New art on the block

More artworks to enjoy from home

Nina Beier, Female Nude, 2015, KMS9102, SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst © Nina Beier/VISDA

This autumn, a crossdepartmental team has been working to bring more art to you digitally. Thanks to a generous donation from the Aage & Johanne Louis- Hansen Foundation, a large selection of masterpieces and new acquisitions to the collection have been digitised and launched on SMK Open.

In these strange times where month after month we have to maintain social distancing and isolation, art can bring comfort and joy to people — even if they aren’t able to visit museums right now.

Agnes Slott-Møller, Two evening landscapes separated by flower studies, 1897, KKSgb8350, SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst. Public domain https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KKSgb8350

So far, more than 5,500 artworks have been photographed and added to SMK Open, including 1,600 works by female artists that have never been published digitally before. Among them are Danish artists Agnes Slott-Møller (1862–1937), a painter and sculptor whose work was influenced by the Italian Pre-Renaissance, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the British Arts & Crafts movement, and Ragna Braase (1929–2013) who worked at the intersection of art, architecture, craft and design. Her work encompasses abstract, textual pieces, figurative paintings and simplified, geometric shapes conducted in graphic arts and tapestry. Braase’s work was presented in a special exhibition at SMK earlier in 2020.

Ragna Braase, Africana’s House, 1980–81, KMS8903, SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst © Ragna Braase/VISDA https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KMS8903

Among the highlights in the new batch of open digital content is more than 500 graphic works by the Italian master Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) whose dramatic and eerie motifs keep fascinating us today. SMK is planning a special exhibition of his oeuvre next year.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Drawbridge, 1748–49, KKSgb9872/7, SMK — Statens Museum for Kunst. Public domain https://open.smk.dk/en/artwork/image/KKSgb9872/7

Danish Art right now

Thanks to support from the Ny Carlsberg Foundation, SMK has been able to acquire more than 100 artworks this summer, all made by contemporary Danish artists. This is the single largest acquisition of contemporary art to the collection in the history of the museum, and as the many new works have been installed they have markedly altered the experience of visiting the permanent collection galleries.

This unique collection of new Danish art will enter SMK Open within the next few months.

The installation view of new Danish art features the following artworks: Molly Haslund (b. 1969), 53 chairs found in the bulky waste sections of five back yards in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, April-May, 2019, KMS8945 © Molly Haslund/VISDA Marie Lund (b. 1976), Stills, 2013 (three works from the series, KMS8976–78 © Marie Lund/VISDA Kirsten Ortwed (b. 1948), Turning Time B7, 2017, KMS8951 © Kirsten Ortwed/VISDA Oscar Yran (b. 1990), Retired Allfather, 2019, KMS8969 © Oscar Yran/VISDA Anna Bjerger (b. 1973), Square, 2019, KMS8948 © Anna Bjerger/VISDA