The museum is located by the Øresund coast in the North Zeeland region, some north of central Copenhagen and south of Elsinore. From the regional train station in Humlebæk, it takes 10-15 minutes to walk to the museum.
History
The name of the museum derives from the first owner of the property, Alexander Brun, who named the villa after his three wives, all called Louise. The museum was created in 1958 by Knud W. Jensen, the owner at the time. He contacted architects Vilhelm Wohlert and Jørgen Bo who spent a few months walking around the property before deciding how a new construction would best fit into the landscape. This study resulted in the first version of the museum consisting of three buildings connected by glass corridors. Since then it has been extended several times until it reached its present circular shape in 1991. In late November 2012, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art launched Louisiana Channel, a web-TV channel contributing to the development of the museum as a cultural platform. In 2013, the museum's music department launched Louisiana Music, a webpage dedicated to musical videos produced by the museum in collaboration with world-famous musicians.
Besides the collection of modern art, Louisiana also displays a collection of Pre-Columbian art. Consisting of more than 400 objects, the collection was a donation from the Wessel-Bagge Foundation in 2001. It is the personal collection left by Niels-Wessel Bagge, a California-based Danish dancer, choreographer, and art collector, who died in 1990.
Exhibitions
The Louisiana Museum mounts temporary exhibitions, including installations such as Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's site-specific work "Riverbed", which was made specifically for the museum and shown from August 2014 to January 2015. The work was in three sections with a theme that related art, architecture and nature, in which a rocky riverbed was created to take up the museum's entire south wing.
Concert hall
The Concert Hall was built in 1976 in connection with the West Wing which had been built in 1966 and 1971. Its acoustics make it especially suitable for chamber music, but it is also used for other musical genres as well as a wide array of others events and activities such as debates, lectures and symposiums. The chairs are designed by Poul Kjærholm and the rear wall is decorated with paintings created for the site by Sam Francis. In 2007 began a project to produce concerts filming and musical clips directed by Stéphan Aubé. All the movies are available for free on the Louisiana Music website.
Sculpture garden
The grounds around the museum contain a landscaped sculpture garden. It consists of a plateau and ground that slopes towards the Øresund and is dominated by huge, ancient specimen trees and sweeping vistas of the sea. It contains works by such artists as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Max Bill, Alexander Calder, Henri Laurens, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Miró and Henry Moore. The sculptures are either placed so that they can be viewed from within, in special sculpture yards or independently around the gardens, forming a synthesis with the lawns, the trees and the sea. There are also examples of site-specific art by such artists as Enzo Cucchi, Dani Karavan and George Trakas. works from Alberto Giacometti
Louisiana Literature
is an annual festival that takes place at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Launched in 2010, the festival each year features about forty writers from across the world. They perform on stages around the museum and in the sculpture park, and attract more than 15,000 people each year.
and Nørgaard på Strøget are the Louisiana's main corporate partners.
Sponsors
sponsors programs and exhibitions at Louisiana. Realdania has supported Louisiana'a architectural exhibitions since 2006. The new Carlsberg foundation has supported Louisiana's acquisition programme generously throughout most of the museum's history.
