According to the United Nation’s annual ranking, Denmark is the world’s second happiest country.
Copenhagen
Posted inArt
Courtroom Sketches from Ai Weiwei’s Legal Battle Against Volkswagen
The artist has filed a lawsuit against the company for copyright infringement after the automaker used one of his works about the refugee crisis as a backdrop for its cars.
Posted inArt
Artists Dream Up Digital Dystopias
A group show at Kunsthal Charlottenborg imagines an unknown future full of sleek techno-chaos.
Posted inIn Brief
Facebook Censors Photo of Copenhagen’s Beloved Little Mermaid Statue
For more than a century, Edvard Eriksen’s bronze statue of “The Little Mermaid” has perched quietly on a waterside rock in Copenhagen, offending virtually no one.
Posted inArt
Mundane Horror in Abandoned Stasi Spaces
As we creep up on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989), some of the remains of the oppressive Ministry for State Security, aka the Stasi, remain as if in their own time capsule.
Posted inArt
One Language Traveller at the National Gallery of Denmark
If the stately looking Statens Museum for Kunst, or National Gallery of Denmark, has a fantastic (yet, small) early 20th C. French collection featuring a stunning Matisse room, it currently lacks few signs that contemporary art has an important role in its collection or mission. History stops abruptly in the middle part of last century and until the institution finishes off its contemporary wing that’s not likely to change. Though contemporary art visitors to the museum are left with little to see in the high temple of Danish art, fortunately all is not lost. Local artist FOS has been given the opportunity to wrestle with the difficult space that buffers the new and old buildings of the art museum.
Contemporary art visitors to the museum are left with little to see in the high temple of Danish art but fortunately all is not lost. Local artist FOS has been given the opportunity to wrestle with the difficult space that buffers the new and old buildings of the art museum.
Posted inArt
The Best Matisse Room I’ve Ever Seen
Among the surprises at the Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark, is an exquisite room of early Matisses that will blow your mind.
Posted inOpinion
Poul Gernes’s Palads Cinema, Too Much?
Near Arne Jacobsen’s SAS Hotel and a stone’s throw from Tivoli Gardens is a peculiar building painted by Danish artist Poul Gernes. Labeled as part of his “Decorations” on his website, this multi-colored building is a flash of color in the city. I’ve been told architects hate it, but I’m more curious what others think. Vote now.
Posted inArt
A Walk Into the Lobby of the World’s First Designer Hotel
I couldn’t imagine leaving Copenhagen without experiencing the classic Arne Jacobsen SAS Hotel that opened in 1960. One of the things that makes this structure so unique is that Jacobsen was commissioned by SAS, the Scandinavian airline, to design the world’s first designer hotel. While the notion of a “designer hotel” is commonplace nowadays, before Jacobsen’s acheivement, luxury was a term more frequently associated with more vintage elements, like lavishly patterned carpets, heavy curtains and 19th C. moldings.
Posted inNews
Graffiti Writers Fail to Obey Controversial Fairey Mural in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN — Shepard Fairey’s wall mural at Jagtvej 69 in the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen may scream “Peace” but graffiti artists appear to have declared war on the art work that sits on the site of Ungdomshuset, the former leftist youth center that was destroyed by the country’s right-wing government in 2007.
Posted inArt
Danish Architecture Is Going BIG
COPENHAGEN — I knew little about the Bjarke Ingels Group (aka BIG) or their architectural practice based in Denmark beyond some photos I had on the internet or publication. Well, yesterday, thanks to a request by Forrest Nash of Contemporary Art Daily, we were treated to a tour of a number of buildings by this accomplished firm that combines great design, smart spatial organization, youthful energy and a sense of community integrated into their structures. Each building, we discovered, was as wondrous and sophisticated as the other.
Posted inArt
Hyperallergic Travels to Copenhagen for Art Weekend
Starting tomorrow we will be filing reports on all we discover in this city renowned for exquisite design, social democracy, environmentalism and — more recently — Mohammad cartoons oops, wrong Danish city, we’ve learned something new already. We will explore what this city has to offer for the art lover.