Toto, we're not in Copenhagen anymore.

I'm back in Seattle after four great months of living / researching / bicycling in Denmark. This blog will remain online as an archive of highlights from my trip. I have put together a short booklet of plans / photos / notes on the museums I visited and will have it available in .pdf format for interested parties. (Photo of Capitol Hill by Sonek_flickr.com)

Freeform Sign Painting

There are store fronts all over town with the phrase Glaedelig Jul (Merry Christmas) painted on the windows. I stopped to chat with the man most likely responsible for many of the Glaedelig Jul hand-lettered signs in the Norrebro neighborhood. What an amazing hand--no guidelines or anything--he just painted letter by letter with complete precision. Beautiful.

Louisiana Museum in Snow

In the city on Friday night it snowed quite beautifully. I knew it would be a good weekend to take a last trip to the Louisiana Musuem, so I spent Sunday wandering around the sculptures in the snow photographing the building and then went through several of the new exhibitions. I hadn't been to the museum since September and the gallery with a view to the pond was considerably different--from green leaves and greenish colored water to yellow leaves and a layer of ice on the water. The museum was packed with people and the restaurant seemed busy all day long. They had a nice wood fire going and the nearby tables were hot real estate. After wandering for a few hours I took a break and watched a 1980's Japanese animated feature film called AKIRA which was on view as part of an exhibit called Manga (Japanese comics). Pretty cool... I hadn't seen that one in a long long time--surrealist sci-fi biker-gang apocalypse.

Klas Anshelm x 2 in Sweden = ♥

This weekend I took the train across the new Denmark-Sweden bridge and visited museums in Malmö and Lund. Both buildings are by Swedish architect Klas Anshelm. I really love these two museums--modest and quiet on the outside with incredible day-lit galleries on the inside. Simple materials, a variety of spaces and not too many fussy details make them an art-first, architecture-second situation... as it should be.




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The Malmö Konsthall, 1975 ⤴
There are two main types of rooms: One with a repetitive grid of light wells that can also be blacked out for video etc. The second is a large hall with a glass ceiling plane facing north. Beautiful and different qualities of light in both situations. The tryptych contains photos of the same space shot at day / dusk / night - make sure to click and enlarge that one. A raw, worn and beautiful wood floor made of wood planks is simply nailed-in from the top.



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The Lund Konsthall, 1956 ⤴
With a similar cross-section as the main hall in the Malmö building, the Lund Konsthall sports translucent glass instead of clear. Materials are dark stone and black linoleum floors, concrete structure with a brick facing and painted steel railings. The building is more or less square, with open air courtyard in the middle. Very very nice nice!


P.S.
House Double
In the plaza fronting the Lund Konsthall stands a 15th century brick farmhouse that used to be surrounded only by crops. Now it's surrounded by cobblestone and is used as a small art gallery for a cooperative of local artists. Displayed on a window sill were a group of tiny cast metal copies of the building...brilliant!

Diagnosis

Well, I was strolling around the Statens Museum last week when a voice in my head that sounded like a doctor breaking the news of a rough diagnosis said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you only have three weeks left... to write the first draft of your thesis." So that is what I am up to—camped out in the Black Diamond Library with a reading room full of Danish university students. There are bright sides... comfortable desks, a nice cafe right on the water for lunch and coffee breaks, no distractions to speak of, grey skys and windy drizzle outside...

* * * November 4th * * *

Last week I went to an election party at a little travelers cafe/bar with a few American friends. The place was pretty packed with American ex-pats as well as Danes and others, all gathered to watch live coverage on CBS. Everyone was drinking American pale ale, popcorn was free and the energy was high. I would have liked to have been in Seattle with the time clock on my side though... just about 4 am rolled around and things were still not settled on this side of the world. That was about as late as I could go! It was cool to hear people all over the city talking about the election... even though Danish is Greek to me, I overheard the words "Obama" and "McCain" all day! Good times!

Statens Museum for Kunst

Last week I went to the State-run art museum in the city center. I've been to so many museums in Denmark, it's kind of funny that I waited so long to go to the big national one right here in Copenhagen. There is a an older building (Vilhelm Dahlerup 1896) and an addition (Anna Maria Indrio 1998). The addition is attached to the old building by a full height atrium space (shown above) which is pretty nice, but probably hard to curate. Several small sculptural works all but disappeared in the huge room... but the overall effect with the park views on both sides and the exposed back facade of the original building is quite nice. I might have museum fatigue at this point, because the whole place left me feeling just a bit indifferent.

