Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Modernist gallery wings threaded through a coastal sculpture park north of Copenhagen.
Louisiana opened in 1958 when Knud W. Jensen converted a nineteenth-century villa on the Øresund coast into a museum of modern art. Architects Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert linked the old house to low glass-and-brick corridors that follow the contours of the garden, so visitors move repeatedly between galleries, woodland and sea views. Successive extensions completed between 1966 and 1991 carried the building in a loop around the park, adding a concert hall, a graphics wing and a partly subterranean south wing.
The collection concentrates on art made after 1945, with substantial holdings of Asger Jorn, the CoBrA painters, American post-war painting, Pop art and contemporary photography and video. Alberto Giacometti and Yayoi Kusama each have dedicated rooms, while the sculpture park holds works by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Jean Arp and Richard Serra. Louisiana mounts several temporary exhibitions each year and runs a children's wing, a concert and talks programme and a long-established literature festival.
Highlights
- Sculpture park overlooking the Øresund with works by Moore and Calder
- Giacometti Gallery and a dedicated Yayoi Kusama installation
- Asger Jorn and CoBrA holdings in the Jorn Gallery
- Children's Wing with open workshops for families
