the most iconic impressionist paintings, namely Claude Monet’s equally monumental triptych Water Lilies (1914–26), now at MoMA in New York. Whereas Monet excludes any hint of his own sorrowful life in his depiction of the tranquil beauty of the water lily pond, Ai Weiwei inserts a black portal among the colourful water lilies, thus unlocking the narrative about his formative childhood years spent with his father in a Chinese work camp. The exhibition shows how Monet’s painting is woven into Ai Weiwei’s gripping life story to re-emerge as a confrontation with the systematic suppression of the freedom of speech, which the now exiled artist, and his father before him, have experienced on body and soul in their native China.
Related Attractions
Exhibitions in the Black Diamond - The Royal Danish Library
Storytelling, sensuous experiences and unique objects set the mind in motion when visiting exhibitions in The Black Diamond. With cultural heritage as an inexhaustible reservoir, everything from Søren Kierkegaard to contemporary art is staged, with particular emphasis on literature and photography.
Current Exhibitions:
The Camera and Us - The Camera and Us presents a selection of works from the photography collections of library, which contain several million images. The theme is the human being as a motif and the exhibition asks what photography does to our perception of ourselves and our conceptions of each other.
Treasures in the Royal Danish Library - An exhibition with library's most precious, beautiful, significant, and valuable treasures. From the oldest of manuscripts to the Internet's ever increasing digital cultural heritage. Explore gems from the collections of science, philosophy, cartography, music, and much more – or take a peek into the lives of a number of prominent Danes by reading Søren Kierkegaard's letter to his fiancé, Karen Blixen's own manuscript, or Hans Christian Andersen's diary.
ON THE EDGE, 23.2.24-10.8.24:
The exhibition ON THE EDGE focuses on The Black Diamond as an architectural landmark and as the users' building.
The Black Diamond is shaped like a sculptural monolith. With its distinct cubic shape and glossy black facade, the library's cultural centre has become one of Copenhagen's architectural icons. The Black Diamond has its 25th anniversary in 2024, and it will be celebrated with an anniversary exhibition. The exhibition focuses on the visions for the building, the Diamond's distinctive architecture and on the building's role today as a culture house and National Library.
Gl. Holtegaard is an art center with a programme of three to four ambitious exhibitions a year, both in the gallery of the main house and in the Baroque garden. The mission is to present contemporary and classical artworks that make history relevant and bring a fresh perspective to the age in which we live.
The gallery’s unique location in the historical buildings and grounds of Lauritz de Thurah’s Baroque complex is an integrated part of the exhibition profile. It is precisely this context that makes it possible to bring contemporary art into close contact with the historical material Gammel Holtegaard is made of.The Baroque garden is thus seen as an extended gallery, and exhibitions there are as carefully curated and presented as the indoor ones in the annual programme.
Gammel Holtegaard has a diverse year-round programme of events and activities relating to the exhibitions and to Gammel Holtegaard itself. These include artist talks, performances, talks, debates, garden tours, concerts, and much more.
Exhibitions (glhotegaard.dk):
YOU TOO WILL GET OLD, 1/6/24-1/9/24
Gammel Holtegaard’s summer exhibition You Too Will Get Old presents two solo shows by what at first glance would seem to be very different artists. Currently experiencing a major revival in the Danish art world, award-winning artist Kirsten Christensen (1943) presents an exclusive selection of works on loan from museums and private collectors, some of them never on view to the public before. At the other end of Gammel Holtegaard is Swedish artist Linnéa Sjöberg (1983) with a choice selection of key works from her oeuvre as her Danish debut.
NINA BEIER, 1/6/24-1/12/24
The internationally recognised Danish artist Nina Beier develops a large-scale new work for the baroque garden at Gammel Holtegaard. Marble is often part of Beier’s artistic practice, reflecting her interest in the material itself but especially the development of natural stone from its raw geological state to cultural artefact. In Beier’s works the gap between the history of an object and the symbolic value it accrues is accentuated and twisted in new juxtapositions and encounters. For Island the artist has collected slabs of marble and other stone originally cut to make kitchens and bathrooms. These she has spread in a specific section of the garden where they form a geological map of the world, transforming the original and natural into a kind of architecture that can be seen as an extension of the controlled design principles of a baroque garden.
Transport
Gl. Holtegaard is located north of Copenhagen, and both entrance and public transport is included in COPENHAGEN CARD - DISCOVER. We recommend using journeyplanner.dk to plan your trip.
The home of Karen Blixen - located directly by the Øresund Sound in Rungstedlund, an enchanting park and bird sanctuary north of Copenhagen.
An author’s childhood home
Karen Blixen was born in 1885 and died in 1962, but her memory lives on in her works and also this unique museum, opened in 1991 to honour her life and memory. You’ll find it on the site of her home growing up in Denmark, still virtually almost intact with the furniture from her childhood, as well as objects brought back from Kenya.
Experience the atmosphere of the rooms in which her well-known and beloved tales came into existence. You can also enjoy the many beautiful fresh flowers throughout the house, just as they were when Karen lived there.
Birdsong and wild flowers
The stunning garden grounds, with its 15-hectare bird reserve, attracts researchers and nature lovers from home and abroad. It is free to access and was established in 1958 by the author herself.
