Kultural Kobenhavn (Museums & Art Galleries in Copenhagen in general)

Member Name: chinnyli

Product:	Museums & Art Galleries in Copenhagen in general
Date:	07/09/01 (1302 review reads)
Rating:

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There's plenty of museums to see in Copenhagen, and unless you're staying a fair while, it's quite impossible to see them all. This is an overview on the museums I did manage to see, not in great depth I'm afraid, and I've focused mainly on my experience rather than any historical background etc (unfortunately this means I will be commenting on exhibits not happening anymore!) but hopefully enough to give you some idea of what they're like.

All of these were free to access for Copenhagen Card holders, (see my Kool Kopenhavn op for details on this, or if you want info on Copenhagen on general), although I've also included their normal admission prices, and transport details if I know them - most of them are actually walkable from the city centre.

I haven't written individual ops on these as I don't think I have enough to say about them, but I've included ratings as though I'm writing about them separately.

- Arken - Museet for Moderne Kunst -
Skovvej 100, Ishoj Strandpark (http://www.arken.dk)
Price: Adults 50 DKK/Children 20 DKK
Open: Tues-Sun 10.00-17.00, Wed 10.00-21.00. Closed Mondays
Getting there: S-train on A, A+, E or E+ line to Ishoj, then bus 128 from outside the station. Information is also available from the tourist office in the basement of the shopping centre adjoining the station.

Denmark's newest centre of modern art (it was inaugurated in 1996) "is located in a scenic setting in an extensive dune landscape", boasts Ishoj's promotional magazine. And I'm sure this would've been more obvious back in 1996 when the dunes weren't quite so overgrown with plant life. You'd be hard pushed to try to duplicate the magnificent view of the museum rising like a sailing boat out of the sand dunes as is used in most tourist materials (particularly as it was photographed from the sea!)

Arken was designed by Danish architect Soren
Robert Lund, and unlike the newly built Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, focuses less on texture, and more on extreme contrasts. It uses stark white walls, veering off in various directions, most noticeable at the entrance where the walls seem to draw you into the focal point of a black 'grilled' minuscule entrance.

Inside, the museum is spacious and perplexing in layout. The art here is predominantly 2D, which is disappointing considering the amount of (floor) space they have, although the works on display do change frequently, and the subject matter is often confrontational.

Like most museums, Arken has a changing exhibition - until Aug 26, 2001, they presented the rather ambitiously titled 'The Desiring Eye - the best pictures of the history of photography'. The exhibition draws on 150 years worth of black and white photos from Moderna Museets collection, varying from the romantic/melancholic pre-Raphaelites portraits of solemn women, to photos of harsh cityscapes, and 'realist' unromanticised views of modern(ish) day life.

It's a fascinating insight into how the witnessing/commentating eye, as well as photography techniques and styles, has changed over the centuries, although I would not say all of these are "the best" in the history of photography. There are a lot of excellent photos here, but some let the exhibition down by being, well, aesthetically mundane and unstimulating.

There's a café on the upper floor, contained within a glass enclosure so that you have a view out over the dunes and a bit of the sea.

Oh there's also free internet access here - intended for browsing around their homepage and related links, although there's actually nothing to stop you (ie no censor controls) from looking at other sites, maybe checking up on email or how many ratings you have so far on Dooyoo :)

4*

- Guiness World Records Museum -
Ostergade 16, Kobenha
vn (http://www.guiness.dk)
Price: Adults 59 DKK/Children 54 DKK
Open: Mon-Sun 10.00-18.00, closes later at 22.30 Jun-Aug

Gosh I'm so embarrassed to admit I was here! We quite desperately needed a toilet at the time, so sought out the closest 'free' museum we could find.

The Guinness World Records Museum is very obviously geared towards kids, and uses a combination of video footages, sculptures and models to show what world records have been achieved.

It's interesting in concept, however as very few of the exhibits are interactive in nature or offer children the opportunity to touch or approach figures/object, I fail to see how they can find this exciting! There are a lot of human scale models (ie the fattest man in the world sitting with the oldest, the world's biggest apple, biggest spoon etc), but these are often cordoned off, with information cards simply explaining what their feats were.

