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Designmuseum Danmark reopens after two-year renovation presenting eight new exhibitions
Aiming to cover the entire spectrum of design — from the wonders of the past to the great icons of modernism to the significant themes of today.
By JOHAN MAGNUSSON
17 Jun 2022

The thorough renovation of the 1700s-era building in the historic Copenhagen neighbourhood of Frederiksstaden includes a newly restored façade and a full 2500 square meters of newly laid marble floor. Museum director Anne-Louise Sommer is obviously excited for this Sunday’s reopening.

— Over the past two years we’ve undertaken the most thorough renovation of the museum since Kaare Klint’s original interior design in the 1920s, she shares. We are very thankful that we soon will be able to welcome guests again after the long shutdown. We’ve also used the time to rethink the entire museum experience, so you will notice a new approach to the way our exhibits are designed and communicated. We have a greater focus on the crucial questions of the present, including the green transition, health, and identity. We believe that design, more than ever, can create connections between historic achievements and contemporary global and national challenges. Design is a prism through which we can understand human need, human dreams, and human behaviour in various eras. It’s a field that is developing very quickly, and through our exhibitions, activities, and communications activities, we want to be a living design archive and a space where everyone is welcome.

Photography: Mathias Kruse Jørgensen

Among the eight new exhibitions featured in the opening programme, a few stand out a little extra. The future is present focuses on how today’s design solutions respond to challenges of the future such as health, climate, and identity, in a space created by award-winning Danish architecture studio Spacon & X. As an extension of this exhibition, the museum introduces ACUTE, a new experimental space for contemporary art and design where changing exhibitions highlight contemporary themes and new talents.

The future is present.

The contemporary perspective is repeated in the exhibition Powerful Patterns, a playful universe that gives new life to some of the museum’s most colourful patterns, which has been created in cooperation with the Danish fashion designer, artist, and musician Henrik Vibskov. Last but not least, the comprehensive exhibition The Magic of Form — created in cooperation with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Kunsten — takes visitors on a journey through the best of 20th-century furniture, design, crafts, visual arts, and architecture.

Address: Bredgade 68. Photography: Rasmus Hjortshøj