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.
Special Exhibitionss (smk.dk):
Against All Odds - Historical Women and New Algorithms 31/8-8/12/24
During the years 1870-1910, a number of Nordic female artists achieved success against all odds. However, despite their success, they were later forgotten and quietly disappeared from history. What happened? We investigate this question, bring the artists back into the spotlight and explore how artificial intelligence can be used to understand and communicate history in new ways.
Success against all odds
All 24 artists in the exhibition have one thing in common: they left their Nordic home countries to pursue their artistic ambitions abroad in places such as Germany, Italy, France and Greece. There, they met other women in the same situation, forming networks across national borders.
These international networks became a support — a cosmopolitan alternative to their home countries, where they had limited opportunities to train and work as artists. As a result, they all managed to achieve success and recognition in their own time. But later, a conservative backlash against women emerged — and they were all more or less written out of history.
Experience a major interactive installation by Ix Shells
In the exhibition, you will encounter both spectacular artworks by the 24 artists and digital installations based on artificial intelligence. These installations use the women’s artworks, biographies and research to tell their collective story.
One of today’s leading digital artists, Itzel Yard (b. 1990), also known as Ix Shells, has developed an interactive installation for the exhibition. In the installation, data about the 24 women is transformed into abstract forms that surround you and react to your movements. With this work, Ix Shells strives to unite the historical with the digital in a bodily and sensory experience.
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Photo: Adam Moerk
Photo: Paul Skovbakke
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Photo: Laura Stamer
Photo: Mark Tanggaard
Photo: Paul Skovbakke
Photo: Ordrupgaard
Photo: Ordrupgaard
Photo: Mark Tanggaard
Photo: Odrupgaard
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.
FLORA YUKHNOVICH. INTO THE WOODS - 18 September 2024 – 19 January 2025
British artist Flora Yukhnovich (b.1990) is acclaimed for her beautiful paintings in which she adopts the language of Rococo and Baroque, reimagining the dynamism of works by eighteenth-century artists through a filter of contemporary cultural references. Ordrupgaard now presents her first museum exhibition outside the UK. For this occasion, Yukhnovich has created four new paintings shown alongside recent works on loan from collections across the world. The female body is the recurrent motif in the sensually fabling canvases, leading the audience into a veritable forest of references.
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.
Ukrainian Diary – photographies by Boris Mikhailov from 1966 till today, runs until 11/1/25
Ukrainian Boris Mikhailov is one of Eastern Europe's most influential photographers, who has documented life in his homeland for half a century. The result is a poetic, beautiful, harsh, ugly and frightening contemporary look into life before, during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now you can experience his award-winning art in the exhibition Ukrainian Diary in The Black Diamond.
Ukrainian Diary is the first retrospective exhibition of Boris Mikhailov in Denmark. With over 500 works, the exhibition is not just a merciless look into Ukraine's tumultuous history over more than half a century. It also presents an artist's impressive life's work, spanning vastly different artistic methods and aesthetic expressions. He is known for his documentary, conceptual and performative works.
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.
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
Special exhibitions (hirschsprung.dk):
Women visualising the modern. Danish art 1880-1910, 28 August 2024 - 12 January 2025
The Modern Breakthrough is a firmly established part of the story of the birth of modern Denmark. It is a time shaped by Georg Brandes’s epoch-defining demands for new narratives and a rejection of old hierarchies, and authors such as Henrik Pontoppidan and Herman Bang came up with their takes on new, up-to-date narratives. Visual artists also entered the fray, exploring new subject matter that put contemporary problems up for discussion.But were men the only ones who had something to say? And what happens when you replace names like Peder Severin Krøyer, Erik Henningsen and L.A. Ring with those of Anna Ancher, Augusta Dohlmann, Anna Sophie Petersen, Johanne Krebs and Sofie Holten? A major exhibition at The Hirschsprung Collection unveils another kind of Modern Breakthrough. Here we show a selection, unprecedented in scope, of women artists who had their breakthrough on the art scene during this pivotal period in Denmark when the world opened up and women got greater opportunities for self-expression.Using the Modern Breakthrough as a lens, The Hirschsprung Collection homes in on the women’s contribution to the visual arts of the period, mapping out their production, the themes they addressed and the questions and problems they put up for discussion. The exhibition unpacks how they processed and renegotiated subjects, themes and strategies they encountered in established art. In so doing, we expand, nuance and challenge the established perception of this landmark period, presenting a selection of works previously unknown to the public from a crucial turning point in Denmark’s history.
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
Café
Wheelchair Accessible