Past Exhibitions and Events
Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum
Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in 19th-Century Danish Art is now open at the J Paul Getty Museum. This exhibition presents tranquil landscapes, and incisive portraits that tell the story of how artists helped forge Denmark’s modern cultural identity. During an era marked by military defeat, financial collapse and national disintegration, 19th-century Danish artists examined themselves, their country, and their culture with heightened scrutiny. The seemingly peaceful and intimate subjects they portrayed convey notions of belonging and displacement as Denmark was transforming into a smaller, somewhat marginalized country at the edge of Europe.
Nikolaj Hess performed in a concert supported by AFSMK, sharing his new compositions at the opening reception. Hess’s compositions translate and explore elements of the Danish landscape and the contrasting themes of darkness and light, night and day, ideal and human, as well as the relationship between art and science found in the exhibition Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art.
Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) in Copenhagen, the exhibition features over 80 drawings, sketchbooks, oil sketches, and paintings. It will be on view at the Getty Center from May 23 to August 20, 2023.
Thank you to all AFSMK Patrons who have supported this exhibition and events in New York and L.A. this year.
Baroque - Out of Darkness now open at SMK until November 5, 2023
Karel du Jardin, Boy Blowing Soap Bubbles. Allegory on the Transitoriness and the Brevity of Life, 1663
The newest exhibition at SMK is now open - and it is not to be missed! Baroque - Out of Darkness is SMK's first major exhibition on art in the Baroque era.
The exhibition is based on SMK’s extensive collection of European paintings, drawings and prints from the 17th century, and a large part of the artworks have been brought out from the museum’s storerooms and retrieved from Danish castles where they have been stored for generations. After extensive restoration work, they can now be experienced for the first time in over 100 years and help shed new light on a vibrant and turbulent period that may have more similarities to our time than one might think.
Area9 Lyceum & American Friends of SMK have partnered to increase art knowledge with a course on the Danish Golden Age.
Which period of Danish art history does the Golden Age cover? Who were some of the most influential painters from that time? And what were some of the most significant characteristics?
Test your knowledge and gain new insights about the Golden Age period through this engaging cultural experience, an adaptive learning mini-course developed by Area9 Lyceum in collaboration with SMK and AFSMK. This partnership allows participants to experience exciting material related to SMK’s own collection and exhibitions. Access to lifelong learning is being driven by rapid technological developments and can help build knowledge across a wide range of topics. Therefore, we are pleased to provide access to art and art history with this collaborative course, using adaptive learning technology. This technology is highly effective in improving learning at all levels, regardless of each individual's level of knowledge and background.
Click here to learn more about the collaboration between Area9 Lyceum and American Friends of SMK.
Click here to set up your free account, and start learning all about the Danish Golden Age!
American Friends of Statens Museum for Kunst Presents a Series of Concerts in New York
Featuring a Stellar Line-up of Danish Musicians and Composers.
AFSMK, American Friends of SMK – Statens Museum for Kunst – presents a concert series that will unfold across Manhattan—from The Metropolitan Museum of Art to Lincoln Center and Tribeca— April 11-14 2023. It features a stellar line-up of Danish musicians and composers, including Nikolaj Hess, Ejnar Kanding, My Beautiful Decay 1973 (aka Carsten Bo Eriksen) and Josefine Opsahl, who in 2022 received the Danish Crown Prince Couple’s Cultural Stardust Award. The series takes place on the occasion of the exhibition Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art, which is on view through April 16 at The Met before traveling to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles from May 23 through August 20, 2023. The exhibition is organized by The Met and the J. Paul Getty Museum in collaboration with SMK.
Music as a genre of art played an equally important role as visual art did in this period, which is also the motivation behind the fact that New York, from April 11 to 14, will reverberate with well-known and new Danish musical works. All concerts are significant contributions to the understanding of the period—both through the great Danish composers at the time, Friedrich Kuhlau, Carl Nielsen and Niels W. Gade, but also through contemporary musical interpretations of the exhibition and its themes.
