Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek right on time

By Stig Miss
Director, Thorvaldsens Museum

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek was reopened on 27 June 2006 – Seven Sleepers’ Day. The renowned Danish brewer and patron of the arts Carl Jacobsen (1842–1914) – founder of the Glyptotek – always launched his major initiatives on this particular day. Selecting precisely this date for the reopening in 2006 reflected the influence the founder still has on the museum today, extending over areas of greater importance than an opening date.

Aerial view of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. The squared-off main structures provide a sense of harmony for all the individual architectural components.

The reopening marked the end of a three-year period during which the Glyptotek had been closed, and the completion of a second rebuilding project in the DKK 100 million (approximately EUR 13.5 million) class. A mere ten years ago, a similar amount was invested when a new wing – designed as a house within a house by Henning Larsen – was built to display the collection of French Impressionism in the south-west inner courtyard of the original building, designed by Hack Kampmann. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek consists of two building complexes with distinctly different exteriors: Vilhelm Dahlerup’s building, opened in 1897, with its façade on H. C. Andersens Boulevard (formerly Vestre Boulevard), and Hack Kampmann’s building dating from 1906, with a much less known façade on Stoltenbergsgade. The Winter Garden between these two complexes was planned as early as the initial stages of construction of the building designed by Dahlerup, but was first completed in connection with the erection of the Kampmann Building in 1906. As mentioned, the Larsen Building was added in 1996, and has now been followed by the latest project, which is not an extension, but a transformation and refurbishment. DISSING+WEITLING – the museum’s architectural partners – are responsible for the latter.

The Dahlerup façade of the Glyptotek. Photo by Ole Haupt.

Transformation and refurbishment in brief

Spatially, the renovations include first and foremost the layout of a new foyer in the basement below the ground floor of the Dahlerup Building. Public access is now via four new flights of steps in the museum entrance hall. A rope extending across the entrance hall between the two stairways indicates that visitors must go down these steps to enter the museum. The floor of the new foyer in this lowest level – the word basement is no longer appropriate – is 110 cm lower than that in the previous, painted basement, and extends across the entire width of the Dahlerup Building. The extremely attractive red and natural white Verona limestone floor laid in this room matches the blue and white checkerboard pattern on the ground floor just above. The ticket office, cloakroom lockers and toilets are located here, along with special facilities for use by groups of schoolchildren. All the fixtures and fittings are made of black-stained oak with brass strips, and black granite with bronze details.
The other new spatial initiative is the interior design of a completely new permanent exhibition section – The Mediterranean Horizon – the main feature of which is the museum’s Etruscan Collection. However, this horizon extends all the way round the Mediterranean. It begins with rooms that display works from the Near Eastern cultures along with the Etruscans, and ends with a gradual transition to the Roman culture. This new arrangement is laid out in a number of rooms on the ground floor of the Larsen Building, and five of the rooms have not been open to the public since the 1930s. Some of the rooms, however, were previously used to display the Etruscan Collection.
In addition, there is an extensive new arrangement of the Collection of Ancient Art in the Kampmann Building, in the same rooms it has always been, but now with more focus on the thematic and chronological relationships. The collection of art from the Danish Golden Age has been rehung in the rooms on the first floor of the Dahlerup Building and, in general, the Glyptotek has made great efforts throughout to provide texts that accompany both the individual works and the contents of individual rooms. A new signage system has also been added, featuring more detailed texts in both Danish and English. Parts of these texts still need to be completed, but the framework for their form and content is there.
The eye-catching focus on providing information is also evident in the two “information areas” located on the ground floor just to the left before going down to the Winter Garden, and on the first floor of the Dahlerup Building, looking out over the Winter Garden. Computers are set up in these areas, where the museum’s web site provides information about events, arrangements, exhibitions and the individual works in the museum’s collections.