Warm-up

Today I gave a little warm-up presentation of some of the research I've been collecting to a small studio of bachelor students at the Architecture Academy. There may be a larger venue/audience in the near future. In the middle of my spiel, I realized I could go on and on--all day about this stuff. I'm not sure yet if this is good or bad.

Karriere (Career)

I first discovered this local art journal a month or so ago. For a free newsprint rag, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the essays. They are kind of "art essays lite," but yes, real essays, with legitimate footnotes, and well chosen images... unlike so many of the free rags I pick up here in Copenhagen which usually display the same new designer chair by HAY (or/and) party pictures of early 20 something hipsters sporting the latest color of Cheap Monday jeans. The journal also promotes Karriere the place... which is, in fact a Bar/Cafe/Restaurant located in the former meatpacking district. (I'm wondering now, where the meatpacking district might have moved?) Anyway, I finally went to check it out this past Saturday partly because they have several art pieces incorporated into the everyday function of the place... and these are some heavy hitters too. Lights by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. A dividing screen/wall by Dan Graham, a chrome floor and "dancer pole" by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, a piece by ? with a what's behind door number 2 scenario wherein one opens a door only to find 5 identical doors, of which one opens to another corridor with 5 identical doors-- out of about 15 or so doors, only about three of them are actually doors that lead to a bathroom, and finally a piece by ? that is completely out of place. Not only does it seem like something out of a first year college sculpture class, it also reminds me of something from the movie beetlejuice. (Go to Flickr to see some photos since I didn't have my camera) I'm sure you will have no trouble picking out the beetlejuicy piece with dangling watch-a-ma-jigs! The place really did turn into quite the jam packed DJ driven club at midnight...

**I just discovered that if you go to the second page of results from the flickr link above you will see the crazy bathroom piece I mentioned... it's called Passage.**

Herzog & de Meuron in China

Last Thursday I went to a small film screening of the documentary Birds Nest: Herzog and de Meuron in China. At one and a half hours it's feature length, and definitely digs quite deep. Light on the technical architecture side, but heavy on culture, politics and business, Birds Nest is a good window into what one might expect working as an architect in today's China. Thumbs up... I like how there is no Danish word for "Popcorn." (Link to the filmaker's website here.)

Socialist Lighting

I've been harping on this to some of you for a while... but I think it's really great! All of the street lights in Copenhagen are strung across the street by wires that are attached to neighboring buildings. The buildings literally have to share the weight of the lights thus acting in a communal way. Imagine trying to convince a bunch of Americans that you want to drill a hole into their building and stretch a steel cable across the street which will be attached to another building--hmmm just might not happen. The other nice thing about this lighting system is that a kind of canopy, or ceiling is created across the street--furthering the feeling that the street is its own sort of room. Oh and also, it uses less material and keeps the sidewalk clear of lightpoles which makes space for wider bike lanes! Sweet.

Presse

When I came across this place during a trip down south, I couldn't help but get a bit homesick for my favorite cafe in Capitol Hill, Cafe Presse. (It's the same sign! -- apparently it just means hey, you can get newspapers and tobacco here, or something like that) ... ahh the baked eggs with gruyere and ham... the rhubarb marmalade... soccer matches on the tv...

Museum Melee

Serendipity delivered a little trip down-south last week, and I was able to see a handful of great museums. Just a few photographs with highlights below. (Click to enlarge images)



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Foundation Beyeler_Renzo Piano
There is a sort-of family of art museums that Piano has realized (all using repetitive roof elements, and a series of diffusing layers in order to deliver a blanket of even, diffuse light into the galleries) of which the Beyeler is a good example. Other family members include the High Museum, de Menil, and Nasher.



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Kunsthaus Bregenz_Peter Zumthor
I was lucky enough to see a show with the kind of art that really shines in this powerful building by Zumthor... sculpture and installation work. John Fabre took over the entire building beginning with the bathrooms on the basement floor in a surrealist work that culminates with a figure excavating a human brain(mind) on the top floor of the museum. Zumthor brings daylight into the exhibition spaces via an extra half-floor of space above the ceiling plane that allows light in on all four sides of the room and then down through the milky glass ceiling. Brilliant!



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Kunstmuseum Stuttgart_Hascher and Jehle
This fairly new museum sits right on the busiest pedestrian street in the city center. A modestly sized glass cube sits atop a huge underground complex of galleries that occupy space leftover from abandoned roadway tunnels. Now that's a good idea. Replace cars with art! Link to H&J site here.