The initiator of several of the concerts is American Friends of SMK, which, since its founding in 2009, has spearheaded the exposure of SMK's collections in the United States. "We see music as an important contribution to the understanding of Danish culture," explains Executive Director of AFSMK, Hanne Støvring, about the initiative; "The concert series creates completely different impressions and expressions of the exhibition and invites the audience to explore across artistic genres, cultures, generations and centuries," she points out.
Thank you to all who participated in Art As Your Future Business Tool!
Join us for this real life session that dares you to think bigger and better in your business approach through the power of art. Packed with international inspiration - American Friends of SMK, BARC Scandinavia and Institute of Future Studies join forces in presenting how art and cultural experiences have measurable impact on both employers, relations and bottom-line.
7 February 2023, from 4-7pm. Please email HSTA@smk.dk for more information.
Carl Bloch, In a Roman Osteria, 1866, oil on canvas, 148.5cm x 177.5cm
Now open at SMK: Carl Bloch: Seduced
The women’s enticing glances, the swarming flies and an aggressively spiky fork: the painting In a Roman Osteria is a prime example of Carl Bloch’s seductive gift for storytelling. This spring, we hone in on the phenomenon of Carl Bloch as SMK shows the biggest exhibition to feature this remarkable artist in a hundred years.
From superstar to whipping boy
In his own day, Carl Bloch was one of Denmark’s most highly acclaimed and spectacular artists. Right from the very beginning of his career, he was celebrated by audiences and art critics alike. However, he later suffered a rapid fall from superstar to whipping boy: after his death, he was largely written out of art history and his pictures were put in storage. The critics claimed that his art was out of date. He was not modern ‘in the right way’.
But the audiences stuck with Bloch. His virtuoso technique, his way of speaking to our emotions and his ability to tell a story continued to impress and delight. To this day, his paintings are some of the most popular in the entire SMK collection.
Bloch was not interested in making audiences see and understand through reason. He wanted people to suffer, be disgusted, rejoice and be seduced in their encounter with his art.
– Peter Nørgaard Larsen, chief curator and senior researcher
The exhibition Carl Bloch – Seduced shows comic and sentimental scenes, religious depictions, fateful tales of doom and portraits of the women of modern life. Bloch embraced it all. Now you have the opportunity to delve into the phenomenon that is Carl Bloch as we unfold his impressive life’s work and examine why he continues to fascinate us today.
Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Denmark in the nineteenth century experienced the disastrous fallout of the Napoleonic Wars, the devastating bombardment of Copenhagen, bankruptcy, and mounting antagonism with Germany. Yet, this sociopolitical and economic tumult also gave rise to a vibrant cultural and philosophical environment for nineteenth-century Danish artists. Beyond the Light places the drawings, oil sketches, and paintings created by these artists firmly in this period, one that witnessed the transformation of a once-powerful Denmark into a small, somewhat marginalized country at the edge of Europe. Danish artists forged a close-knit community during this time, and the artworks they created explore notions of place, identity and belonging, and what it means to travel and return home.
The exhibition features approximately 100 works from The Met collection, SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark, and several American collections, and highlights such artists as Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Christen Købke, Constantin Hansen, Martinus Rørbye, and Vilhelm Hammershøi as well as lesser-known figures like Anton Melbye, Johan Thomas Lundbye, Peter Christian Skovgaard, and Heinrich Gustav Ferdinand Holm, among others.
This exhibition is open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 26 - April 16, 2023. It will then travel to the J Paul Getty Museum, where it will be open from May 23 - August 20, 2023.
A talk from the curatorial team is available to view here. Thank you to the exhibition curators Freyda Spira, Stephanie Schrader and Thomas Lederballe for making this exhibition a reality. And thank you to all AFSMK board directors, patrons and friends for your support and engagement.
The exhibition is made possible by Gilbert and Ildiko Butler. Additional support is provided by The Schiff Foundation. The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, in collaboration with SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark. Accompanied by a catalogue published by The Met. The catalogue is made possible by the New Carlsberg Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Drue E. Heinz Fund and the Tavolozza Foundation.
