louisiana on my mind

Louisiana Museum, Humbleback, Denmark

John & Ellen, friends from my days in Australia, were passing through Paris on their way to Corsica in June when I met up with them. I asked if they had ever been to Copenhagen. Indeed they had. After a tale of arriving there or maybe it was Malmo, Sweden, on May 1 and finding everything closed (It’s a sacred day in Europe - Labor Day), they did mention one must see - the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in Humblebaek, about 20 miles north of Copenhagen. I was skeptical. I have access to plenty modern art museums in Paris, like Fondation Louis Vuitton, Centre Pompidou, Bourse de la Commerce, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.

John even found a photo on his cell phone - of a thumb. That is a sculpture of a Puce by César. (Figure 1) Do you know César? I had seen a copy of that Puce before - in the garden of the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Which, btw, is another museum of modern art. If you don’t know César’s Puce maybe you know his centaur that proudly stands where Blvd St. Germaine intersects rue Cherche-Midi. (Figure 2) Or maybe you know the César, the French equivalent to America’s Oscar. It’s called the César because César designed the statuette. (Figure 3)

Figure 1. César’s puce and Nicolas’ thumb, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark

Figure 2. Centaur, César, Place Michel Debré,, Paris

Figure 3. The César & The Oscar

So, I asked myself, did I really need to travel 20+ miles north of Copenhagen to see another museum of modern art. Then Sharon weighed in from Haifa. Yes, it was a schlep from Copenhagen, but worth it. So, I perused the museum’s (excellent) website. What convinced me was the sculpture garden. I love sculpture gardens. The deYoung Museum in San Francisco has a lovely one and so does the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence, and the Fondation Cartier here in Paris.

When Nicolas and I landed at the Copenhagen airport, we not only found the metro, we figured out how to use it! After mastering the metro, the train beckoned. So, the morning after we arrived, we got ourselves to the train station. Helped by two young guys from South Carolina, (who were in Copenhagen working construction for a new pharmaceutical plant), we found the train going the same way we were. I still feel guilty that we didn’t go to Helsinore first, to see Kronborg Castle (Elsinore Castle in Shakespeare’s Hamlet). But life is full of choices and I have to live with mine.

As advertised, the museum was a short, pleasant walk from the train station. The museum is the brain child of one man, Knud Jensen. In fact, one could say that Knud Jensen = the Louisiana Museum. It was his vision that created it and his money that financed it. Here’s how that happened. In 1944, Jensen inherited his father‘s successful cheese wholesale company. He served as the company’s director for the next 12 years. Then in 1954, his biggest customer, Kraft Foods of Chicago, didn’t want to buy cheese anymore, they wanted to buy Jensen’s company. So, at the age of 38, Jensen became a multimillionaire with nothing to do. He blew through some money with a publishing company. Then he remembered that he had wanted to be an art historian when he was young. He decided that the only sensible thing to do was “dedicate his life--and his family’s fortune--to the support of art.”

Two years later, he bought a century old villa (Figure 4) and 25 acres of land overlooking the Oresund Strait.(Figure 5) On a clear day, you can see Sweden. Someone else might have hesitated to build a museum 20 miles north of Copenhagen, but Jensen didn’t. He figured that if he built it, they would come, and they have. The museum welcomed over 600,000 visitors in 2022. The villa was called then and is still called, Louisiana. Jensen explained the name to Studs Terkel in a 1968 interview, “This place was created by this nobleman 100 years ago, married 3 times, each time a Louise. And I kept this name, Louisiana, which he gave the old villa because I think this was just a funny story about this man and his three wives and his fidelity to the name of Louise.”

Figure 4. Villa Louisiana, Denmark

Figure 5. Henry Moore sculpture at Louisiana Museum with the Strait of Oresund beyond

The museum opened in 1958, with Jensen as full-time director, a position he held until 1995. He lived in a wing of the museum until his death in 2000.

Jensen’s original intention was to create a museum to exhibit postwar Danish art. But his brief soon expanded to include modern and contemporary European and American art. One thing hasn’t changed, and that is, from the beginning he wanted the Louisiana to be, “the antithesis of the overbearing city museums of the late 19th century. Visitors were never to feel, as they sometimes do in encyclopedic museums, that they were in some way on trial and would almost certainly be found guilty.”

Again, Jensen from the Studs Terkel interview, “I think that good drinking and food is very important in connection with experiencing art. You get so damned thirsty and you’ve got to relax afterwards, and then to sort of (re)turn again and look again. And my favorite idea, my ideal would be that people should come here for a whole day and just look and eat and drink and listen to music, see a film, and go back and look at some paintings and stay a whole day in this place.”