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Kolumba_Peter Zumthor
Built into and over the ruins of at least two churches and one working chapel with off-white Danish bricks, the Kolumba Museum also houses the Archdiocese of Cologne's amazing art collection. This project has enough palimpsest to sink a cruise ship designed by Frank Gehry. Or something like that. My point-and-shoot had a hard time with the contrasting light/dark levels in the gallery spaces, so you might want to try a flickr search for better shots of the interior. Really amazing project... ask me about it sometime.




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Museum Insel Hombroich_Erwin Heerwich
A series of pavilions in the landscape. No air conditioning or heat. No gaurds. No art work labels on the walls. No electrical lights. A substanitial art collection with many of the heavy hitters collected by other museums. Doors left open to the landscape. Leaves blown in from wind, left scattered on the floor. Even a few cobwebs here and there. A powerful un-museum. A kind of freedom.
(Use arrows to click through pictures on the Hombroich website here.)

Denmark Road Trip

White Rope, Fake Grass and Golden Leaves
In a park next to the Silkeborg Art Museum lies a forgotten mini-golf course. Probably a seasonal activity... off season at least, it's more of a sneaky art-installation-in-the-woods... nicer than some of the comissioned art- installations-in-the-woods that I have seen.



Chair Spider
I just couldn't help imagining this cluster of chairs as a stop-action film animation. Scurrying off into a corner of the hedge like a frightened spider.




Skovvilla's Three Columns
One of my favorite gallery spaces out of all ten art museums I visited was in this modest old "forest villa" by Danish architect Anton Rosen. This one wasn't on my list--I didn't even know about it--but just happened upon it when visiting another museum in the same park. The exterior remains original as you can see in the left hand photo. The interior has been converted into display spaces, but with remnants of the orginal floor layout. On one level there are three beautiful columns left in the center of a room--on another level the same structure appears as bearing walls and forms a strange little extra space (pictured on right). The contrast between the outside of the building and the interior conversion is a fantastic surrealist painting.




Green Rooms and Heart
There is a complex of buildings in Herning Denmark that includes a design school, two art museums, a sculpture park, a Jørn Utzon prototype building, various large scale public art works, and a stunning work of landscape by Danish landscape architect C. T.h. Sørensen. Sørensen's "Geomtric Garden" is definitely the highlight of the area. A series of hedges in geomtric shapes create beautiful green outdoor rooms...the height of some of the tree-formed hedges are amazing! Most of the rooms are completely closed (as in a complete oval) with only two small people-sized openings and maybe one bench.
The museums are a bit underwhelming--and maybe this is the reason for a new one--being built by U.S. architect Steven Holl. The new Herning Art Museum or Heart, is about half-way built, and I was able to wander around (there are no gates or fences at many Danish construction sites) the raw spaces that will eventually house art works. For the geeks: Its built in pre-cast concrete with funky steel-trussed curvy roof planes. The photo above shows, I'm guessing, one of the large--open plan gallery spaces. Very promising. Link to the Heart website here.



These great roadside attractions were consistently the view from my rental car window.




Two Seas Meet
At the northern most tip of Denmark (see the map above) it is possible to walk all the way out to the last bit of land on the peninsula. This is where the North Sea meets the Baltic in an elemental clash of waves. The Danes refer to the two colliding water bodies by there names as straits (the Skagerrak and the Kattegat) instead of the two oceans... which, I guess, is a more local way of relating...

Global Positioning

I am back from five days of museum-hopping. With a GPS aboard the rental car, it was almost relaxing driving to and from each destination. Just type in the address and do what the nice GPS lady says--and bamm! you're there. So so great. I know this is old technology, but man I am just getting to take advantage. Currently, I am working on a printed booklet (that I will make available for download) documenting all the museums I visited. So, for the blog posts I will put some of the random-ish other or additional things from the trip. And by the way, I can now highly recommend couchsurfing.com. I couch surfed with two different hosts along the way and it was just fantastic... I met 3 friendly Danes a good-natured Lithuanian, and a Slovak kitten. Perfect! Oh, also, I stayed with my friend Mark's parents in northern Denmark and that was great too! They roasted a whole chicken and over wine we talked American politics and all sorts of this and that. Thanks Niels, thanks Susan.

Museum Hopping

Tonight I am doing all the last minute packing and address-gathering for a potentially mind-numbing trip to see ten art museums in central and western Denmark. I am working on a booklet that will document the trip with photos, notes, etc. Alright, it's go-time.

Survivors

A good example of some of the few old half-timber buildings that mostly burned down in Copenhagen's great fires during the 18th century. I'm not sure why some of these look like half-buildings also... did the other side burn, or maybe there was another building there at some point...?