Here, too, walked the poet Johannes Ewald who has a hill named after him, and the park’s benches are named after others who once strolled its grounds for inspiration. You can even meet Karen Blixen herself. At the foot of Ewald’s Hill, you will find her grave beneath a large beech tree. The park is always open to visitors, who are invited to take a little walk and enjoy its beautiful natural setting. Nesting boxes are set up in the grove, and the space has become a breeding ground for many birds.
Cultural hub
The Karen Blixen Museum has a rich program of events and is a meeting place for those interested in culture and literature. All year round, writers, artists, researchers and politicians are invited to talk about some of the current topics in Danish culture, which has always been a thread to Karen Blixen's timeless writing.
When you’re there, you should also visit Madam Carlsen Café and Bistro, serving French-inspired dishes as well as a selection of wine, coffee, tea and cake. All meals are carefully prepared with fresh local produce from the estate.
Special exhibitions (blixen.dk):
Babette - The art of fine dining, 07.05.24-28.08.24
What happens when six craftsmen- and women are asked to interpret a world-renowned tale by Karen Blixen?
You can find the answer at the special exhibition BABETTE – THE ART OF FINE DINING, opening on May 7th at the Karen Blixen Museum Rungstedlund. Here craftsmen- and women, skilled in working with wood, clay, silver, glass, and textiles, will be displaying their individual interpretations of both the exquisite meal and the memorable guests depicted in Karen Blixen’s iconic story Babette’s Feast (1950).
The result is a remarkable meeting between generations – past and present.
Step into the Danish Golden Age Bakkehuset was an essential meeting place in the Danish Golden Age, hosted by Kamma and Knud Lyne Rahbek and frequently visited by Hans Christian Andersen, Oehlenschläger, H.C. Ørsted and other poets, scientists and opinion formers of the romantic period.
Today, Bakkehuset is buzzing with art and culture. The historic house and its surrounding gardens provide an authentic insight into the way of life in the early 19th century, its atmosphere and style. A visit to Bakkehuset is a visceral experience of one of the most central periods in Danish cultural history; the period that would become known as the Golden Age.
Hans Christian Andersen visited Bakkehuset as a young man and here he found inspiration and support to become a writer. His famous tales work as inspiration for creative activities in the cozy family area, Eventyrakademiet (the Fairytale Academy)
Experience the newly renovated romantic garden around Bakkehuset. You can enjoy coffee and historical food in the orangery, beautifully situated in the middle of the blossoming garden.
The café is set in the historical garden and serves traditional open sandwiches.
Spanning the period from the Danish Golden Age to the Skagen painters and the Modern Breakthrough, this Østerbro gallery presents some of the most evocative and moving paintings in Danish art history.
In a beautiful building, in the Østre Anlæg park in central Copenhagen, today listed as a building of special importance, you can discover some of the most important works by masters such as Eckersberg, Købke, Krøyer, and Hammershøi.
The museum is built around the personal art collection of Heinrich Hirschsprung, a tobacco manufacturer, who donated his collection to the Danish state in 1902. The collection offers a representative selection of paintings from one of the most outstanding eras of Danish art history.
The museum building is a beautiful example of the neo-classical style, where the interior, with its subdued colors and small galleries, creates a special and intimate atmosphere. There isn’t a better setting for the intimate portraits and scenes of daily life from over a hundred years ago that constitute much of the collection.
The museum building is a beautiful example of the neo-classical style, where the interior, with its subdued colours and small furnished galleries, creates a special and intimate atmosphere.
The museum is built around the personal art collection of tobacco manufacturer Heinrich Hirschsprung and his wife Pauline who donated his collection to the Danish state in 1902.
Every last Thursday of the month until 8 PM
Særudstillinger:
SOLDIERS. ART AND THE DANES AT WAR 1848-1864, 15.3.24-28.7.24
SOLDIERS. ART AND THE DANES AT WAR 1848-1864 is an exhibition about art and the popular image of the people’s warrior which arose with the wars in the 1800s. For the first time ever, the Danish soldier was given a leading role in general culture. The home front closely followed the war through photographic reports. Danish soldiers, student volunteers and sailors became heroes in large battle paintings. But art also tackled problems and conflicts. Families had to send their sons to the wars and, later, to receive and accommodate the returning veterans.
SOLDIERS. ART AND THE DANES AT WAR 1848-1864 is an exhibition about the ordinary Danish soldier. We see him in the field and on the battlefield, at camp and on leave. And we meet his family and the community to which he returned. The exhibition is also about visual strategies and blind spots. How did we perceive and understand the soldiers and their struggles? Could death and grief be accommodated in art? What happened to the scars of those who came home from the wars?
Opening Hours
21.05.2024 - 23.12.2024:Monday: closed
Tuesday: 11:00 - 17:00
Wednesday: 11:00 - 19:00
Thursday: 11:00 - 17:00
Friday: 11:00 - 17:00
Saturday: 11:00 - 17:00
Sunday: 11:00 - 17:00
Location
Vilvordevej 110
2920 Charlottenlund
Restaurant
Wheelchair Accessible