Additional information available on the Met’s website.
New York Scandia Symphony "Under Northern Lights" Concerts
On April 13th, New York Scandia Symphony will collaborate with AFSMK (American Friends of the Danish National Arts Gallery) and mirror the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, "Beyond the Light," a display of paintings from the Danish Golden Age. This concert will be performed by 50 musicians, selected among the finest in New York City, soloists Peter Reit and Will de Vos and Scandia's Music Director and Conductor, Dorrit Matson.
All AFSMK patrons are welcome to join this very special event, please email mail@afsmk.org to reserve. We look forward to seeing you there.
Matisse: The Red Studio opens at SMK
On October 12th 2022, SMK opened Matisse: The Red Studio to the public and drew in upwards of 3000 visitors. Visitors of the public opening enjoyed talks from museum director Mikkel Bogh, exhibition curator Dorthe Aaagesen as well as music from jazz pianist Nikolaj Hess.
Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with critics praising the focused, rigorous exhibition for its concentration on select Matisse masterpieces.
A big thank you to all in our AFSMK network who followed this project closely and supported the conservation funding of Bathers (1907).
In a special concert to honor the final days of Matisse: The Red Studio at The Museum of Modern Art, internationally renowned and award-winning pianists Nikolaj Hess and Kris Davis performed a series of new pieces inspired by Matisse’s 1911 The Red Studio. Various compositions by Hess and Davis were created specifically for the occasion of the exhibition and performed by the two virtuoso pianists.
The brilliant and memorable concert at MoMA marked another successful collaboration between Hess and AFSMK. In preparation for this concert, Hess and Davis visited the exhibition together and spent an afternoon experiencing and discussing the painting.
This was a special evening which saw Danish-American collaboration extend from visual art to music as Hess and Davis performed their first concert together, and an exciting occasion to see how Matisse’s foundational work continues to inspire artists today. A special thank you to IBN Diamond Corporation / Owner Morten Degnemark for supporting this evening.
More About the Compositions
We asked the musicians to share a little more about their experience composing new music inspired by The Red Studio. Davis’ approach was to compose three pieces in conversation with The Red Studio:
The first was an improvisation using piano preparations (various materials such as rubber and magnets to alter the sound of the piano) wherein I assigned various tempos to different objects in the painting and moved between these tempos freely. The second piece was a more mathematical and literal approach to the painting, assigning 11 themes to the 11 objects in The Red Studio, and moving between those themes by playing with the 'red environment' between the objects. Finally, the third piece was more intuitive- simply a feeling and mood I experienced while studying the red studio.
Nikolaj Hess shared that he used “methods from his artistic research project Transformative Reflections (2022), about translating and generating inspiration from visual art to music.” He shared:
My general method falls in four main categories: intuitive, element-analytical, concrete, idea-analytical, and a fifth perspective reflecting the music back to the visual art, and being in dialogue with it and transforming the experience of both.
My musical perspectives on the Red Studio were based on a number of inductively chosen angles: In the specific area, I was focusing on four rectangular parts with different atmospheres and attributes; the artworks in the artwork and the overall Venetian red; the circular movement and the different iterations of figures and elements; relations between the colors and between the underlying colors, and the figure/ground inversion.
From an underlying idea based perspective I worked with how I experience the artistic intuition and philosophy in the painting; the inspiration it has given to future visual art creation and music; a recurring feeling of suspension of space and time and balancing the figurative and the abstract; and the currents and music of the time of the painting.
For more information about the music, please see Hess’ website.
More about the artists:
Nikolaj Hess is a Danish International multiple prize and award-winning jazz pianist and composer in the field of Nordic and contemporary music. He has toured with and composed and produced music for a number of global projects. Hess is Associate Professor and artistic researcher in the field of painting reflected into music at the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen, and is the Artistic Director of Denmark's Jazz Summer Session.
Kris Davis received the 2021 Doris Duke award and was named Pianist and Composer of the Year 2020 by the Jazz Journalists Association. She is a leader in modern jazz music in the US, and her release, Diatom Ribbons, transcends genres and shows her as an important composer and thinker in modern music.