The title slide of the powerpoint presentation had a picture of him giving a lecture somewhere else

I heard urban geographer Edward Soja from UCLA speak at the Danish Academy the other day. He mostly presented ideas from his last two books, namely the one called Post-Metropolis. There was a whole row of Seattle folks in the audience... five I think, great!

Eyes of the Glyptotek

I shot these two, somewhat abstract views of roof skylights, as I was wandering around the Glyptotek on Free-Sunday--the sun and sky were showing through at the same time. Both of the light monitors are the same, but one has a dome-like interior piece built over the rectangular opening. The circular bit in the middle is a Danish Modern (hanging) pendant lamp by Poul Henningsen. These light fixtures are everywhere in Copenhagen--in both old and new buildings The quality of light is affected by bright red and blue colors on the inside of the fixture. Link to the light here.

Accidental Art

I found this beautiful fiasco wandering around the city center yesterday-- a very quiet Sunday afternoon, with evidence of a busier morning. The tracks went on for half a block in three directions.

Caught Up and Planning

Now that I'm caught up on posting old blog entries, I can start planning my trip through western Denmark. I had a great meeting with my contact at the Danish academy who helped me refine a list of museums and recommended that I rent a car for a four-day-dash up and down the long peninsula of Jutland.

So That's How it's Done

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Copenhagen Business School

My friend Kevin Driscoll from Seattle dropped in for a few days after his summer architecture program in Switzerland. He rode for about three weeks on his bicycle through Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium and finally to Denmark. Impressive man! I showed Kevin a few highlights including this building which I pass on the daily commute.



The CBS building was designed by Lundgaard+Tranberg, the same Danish architects that did the new excellent playhouse. The facade has mechanical shades that can be moved with the touch of a button on the inside--there are two shades to a button. I know this, because of course we had to play with them. The atrium space is just fantastic, with beautiful light, and plenty of stone steps which also act as benches, not to mention the futuristic tube elevators and the incredibly thin-sections on the spiral stair. (pre-cast concrete) Why are there so many spiral stairs in Scandinavia and so few in the U.S.? Anyone?

Link to the Lundgaard+Tranberg site here.

Copenhagen's Quadrennial

Modeled after the big biannuals, but not as big, the Copenhagen Quadrennial is the city's first attempt at an international art festival. It turns out there was a competition of ideas for a city art festival and two young women won the contest with a proposal for this years festival called U-Turn. Frankly, I have seen better art at many graduate school thesis shows, but there were some gems... and more importantly some really great ideas for exhibition venues and programming albeit a little ill-communicated. Just for an example, the above image is what I found when I navigated my way through the city in order to go to the "U-Turn Information Center." I'm being harsh here, but to give credit, they really did tackle quite a big project in an ambitious manner.



I went to the opening night of the biggest venue--an unused warehouse-ish building at the original Carlsberg Beer Brewery complex. They set up several of the big spaces with a combination of artists work, and sited other installations in these little storage or office type rooms off to the side. They really effectively occupied the building. My favorite piece of the night was a performance reminiscent of a Josheph Beuys action, but maybe if Beuys had slept in late that day and was feeling a bit cheeky. Title: Wet Paint Handshakes. There was a big bucket of water for washing the paint off after a handshake, and a stack of cloth towels for drying. It was quite fun to watch new people enter the exhibition and size up this bald man in a suit standing in front of them with his hand stuck out to shake. The brave and fun ones got right into it, others acted like they didn't really see him, and there were those, that after watching for five minutes or so decided to go out, re-enter the exhibit and shake the man's hand as if they were just getting there for the first time. Funny, I was one of five or six people that were walking in to the show, just as the artist was arriving himself. We were a bit too early to really be a part of the social experiment.

After the Beginning

After no consistent internet connection for the month of August, I now have a wireless connection plus access to the beautiful facilities at the Danish Academy. Their semester just started and the campus is buzzing with eleven hundred architecture students. _ Over the next week I will post highlights from my first month of city exploration and museum research in Copenhagen.

The posts will all be back-dated to reflect when they actually happened!

White Marble and Pink Latex

On a second trip to the Carlsberg Glyptotek I noticed a small sculpture that I had overlooked previously. I don't know how I missed it actually--a headless mythic animal-like statue with multiple breasts made of pink latex really does stand out when it is placed next to white marble statues of greek gods. But it works perfectly. This is a great example of a museum that could easily not include a piece like this and get along just fine with its collection of various antiquities and French Impressionists. It's just fantastic that they aquired and exhibit a piece by Louis Bourgeois from the 1980s in this context. I wish more museums had the guts to do this.