Some were worse, being simply tiny cheap looking toy models 'reconstructing' scenes (badly) within a glass box - like the biggest car park, or the biggest garden maze - while others weren't realistically represented at all - the woman who had the longest hair in the world was Indian... so Guiness World Records Museum used a Caucasion looking female dummy?!

Also a little confusing, is that the museum doesn't only include world records. Quite frequently, there will be localised records, ie the oldest fun fair in Denmark (Tivoli), and er, the highest mountain... which isn't anywhere near quite as impressive than the actual world record. Perplexing for tourists, but I suppose they do need to attract the local crowd too.

At various points, there are question and answer quizzes on the wall, testing what you have learned so far I assume - I couldn't actually tell because they weren't in English.

The museum was very informative, and the facts often quite interesting, bu
t to learn anything, you will have to read the signs! If I were an 8-year-old kid, I'm pretty sure I would just go "ooh" at the sculptures, "look at that fat man eating all those cakes!" or "why there loadsa feet under that telephone box?" and then walk on to the next item without reading anything! And if I were a 14-year old: "MumcanIgoonarcadesmumcanIcanI?"

I noted with some amusement that the museums exits out through a turnstile, and uncharitably dumps you into a sort of 'waiting area' with a few seats, a table football, refreshments machine and toilet facilities from where you can get out onto the streets. What no café or souvenir shop? Or someone to say "goodbye and hope you enjoyed being here"?

Highlight of the museum for me? A video footage at the start of the museum showing the longest domino lineup in process.

2*

- Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum -
HC Andersens Boulevard 22 (http://www.tussaud.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 68/Children DKK 28
Open: Mon-Sun 10.00-18.00. Closes later at 22.00 May-Aug
Getting there: From Kobenhavn station, walk down Vesterbrogade along the North side of Tivoli Gardens, turn right at the end onto HC Andersens Boulevard and you'll almost be there.

I'd been avoiding Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, purely because it is blatantly a tourist trap, but couldn't resist seeing the Danish version - particularly as I could get in free with the Copenhagen Card.

It's much better than the Guinness World Records Museum (honest!) though not because the wax figures are any good! The sculptures have a passing resemblance to real people from a distance, but when you look up close, something seems off-kilter... the skin tone might not be quite right, the eyes look too glazed etc. In some cases it's more obvious - the figures look too young!

It's quite amusing to see youthful replicas
of Tony Blair, Princess Diana, Prince Charles, (a very young) Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philips, and Bill Clinton - they obviously need updating, but even more amusing are the settings they're placed in. Politicians looking animated, while the royals look glum sitting around a table, apart from standing Di with a fixed plastic smile, while Charles is looking lonely sitting at a study desk.

However, Louis Tussaud's destroys the concept Madame Tussaud's is most famous for, being able to be photographed next to the rich and famous without ever meeting them. Virtually all the figures are cordoned off, meaning you can't stand right next to the figures, which makes this just a museum like any other.

Although the famous figures are naff (watch out too for singers, artists, scenes from films etc), the fairy tale scenes are quite endearing and creative. There are scenes from some of Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen's stories including Sleeping Beauty (she breathes!), the Snow Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Thumbelina and others.

Watch out also for figures that look as though they're another visitor, one even takes pictures!

The dungeon in the basement is quite fun too, providing a few gruesome shocks. Remember to check out the toilets there :)

3-1/2* (yes I know that's cheating!)

- NY Carlsberg Glyptotek -
Dantes Plads 7 (http://www.glyptoteket.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 30/Children DKK 20. Free admission Wed and Sun.
Open: Tue-Sun 10.00-16.00

Getting there: From Kobenhavn station, turn right down Bernstorffsgade along Tivoli Gardens, cross road then turn left onto Tietgensgade and walk straight down until you meet another major road. Turn around and the Glyptotek should be behind you.

Similar in content to the British Museum in London, the Glyptotek (I'm not sure why it's called NY Carlsberg) has a large collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Etruscan ar
t, as well as examples of French 19th century paintings and sculptures, and Danish Golden Age paintings.

The focal points of this museum are the classical sculptures exhibited in classical style. There's one just near the entrance, surrounded by an indoor pool and garden. Another is a beautiful room used for recitals, and has several Greek figures lining the room and along the walls between columns.