Concert in Celebration of Matisse: The Red Studio at MoMA by Nikolaj Hess and Kris Davis
Above: Nikolaj Hess and Kris Davis perform at MoMA
From left to right: AFSMK Cultural Coordinator Emma Mortensen, Consul General in New York Ambassador Berit Basse, Composer Kris Davis, Composer Nikolaj Hess, Owner IBN Diamond Corporation Morten Degnemark, AFSMK Executive director Hanne Støvring, MoMA. Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture Ann Temkin and board director in AFSMK Arthur Zegelbone
Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor, 1901.
Chronicles of Solitude: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK - The National Gallery of Denmark
In 2016, The National Gallery of Denmark presented a major travel exhibition on Vilhelm Hammershøi’s masterworks. The exhibition was shown at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Scandinavia House in New York, and Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
As a master of atmospheric and psychological interiors, Hammershøi (1864–1916) was admired by his contemporaries in Europe and the United States including German poet and art critic Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) and American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). In 1889, Hammershøi was awarded a medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and his work was recognized with the Grand Prize at the International Exhibition in Rome in 1911.), German critic Georg Biermann described Hammershøi as a “modern Nordic Vermeer.” Read more about the exhibition HERE.
Credit: SMK
On the Edge of the World: Masterworks by Laurits Andersen Ring from SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark
In 2019 and 2020, a major travel exhibition featuring the Danish painter L.A. Ring was presented at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, WA and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT.
L.A. Ring has been a key figure in the international breakthrough of Nordic art. His works are represented in major shows dedicated to art from around 1900, but despite his importance this was the first exhibition devoted solely to Ring’s art shown outside the Nordic countries. It was a rare opportunity to meet a highly gifted Nordic artist with a view on nature and modern life that corresponds with American Naturalism and Impressionism. You can read the Press Release HERE.
Credit: Besyv
L.A. Ring and Lars Mikkelsen
I’m constantly trying to sort out what’s important and unimportant, because our current society certainly won’t do it for us, and L. A. Ring has something to say. He is one of the main artists of the Modern Breakthrough in Denmark, but he marched to the beat of his own drum. It’s always exciting when people manage to do that. We all know how hard it is to not always to run with all the other sheep. Actor, Lars Mikkelsen
As part of the promotion of the L.A. Ring Exhibition, Actor Lars Mikkelsen was appointed as the Cultural Ambassador for the exhibition. Lars Mikkelsen is one of Denmark’s most known and prominent actors and he has been awarded both nationally and internationally for his acting. In the United States, he is especially known for his role as the Russian president Viktor Petrov in House of Cards, a popular and award-winning show.
The collaboration with Lars Mikkelsen has resulted in five videos on his connection to L.A. Ring. You can see them all HERE.
Credit: SMK
Impressions of L.A. Ring – Concert series by acclaimed jazz musician Nikolaj Hess
In a unique concert series reflecting on the themes in L.A: Ring’s artistic universe, internationally renowned jazz and improvisational artist Nikolaj Hess, known for his “fluidity, harmonic command and palpable determination at the keys,” has painted a modern impression of one of Denmark’s most celebrated artists.
Three performances in 2020 explored Hess’ interest in the five main themes of Ring’s work as highlighted in the travel exhibition, such as the naturalism seen in the landscape paintings, and the humanity captured through portraiture.
The fabulous concerts (on-site as well on-line) came out of Hess’ collaboration with AFSMK and is connected to his research study Transformative Reflections, which explores inspiration and translation from visual art to jazz composition and improvisation. Film Producer Andreas Johnsen created the visuals to the concerts and recorded all concerts for digital broadcasting. A special thank you to AFSMK Board member and donor Greg M. Moga who generously supported the project.
Films from the performances can be found here:
Six minutes teaser from the concert at the National Nordic Museum on January 14th
2020 Full concert from the National Gallery of Denmark on June 24th, 2020