Metropolitan zone and metropolitan museum

The Lord Mayor of Copenhagen and the Mayor of the Technical and Environmental Administration recently launched an initiative to redefine the process of development in the part of the Copenhagen city centre that extends from the main railway station to the town hall and from the harbourfront to the Jarmers Plads square. They named this area the metropolitan zone. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek definitely lies within this zone and cannot avoid being ascribed even more “metropolitan significance” if the city government carries out the initiatives that have so far only been hinted at. It is interesting to note that this provides clear differentiation between state museums of art on the outskirts of the zone and a major museum of art right in its centre, with the municipality as an important working partner.
However, this development does not feel wrong. In recent decades, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek has in many ways taken on the role as the main museum of art in the centre of the Danish capital, just as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) does so in New York, not only in its exterior form, with its constantly changing architecture, but also as regards its very location in the urban environment, its visitor count and, to some degree, also its content and layout.
Seen from above, both the Met and the Glyptotek consist of large rectangular structures with very constricting exterior shapes that seem to have a calming effect on all the architectural features that emerge subsequently and that have to co-exist within that outer framework every time extensions are built or alterations are made. Even though the exteriors of both museums have features in common, the overall scale – quite naturally – differs greatly between New York and Copenhagen. This also applies to their location in the urban landscape. The Met has Central Park as its nearest neighbour, and the Glyptotek has the Tivoli Gardens, which were probably not the worst of neighbours for many years. In the years following its establishment, the Tivoli Gardens amusement park was a distinguished part of urbane society in Denmark, even though Carl Jacobsen himself referred to the site as “that plebeian Tivoli”. His words have held true in recent years, especially as regards the unusually ugly rear side of the gardens that now back onto Tietgensgade and the north façade of the Glyptotek. The Tivoli Gardens’ plans for further conquests of the urban environment by building a high-rise hotel and luxury apartments on the Town Hall Square also constitute an insult to democracy and are downright destructive for a special Copenhagen identity, but that is another story …
In terms of visitors, the Glyptotek has long been one of the most popular museums of art in Denmark, and is unrivalled as the most popular in the Danish capital. However, there are also parallels with the Met as far as content and layout are concerned. The two museums are actually museum complexes, with the intricacy and diversity that can be perceived as impenetrable, but which are also fascinating – and indeed brim with opportunities, to a degree that someone standing at the entrance can scarcely imagine. The collections are essentially unpredictable in their layout. They feature large numbers of different subsets from within a long history of art, have clear focal points, and do not follow any systematic and linear pattern. The growth of the collections is largely determined by the interests of particular individuals and by financial resources. And the interior architecture is correspondingly different, following the same contemporary interests and their wishes regarding renovations and new buildings. Both museums feature the fascinating – at least for some of us – opportunity for being able to escape into the depths of a museum. In a museum that is actually well attended by visitors, it is nevertheless possible to suddenly arrive in a place that nobody else seems to have found, a place where one can be left alone and end up in a dead end, a small staircase or a narrow corridor.

Minimalistic and yet opulent

The new foyer on the lower floor presents a straightforward visual change. The black-stained oak furnishings stand out in sharp contrast to the light, roughly buffed walls, where the brickwork in the walls and arched buttresses has been left semi-visible and leaves visitors in no doubt that they are actually on a lower floor. In fact, it is tempting to use the word basement. On a hot summer’s day, with very little in the way of outdoor clothes, a trip all the way down to the “basement” solely to buy an admission ticket seems to make little sense. Bearing in mind that the lower floors of museums all over the world are to an increasing extent also being used for museum shops, information desks, lecture rooms and other more service-oriented purposes, this floor space might in time come to be used for other activities that more amply justify going all the way down and up again.

The new foyer placed below ground. The chequer-board floor surface made of Verona limestone can be seen on the left.

At the same time, however, there is naturally a point in focusing on this very tight, almost minimalistic idiom in the new foyer. The simplicity of this underground level is, of course, counterbalanced by the lavishness of the materials used in the museum architecture – full of Jacobsen symbols and crammed with ornamentation – in the building upstairs (I. C. Jacobsen wrote to Carl Jacobsen: “The problem is that you got rich too quickly!”). If one had gone down here straight from the street, the effect would be impressive, but on the other hand, it would have been fairly unnatural not to use the main entrance – the original one – and the old front door, which was also restored to its original position in conjunction with the rebuilding.