The rest, because they weren't displayed in the same 'appropriate' settings, I found a bit dull - the usual glass cases and randomly arranged artefacts around each room.

3 stars

- Rundetaarn - Round Tower -
Kobmagergade 52A (http://www.rundetaarn.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 15/Children DKK 5
Open: Mon-Sat 10.00-17.00, Sun 12.00-17.00. Closes later until 20.00 Jun-Aug

Not strictly a gallery, although the Round Tower does have an excellent exhibition space in the Library Hall (halfway up the tower) where the content changes frequently.

The exhibitions there aren't well promoted... though there were small posters on display outside the tower, I didn't see any adverts about it in the rest of the city, and didn't even realise there was an exhibition there until we went up.

I was lucky enough to catch Jacob Holdt's exhibition 'Earth is a sinful song - American pictures in 25 years', before it finished on Aug 19, 2001.

Jacob Holdt, a Danish photographer, is best known for his controversial slideshow 'American Pictures', created during his five-year journey as a vagabond in USA. This exhibition uses the same photos from that slideshow, as well as a large (though small part of his portfolio) selection of photos from his travels in Bolivia, Nepal, Thailand, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Kosovo, depicting startling, painful and often very intimate scenes of ostracised people living in the harshest of circumstances - in run down shacks, without basic ameni
ties such as clean water, warmth or light, and where some are used to digging in the ground for red clay to eat.

The exhibition leaflet explains: "The photos attempts to describe the effects of racism on the black ghettos in which he (Holdt) felt that 'blacks from the very first day took me by my hand to show me their deep pain - a pain I could as an outsider soon see was caused by the white oppression'."

The people here often look haunted, forlorn and tired, and yet there are some astonishingly beautiful and tender pictures included here too - Holdt often preferred to give money he could've used on a hotel to impoverished people instead, in exchange for being able to live with them and see their true circumstances. In this way, he was quickly able to gain his host's trust, and was able to photograph them in their most vulnerable and intimate moments - relaxing after a hard days work, reuniting lovers embracing, or of lovers in the throes of passion.

Holdt usually kept in contact with the people he stayed with, and it is heartbreaking to see pictures of the same people 25 years later, living in exactly the same conditions - although there was at least one success story who managed to escape the cycle of poverty, and who became a lecturer.

4*

- Statens Museum for Kunst -
Solvgade 48-50 (http://www.smk.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 40/Children free. Free admission Wed.
Open: Tue-Sun 10.00-17.00

Denmark's national gallery shows a mixture of paintings, drawings, graphic, sculptures and installation art from the 14th century to the present. Like any other national gallery, the collection is pretty overwhelming (took us a fair few hours to get about half way through), and like any other large gallery, not everything is worth seeing. I can guarantee you will be bored after two hours, particularly if you've already visited loads of other museums, however, there will likely be at leas
t one section that interests you.

My favourite part of this museum were the fairly new exhibition rooms on the lower ground floor called x-rummet. These promote mainly Danish contemporary artists, and are best suited for conceptual art installations that you won't see in the rest of the museum.

From Jun 23 - Sep 9 2001, they were showing 'A Room Defined by its Accessibility' by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. These were three art installations that aimed to make familiar surroundings seem impotent and useless.

For instance, 'Elevated Gallery' mocks the exhibition space, by placing a clinically sparse office inside one of the rooms (room within a room). However, the image is disjointed purposefully by tilting the whole office structure at an angle and hanging it from the ceiling. You can walk under the walls, the desk and chair, but in no way are you able to participate within the office space as 'normal', you can't sit at the chair, nor can you use the desk.

'Tilted Wall' is simply two walls of a building with a doorway and emergency exit sign, but laid down on the floor instead of upright. The structure is made inaccessible and pointless as the door and exit sign doesn't lead anywhere.

Also worth seeing, purely for amusement even if you don't have kids with you, is the Children's Art Gallery (aimed at classes of 6-12 year olds). About twice a year, the gallery selects a range of artworks from the main museum to include as part of an educational programme here.

