New museums
Next year visitors to Denmark will be able to seek out a choice of historic museums as they reopen their doors. The Museum of Copenhagen reopens in spring 2020 having moved to a new location on Vestre Voldgade. The museum will be a source of information on the city’s past, present and future and a reference point of its archaeology enabling city planners to make best use of the space within the city.
VisitCarlsberg is also set to reopen in 2020 following a major renovation and modernisation, whilst still maintaining the heritage of the iconic old brewery.
Following a devastating fire in 2013 the Museum of Danish Resistance (Frihedsmuseet) will reopen in May 2020 in the same location where 75 years after the end of WWII visitors will be able to see the incredible work of the Danish Resistance during this time.
Looking further ahead into 2021 the FLUGT Refugee Museum of Denmark is set to open. Located close to Varde in the original WWII refugee camp hospital, the 2,000 m2 Danish Refugee Museum will relate the story of the 250,000 German refugees who arrived in German-occupied Denmark after having fled the progress of the Russian Red Army. An adjacent modern building designed by Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) will provide the main entrance to the museum.
Meanwhile, in historic town of Ribe the story of Maren Spliid, a Danish woman who was burned at the stake in 1641, will be the starting point for the new witch museum. The museum, which is set to open in 2020, will showcase the extensive Danish source material on sorcery persecution, mainly of women, that seized the people of Europe in the 15th and 16th century.
10km north of Copenhagen the Ordrupgaard Museum will reopen in autumn 2020 with five new underground exhibition spaces designed by the Norwegian architects Snøhetta. The museum is home to one of Northern Europe’s largest collections of Danish and French art from the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, including a large collection of Impressionist art and an outdoor sculpture park. The five new underground exhibition spaces will resemble buried boxes, where only one of them is visible from the outside. These new exhibition rooms will link with the Zaha Hadid´s exhibition space (built in 2005) and the original early 20th century buildings, to ensures a new and complete connection of all the existing buildings.
Art and design are also the focus at the opening of the new museum Holmegaard Værk just an hour south of Copenhagen. Opening on the site of the old Holmegaard glass factory which closed in 2010, it will be Denmark’s largest museum for glass design and a flagship for crafts, cultural heritage and research.