Art is everywhere. As Nicolas and I sat on the terrace of the café, we were looking at art because the café’s terrace is in the midst of the sculpture garden. (Figure 6) As you eat, you feed both body and spirit.

Figure 6. Café terrace with Calder mobile at Louisiana Museum, Strait of Oresund beyond

For the NYTimes art critic, John Russell, (1994), “Louisiana has a therapeutic effect, totally unlike that of most other museums. During the more than 30 years that I have been going there, I have never seen a visitor who looked either hurried or harassed, tired or cross…What Mr. Jensen wanted, for young and old alike, was a discreet, nonthreatening environment in which a great many memorable things would happen and none of them would go on too long. Far from wanting to come on as a tyrant of taste, he once said that he'd ‘really rather like them (visitors to the museum) to feel that they were paying a call on a stodgy, comfortable, slightly eccentric old uncle.’”

Of course the critical component for such a welcoming and comfortable environment is the the buildings and how they fit into the environment. Jensen initially imagined that his museum would consist of the villa and an exhibition pavilion at the edge of the cliff facing the Oresund Strait.

But Jensen’s ideas developed and matured as he collaborated with the architects Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert,. Over the years, Bo and Wohlert designed seven extensions and alternations - a series of buildings of whitewashed walls, laminated wooden ceilings, deep-red tiled floors and large glass panels that open into the surroundings. Buildings connected to each other and their setting. (Figures 7, 8, 9)

Figure 7. Building and bridge and Dubuffet sculpture, Louisiana Museum

Figure 8. Open buildings bring inside out and outside in, Louisiana Museum

Figure 9. Giacometti figure, Louisiana Museum

Vilhelm Wohlert had studied at the University of California at Berkeley, where he developed an appreciation for the wooden houses of the San Francisco Bay. The simplicity of traditional Japanese buildings guided the partner's’ design decisions, too.

As part of commemorations for the museum’s 40th anniversary, Jensen wrote that while the site was ‘an ideal location for a museum, the lot made its own demands and became in a sense our employer, making the final decisions about where the buildings should stand and where the sculptures should be placed.”

In 2005, France’s superstar architect Jean Nouvel was invited to curate an exhibition of his own work. During his visits to the museum, he realized that the Louisiana embodied the most important principles of his own design practice. He called the exhibition, 'Jean Nouvel - Louisiana Manifesto’. Ten years later, Novel’s appreciation had not dimmed. He narrated a short video in which he "shares his thoughts and passion about a place where architecture, nature, and art belong together.” According to Nouvel, "At Louisiana, each thing is directly felt, and everything is at home".https://louisiana.dk/en/museum/architecture/

Nicolas and I spent most of our time wandering around and looking for the 45 sculptures in the Sculpture Park. And because Nicolas loves to sit down and there are so many places to sit - on benches, rocks, the grass in the sculpture garden. Sculptures are everywhere you look. (Figs 10, 11, 12 13) Some pieces I knew, some pieces were new to me. Some sculptures are in plain view, others are tucked away. (Figure 14) Some define your progression through space. (Figure 15) Others you glimpse at from inside and then try to find them (sometimes unsuccessfully) as you retrace your steps outside. And always, flowering plants and mature trees and rolling hills and panoramic views vie for your attention, stop you in your tracks, leave you breathless. (Figure 16) Everything works together.

Figure 10. Henry Moore, Bather, Louisiana Museum

Figure 11. Jean Arp, Louisiana Museum

Figure 12. Max Ernst figures, Louisiana Museum

Figure 13. Juan Miro, Louisiana Museum

Figure 13. Alicja Kwade, Balls, Louisiana Museum

Figure 14. Outside sculpture seen from the inside, Louisiana Museum

Figure 15, Richard Serra, Louisiana Museum

Figure 16. Lake, Louisiana Museum

Jensen was a man after my own heart. “For him, nature could almost become too dominant if there was not something man-made added to it.” I couldn’t agree more, nature is great as long as a medieval church or Renaissance castle is nearby.

Most of the collection is exhibited on rotation. Except for César’s Puce, the Giacometti Gallery and the Kusama installation which are always on display. (Figure 17) What fun it was to find a Kusama Infinity Room with a short line and no guards keeping time. Just polite people staying long enough to immerse themselves in the experience and then leaving, so that others could have their turn.

Figure 17. Kusama Infinity Room, Louisiana Museum

The museum has four guiding principles - to plug holes in the historical collection; to add new works by artists already represented; to focus on contemporary art and to add a lasting reminder of the museum’s temporary exhibitions. I’ll tell you about the fabulous temporary exhibition I saw at the Louisiana next time. (Figure 18).

Figure 18.. Mother spitting on Son, temporary exhibition, Ragnar Kjartansson, Louisiana Museum

Copyright © 2023 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved

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