Image: Statens Museum for Kunst
Statens Museum for Kunst is to rebuild the way it shows Denmark’s national art collection. The museum’s four collection displays will close in turn and reopen across three stages, in a programme it dates to the years 2027 to 2029. No month or day has been published for any stage.
The work covers 6,700 square metres of exhibition space, which SMK says will be renovated and rethought architecturally while respecting the original building. Behind it lies a question of proportion: the collection runs to roughly 200,000 works across seven centuries, and the museum’s stated aim is to put a far larger share of that holding into circulation than the present rooms allow.
The four displays affected are Europæisk Kunst 1300-1800, Dansk og Nordisk kunst 1750-1900, Dansk og International Kunst efter 1900, and Fransk Kunst 1900-1930.
SMK is developing the new exhibition architecture with Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter. The museum describes the brief as long-term usability rather than a single fixed arrangement, with more modular structures intended to let displays change and recombine over time. Three practical aims are named: clearer wayfinding through the building, better physical accessibility, and bringing out the historic qualities of Vilhelm Dahlerup’s original museum.
What hangs will change as well. SMK says it is drawing works out of storage and back from castles and ministries, including many shown rarely or never before. One is already in motion: Isaac Isaacsz’s Allegori på Øresund, painted in 1622, has been taken down from its former place at Kronborg Castle, rolled for transport, and examined at the museum by paintings conservator Tanja Larsen. Director Astrid la Cour frames the project as giving cultural heritage more attention and care rather than simply showing more art.
The museum remains open throughout. Its programme continues alongside the building work, and the first closure is already marked in the calendar: Kulturnatten this October is to serve as a farewell to Europæisk Kunst 1300-1800, the first display to come down, with baroque mini-concerts by Concerto Copenhagen, expert talks, tours and a final walk through the rooms.
Special exhibitions continue in parallel. A retrospective of the Danish artist Lene Adler Petersen is announced for spring 2027, an exhibition of the American artist William H. Johnson for 2028, and for 2029 an exhibition examining Vilhelm Hammershøi’s working methods and use of materials.
