The Louisiana is a renowned museum of modern and contemporary art located near Humlebæk, a town in eastern Denmark, about 25 miles north of Copenhagen.
The museum was founded in 1958 by Danish businessman and art collector Knud W. Jensen in a beautifully located site on the Zealand coastline, where a country house had been since 1855, to establish a new museum of modern art.
The estate was named Louisiana by its first owner, Alexander Brun, who had married three women all named Louise; after purchasing the property, Jensen decided to retain the original toponym.
Over time, the museum was expanded and updated seven times with several modern-style pavilions, all conceived by Danish architects Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert. A distinctive design feature of the museum, the integration between art, architecture, and nature of the Louisiana Museum is outstanding and has massively contributed to its popular success.
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, views of the old villa, and one of the modern pavilions
The permanent collection of the Louisiana museum comprises about 3,500 works, dating from 1945 to the present, by American and European artists, including Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichenstein, Henry Moore, Asger Jorn, Georg Baselitz, Lucio Fontana, Jean Tinguely, Antoni Tàpies, Francis Bacon, Sigmar Polke, Louise Bourgeois, Claes Oldenburg, Anselm Kiefer, Mario Merz, Yayoi Kusama, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Per Kirkeby, and Pipilotti Rist, among others.
Another major attraction of the Louisiana Museum is its exceptional sculpture garden with pieces by Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Henri Laurens, Henry Heerup, Joan Miró, and Henry Moore, among others.
Various views of the museum’s galleries
The sculpture garden overlooking the Baltic Sea
The Louisiana Museum organizes temporary exhibitions of art, architecture, design, and ethnography; as well as guided tours, special events, concerts, lectures, workshops, and educational activities specially aimed at children and young people.
The museum’s complex, accessible to people with disabilities, includes a restaurant, specializing in contemporary Danish cuisine, and a bookshop.
The museum shop and a view of the interior of the Children’s Wing
All photos courtesy of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art