The museum tries to be fairly interactive and stimulating but without actually allowing children to touch the works (children can "touch with their eyes", though there weren't actually any barriers around the sculptures). Children are led first to a small 'cinema' screening to watch the gallery mascot (some sort of monster) wander around an exhibition - they then follow in the masc
ot's footsteps (footprints painted on the floor) to the main exhibition room where they will see the works they have just seen in the screening.

The exhibition on display when we went was 'Round about Sculpture' (Jun 16 - Apr 21 2001) and had only three sculptures. There's a sort of blocky seating area for you to sit on... hit a large blobby button on the wall and room lights will dim, and sound effects will begin with sporadic spotlighting on each of the sculptures. I'd have to say I found the random screams and horse galloping sounds somewhat perplexing, and quite amusing. However, the sound effects make sense as you walk round to look at the sculptures' descriptions - instead of being simply explanations of what the sculpture is about, they ask children what they think is happening in the image, providing various prompts such as asking why they think the horse is running, is the dog scaring or helping the horse, what caused the woman to fall off the horse etc.

There's another exhibition room just outside, although there aren't many works here either, and no sound effects or 'prompts'.

Oh there's also a children's workshop upstairs, but don't think I was silly enough to try out the facilities there! The boyfriend had a peek around the doorway, and said there was a rather bored and lonely looking woman sitting at a computer hoping for a mass of children to arrive :).

4*

- Tycho Brahe Planetarium udstilling -
Gammel Kongevej 10 (http://www.tycho.dk/)
Price DKK 15/Children DKK 10
Open: Tue,Thu 09.30 - 21.00, Wed 09.45 - 21.00, Fri-Mon 10.30-21.00

Not much to see here - most of the exhibition is contained within just one room, which may explain why it only costs DKK 15 to get in. The planetarium also has a cinema, but you'll have to pay extra for that (adult DKK 75/children 56, or with Copenhagen card adult DKK 60/children DKK 46).

There&#
39;s loads of information about space, and makes some of it interesting using interactivity - for instance, you can compare your weight on earth with that on the moon, or on planet Jupiter. You can see what different star constellations look like (you wouldn't believe how many there are), and see how gravity affects spinning objects in space, or the size of the planets in our solar system relative to each other.

They also had a piece of rock from the moon, collected when Neil Armstrong landed there in god knows when, but I failed to be impressed by it (I'm sorry, but it just looks like any other rock!)

3*


Other museums that I would've liked to have seen, but either didn't offer free entrance with the Copenhagen card or I just didn't get round to visiting, are:

- Det Kongelige Bibliotek -
Soren Kierkegaards Plads 1 (http://www.kb.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 30/Children DKK 10, with Copenhagen Card Adult 20/Children 5
Open: Mon-Sat 10.00-19.00
Getting there: Harbour bus 901 to Det Kongelige Bibliotek

The Royal Library, otherwise known as Black Diamond, is an impressive modern black building adjoined to a somewhat older one! Black Diamond itself is split into four sections, designed to look as though the building has been sliced open and pulled apart so that you can see its innards.

It's obviously free to just look at the building from the outside, but they also have exhibitions and concerts which may be worth checking out.

- Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst -
Gammel Strandvej 13 (http://www.louisiana.dk/)
Price: Adult DKK 60/Children 20, with Copenhagen card Adult DKK 55/Children 15
Open: Thu-Tue 10.00-17.00, Wed 10.00-22.00
Getting there: Re train to Humlebaek

Situated by the coast, this museum has a large collection of modern art from 1945 onwards, and features frequently changing exhibitions focusing on modern, international art.

>- Carlsberg Besogscenter -
Gammel Carlsbergvej 11, Valby
Price: Free apparently!
Open: Tue-Sun

I'm not sure how I managed to miss this one! Carlsberg Visitor's Centre shows the history and development of the brewery. But I hear you get to sample their lager at the end too (like you don't know what it tastes like?!) I personally would prefer to visit Tuborg's brewery instead if it were possible - much easier on the palate, and less, um, common :)


Finally in case you're still craving more info on Copenhagen museums, Collingwood21 has written a very thorough op on Nationalmuseet (Danish National Museum, free admission to Copenhagen Card holders).

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