Designmuseum Danmark set to reopen in Copenhagen after two-years of renovation

After a thorough renovation of its 1700s-era building in the historic Copenhagen neighbourhood of Frederiksstaden, Designmuseum Danmark is ready to welcome guests yet again. Visitors will be greeted by a newly restored façade and a full 2500 square meters of the newly laid marble floor.

The museum’s reopening will be commemorated with a variety of different events where guests can experience new exhibitions, a new shop and café, and new facilities in the garden. It is also a chance to get closer to a unique example of architectural heritage in the heart of Copenhagen.

Museum Director Anne-Louise Sommer says: "It is with great pleasure, and excitement, that we announce the date for this long-awaited 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. 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 needs, 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.“

The museum’s opening programme includes a total of eight new exhibitions that cover the entire spectrum of design, from the wonders of the past to the great icons of modernism to the significant themes of today.

Five highlights are:

The future is present
This exhibition focuses on how today’s design solutions respond to challenges of the future such as health, climate, and identity. The future is very much present in these exhibition spaces, inviting all of us to think along and form a poetic universe designed by the 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 will put contemporary themes and new talents up for debate. The first theme addresses sustainability and fashion. 

Powerful Patterns
The contemporary perspective is repeated in the exhibition Powerful Patterns, a playful and visually sensual universe that gives new life to some of the museum’s most colourful and fabulous patterns. The exhibition is created in cooperation with the Danish fashion designer, artist, and musician Henrik Vibskov.

WONDER
The exhibition displays a treasure chest of the museum’s oldest and most unique collections and tips a hat to some of the wonderful and eccentric personalities who have helped build and expand the collections since the 1800s, turning “things” into museum objects. The contemporary design duo Mathias Mentze and Alexander Ottenstien have created a special showcase for the unique collection of Japanese sward fittings (tsubas) in one of the rooms.

The Magic of Form
This comprehensive exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the best of 20th-century furniture, design, crafts, visual arts, and architecture. Here guests can see the critically-acclaimed audience favourite The Magic of Form – Design and Art, which was shown in 2021 at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg. The exhibition is created in cooperation with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Kunsten and brings together highlights from the three museums’ beautiful collections.

Table be set!
In this exhibition, visitors will encounter a 13-metre glass slab lit from within, designed by the acclaimed designer Boris Berlin. Resembling a golden, glowing worm in the darkened room, it tells the story of the history of mealtime design with seven settings of tableware from the Renaissance until today. The guests follow the evolution from “the table of the rich” set with an overabundance of silver settings and rare one-of-kind glasses to modernism’s simple tableware, with pots designed to sit directly on the now sparsely-set table.

New café and museum shop
In addition to the exhibitions, the museum has renovated all its guest areas. The museum’s café and shop are redesigned by the award-winning OEO Studio with a new concept and more lounge areas.

In the years to come, the museum garden will create a space for several new creative initiatives where visitors and locals can meet the creative community.

Read more about Designmuseum Danmark here.