Art and cultural history

 The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek has always been a museum of art in every sense of the word. In 1887, Jacobsen wrote to Wolfgang Helbig, his agent in Rome, that: “In my opinion, the Glyptotek’s ‘specialty’ should be this: to show my fellow citizens the most beautiful that art can create and has created”. It therefore represents a new path for the museum to set up the permanent new Mediterranean Horizon exhibition section that includes a distinct focus on the cultural history background. However, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s other exhibitions do indeed follow the original intention of setting up and displaying works of art.
The Mediterranean Horizon section explicitly aims to provide the background necessary for visitors to be able to understand and grasp the other ancient history collections in the museum. It was a good idea to make a virtue out of a necessity by doing so, because the Etruscan Collection at the Glyptotek has always been of a different character than the remaining ancient history collections. Especially so because it contains artefacts, implements and burial relics reflecting how people actually lived, rather than individual works that could appear as individual works of art rooted in aesthetics.
Carl Jacobsen believed that the Etruscans were in no way a people that created art. He only acquired Etruscan artefacts to provide a link between Greek and Roman art, and this was definitely a matter of “artefacts” and not art. He was also convinced that it would be very difficult to attract any real interest in the exhibition of these Etruscan “artefacts”. They were therefore displayed in the basement of the Kampmann Building, where visitors went down to them, and it is reported that they were seldom seen by visitors and spent a quiet existence there. It was not until after World War II, when interest in Antiquity had become distinctly “art-archaeological”, that the Etruscan Collection was rearranged. The opening in 1966 attracted considerable attention, with the most “archaeological” artefacts omitted, but displayed with new lighting in new showcases – under what were for that period optimal aesthetic conditions. Signage was limited, in keeping with the overall tone of the museum. The works of art were expected to speak for themselves.
In subsequent research work, it became clear that relics from the Etruscan culture not only fill the gap between Greek and Roman art, but should also rather be viewed in context with contemporary Phoenician, Cypriot, Egyptian, Greek and Syrian cultures, and the numerous links and thriving commerce that criss-crossed the Mediterranean. Hence the name of the new exhibition section – the Mediterranean Horizon. The key to this treatment is to accept that the Etruscan Collection at the Glyptotek is different in nature from the remaining ancient history collections. The exhibition accentuates this difference and at the same time adds a lead-up that involves the museum’s other collections of arte minori from the other parts of the Mediterranean region, along with a conclusion that sheds light on Etruscan culture’s gradual integration into Roman culture.
In this way, one is provided – at least, that is the intention – with both basic knowledge about and an introduction to the museum’s other collections of ancient art.Visitors can choose to see this introduction first and thus become better prepared for the fantastic, but not quite as well promoted, Collection of Ancient Art in the rest of the Kampmann Building. Whether or not it works this way will depend on the experience gained in time to come.
Although visitors may not consider them particularly radical, a considerable number of changes have also taken place in the remaining ancient history collections, largely displayed in the same room as they have been ever since Director Vagn Poulsen’s new arrangement was completed in 1951. And there are definitely changes, including a major focus on grouping the works according to specific themes as regards both motif and the way in which the works were originally used and located in ancient times. More distinction has also been made of the chronological aspect. In addition, all the rooms have been painted in colours that are closer to those originally used.

