SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
Denmark's national art collection, seven centuries deep, in a Renaissance-revival hall joined to a glass wing.
The National Gallery grew out of the royal art collection and moved into its own building on Sølvgade in 1896. Vilhelm Dahlerup and G. E. W. Møller designed it in an Italian Renaissance revival manner, with a tall central hall and top-lit galleries facing the Østre Anlæg park. In 1998 an extension by Anna Maria Indrio and Mads Møller of C. F. Møller Architects added galleries for modern and contemporary art; the two buildings are joined by the glazed Sculpture Street, which runs the full length of the site.
The collection covers roughly seven centuries and holds about 9,000 paintings and sculptures, 240,000 works on paper and a large group of plaster casts. European old masters include Mantegna, Cranach, Rubens, Rembrandt and Titian, while the Danish rooms cover the Golden Age, Skagen painters and Vilhelm Hammershøi. Twentieth-century holdings take in Matisse, Picasso, Emil Nolde and the CoBrA group. The museum runs a children's art workshop, a print room by appointment and a regular programme of talks and late openings.
Highlights
- Sculpture Street linking the 1896 hall to the 1998 wing
- Danish Golden Age, Skagen painters and Hammershøi
- European old masters including Rembrandt, Rubens and Mantegna
- Matisse and early modernist rooms in the new wing
