Image: Courtesy MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Space, Køge
MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Space is presenting ‘The Story of Public Art’, its largest international exhibition to date, in Køge, Denmark. Running from 22 March 2025 to 1 April 2029, the four-year project brings together 90 artists from 40 countries in an exhibition format that changes over time rather than remaining fixed from opening to closing.
The exhibition examines landmark artistic experiments in public space from the 1950s to the present, tracing how artists have worked with cities, landscapes, media and social life. According to MAPS, the selected works address questions of identity, power structures, biopolitics, desire, labour, social relations, nature and reality, connecting artistic practice to the conditions of its time.
‘The Story of Public Art’ is divided into two principal sections and curatorial tracks. Its first chapter, ‘Dancing in the Streets (On Power)’, opened on 22 March 2025 and focuses on performances, actions, demonstrations and media interventions in cities around the world. The exhibition’s concluding section opened on 9 October 2025 and investigates artistic experiments in landscapes and the relationship between the natural and the built environment.
The urban section ranges geographically from Warsaw and Rio de Janeiro to Tamale and Times Square, and spans interventions including Jenny Holzer’s text-based works, Alfredo Jaar’s ‘A Logo for America’ and Danh Vo’s ‘We The People’. Other artists represented in the exhibition material include Pope.L, Suzanne Lacy, Rosemary Mayer, Heidi Bucher, Ibrahim Mahama and Göksu Kunak. The later landscape-focused phase draws on traditions including Arte Povera, Earth Art and Land Art, with works and projects associated with Agnes Denes, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and Heinz Mack.
The exhibition also extends beyond the museum’s galleries. MAPS says its building is transformed and the project branches into public spaces, while the atrium foyer was converted at the opening into ‘passage’, a live performance installation by Maria Hassabi. The exhibition is curated by PhD Charlotte Sprogøe and designed by the Milan-based studio FormaFantasma, whose previous work has included the main exhibition ‘The Milk of Dreams’ at the Venice Biennale.
MAPS describes itself as a museum, workshop and platform devoted to art in public space. Its collection contains more than 19,000 sketches, models and other preparatory materials for realised and unrealised public-art projects, alongside an archive documenting their processes and contexts. The institution was founded in 1977 as Køge Skitsesamling, became known as KØS – Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum from 2009 to 2025, and adopted the name MAPS in January 2025.
Visitors can also attend a 15-minute introduction to a different work from ‘The Story of Public Art’ each day at 12.15, with the featured project listed in the museum’s calendar. MAPS is located at Nørregade 29, 4600 Køge, and is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 5pm, with extended hours until 8pm on Thursdays and Fridays.