Carl Jacobsen and posterity

To mark the occasion of the transformation and refurbishment, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek has published an extremely attractive book (designed by Mette and Eric Mourier) that is also very informative: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek i tiden (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek In Our Day), whichcontains a considerable number of texts written by the museum staff. This book provides very good coverage of all the most important aspects of the museum’s origins, subsequent events, the organisational structure, considerations regarding the expansion of the collections and changing decor – both that seen by visitors and the areas behind the scenes. It also describes all the different measures undertaken to promote the collections over the course of time. I personally remember witnessing a cowboy hat being placed on Caesar Vespasian’s head to make him seem as contemporary as President Johnson. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, but such a happening would not have been accepted today.
Reading this new book carefully, including taking note of what lies between the lines, it becomes clear that – despite the world-famous collections and having the financial good health that stems from the backing of the two Carlsberg Foundations – there are numerous, difficult problems to address at a museum founded by an eccentric, where there were no restrictions regarding either grandeur or limitations.
Jacobsen, Jacobsen, Jacobsen – his name and endeavours are repeated time and time again throughout the book, both in praise and as a hindrance almost impossible to escape from. He was responsible for the strong statements regarding the museum’s purpose and character. He paid whatever was necessary to establish the museum and he was the one who first collected and subsequently donated everything to public ownership. The young man first became fascinated by French sculpture, exhibited at the salons in Paris. 1878 was a year of awakening for Carl Jacobsen, who bought Eugène Delaplanche’s La Musique from the previous year. A number of other French temptations followed. In most cases, even though these works were exhibited at the salons in Paris, this is no longer regarded as praiseworthy – on the contrary. Carl Jacobsen also considered Danish sculptors such as Rudolph Tegner and Stephan Sinding as being exceptional. Currently, however, neither of them is particularly conspicuous at the top of the popularity charts.

The newly arranged Greco-Roman sculptures. Photo by Ole Haupt.

Nevertheless, Carl Jacobsen was pleased and regarded French salon art as something that would revitalise Danish sculpture in the footsteps of Thorvaldsen. As Flemming Friborg so rightly points out in the book, he also quite clearly wanted to break away from the artistic line pursued by his father, featuring an unshakeable belief in Thorvaldsen’s greatness. Excluding Thorvaldsen and those sculptures that represented a continuation of Thorvaldsen’s artistic style was also a way for Jacobsen to get back at his father. Thorvaldsen already had his own museum, anyway.
A few years later, La Musique and the other members of that ensemble were no longer considered contemporary, topical art – not even in Denmark. Jacobsen had gambled on something that was already passé, and this was perfectly clear to his contemporaries. In 1878, for example, he had paid the considerable sum of 20,000 Danish kroner to the Gallerikommissionen (a commission that bought works of art for the National Collection of Paintings and Sculpture), intended for casts of more recent French sculpture. However, these funds were not used for their intended purpose at all. The two dominant board members of the Legatet Albertina (Albertina Foundation) during the period 1879–97 were Carl Jacobsen, who had provided the basic capital for the foundation, and the architect Ferdinand Meldahl. The foundation was to pay for erecting sculptures in Copenhagen, but these two board members could not agree on anything at all. Jacobsen wanted to buy new French sculpture, while Meldahl was more interested in new Danish sculpture. Fortunately for posterity, a compromise was reached in the form of the purchase of bronze casts of sculptures from antiquity.
Should the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek work for or against – or both for and against – so powerful a founding figure? This is clearly spelled out in an excerpt from a May 1922 decision by the board of directors of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, where the future acquisition policy was discussed: “In accordance with the aim that the founder of the Glyptotek had in mind when acquiring the collections, the board of the Glyptotek should give priority to endeavouring to expand the sculpture collection itself (…) Within the other areas covered by the sculpture collection – also in accordance with the founder’s intentions – the modern French department must have priority over the modern sculpture of other countries. As regards Danish sculpture in particular, and given that the state maintains a special collection that has acquiring works of this kind as its purpose, this should fall outside the normal programme of activities for the Glyptotek, so that such activities should only take place as special exceptions”.
As far as the collection of paintings was concerned, the board decided on the same occasion that this collection was a private matter for the founder – in common with Thorvaldsen’s collection of paintings – and that it should only be given secondary status in conjunction with the board’s work. It was called “an element of variety and entertainment for visitors” and the board regarded the collection as completed. What was remarkable, however, was that apart from not being able to buy any more recent Danish sculpture (Denmark’s National Art Gallery would be expected to do that), this plan was scarcely followed at all. The sculpture collection did not develop significantly – either in terms of French sculpture or to any extent whatsoever in terms of the type of sculpture that Jacobsen cherished most. And the collection of paintings was developed to a vast extent, not least during the period Carl Jacobsen’s son Helge Jacobsen was director (1915–26), even though it had been regarded as completed. And this has been the case ever since, not least in terms of the large, excellent collection of art from the Danish Golden Age.
Helge Jacobsen placed great emphasis on building up the collection of French painting from Corot to Gauguin, and especially the Impressionists. This was exactly the kind of art that Carl Jacobsen was definitely not interested in. Helge also hit back at his father this way, and let his own personal taste take over. Not that this in any way made the museum less interesting, but it does raise difficult questions for posterity. What, for example, should one do with the “salon sculpture” today and what rôle shall the now very large collection of paintings play when trying to preserve the original intention expressed in the name of the museum: Glyptotek – a place for exhibiting sculptures?

On the safe side – and searching

Other collections were subsequently added – as well as acquisitions that extended the existing collections. And – in the true Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek spirit – these were private collections of a somewhat confined nature. These included Lizzie and Knud Deichmann Heegaard’s collection of icons, bequeathed in the period 1978–85, the artist Richard Winther’s collection of European art from the 1930s to the 1950s, and Dr Erik Andreasen’s collection of abstract art. None of these collections are on display in the reopened Glyptotek.
This helps create the clear impression that one of the endeavours of the transformation and refurbishment process was also to consolidate the museum’s efforts in carrying out its core expertise. This should not be interpreted as a negative statement. The fundamental idea behind the philosophy of any museum is preservation, keeping both the collections and the buildings intact, and using these as a basis for providing research and information activities that benefit its visitors.

The Mediterranean Horizon – a radical innovation for the Glyptotek. Photo by Ole Haupt.

Even the radical, innovative Mediterranean Horizon section at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek can be interpreted as “... an update of the culture and history of art aspect that was the reason Carl Jacobsen decided to set up an Etruscan collection” (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek i tiden, p. 61). Restoring the colour scheme of the individual rooms in the Kampmann Building to the original can also be regarded as part of this overall endeavour. Moreover, nothing is left to chance as regards the professional, top-tuned flair for the actual running of the museum – in terms of the security and proper care of the collections, or the provision of signs, lighting, the museum’s web site, upkeep of the Winter Garden or the security staff uniforms. Congratulations on this well-oiled “museum machinery”! Although we can sometimes echo Leonard Cohen’s “there is a crack, a crack in everything”, this certainly does not apply in this case. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek has now set the stage for achieving a good placing in the league of metropolitan museums, with the exchange of individual works and whole exhibitions that is the hallmark of life in the international art world at the highest level. And with one particular key asset – the collection of French paintings from Corot to Gauguin – the very kind of art that tops the “blockbuster” lists at museums all over the world, year after year.
But the cracks are also where the light gets in, and being on the safe side is not necessarily always fun. It will be exciting to follow the course of this museum in the years to come. On a personal level, I am extremely satisfied that there are still places at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek where I can escape and marvel at being alone. These include finding myself at the end of the long rooms with skylights, right up under the roof of the Dahlerup Building, or just as I think I have covered everything there is to see in the Mediterranean Horizon section, I end up standing in front of a wall. It turns out that it is in fact possible to go around to the other side, and hanging right there on a wall in front of a storage room are Ian Keever’s Whispers drawings. A very intimate whisper, fragile and yet insistent that even small changes nevertheless have a meaning. It is up to the individual visitors to see what they will in these drawings in an open dialogue, where no answers are provided in advance. Fortunately, there is still room at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek for this kind of quest – mainstream is easily found everywhere else.

In connection with the article Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek right on time by Stig Miss (Danske Museer 4–5), the new Mediterranean Horizons section was supervised by Head Curator Jette Christiansen in collaboration with Bonde + Ljungar Arkitekter MAA.
Editors