Denmark

Carl Jacobsen

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

The collection is built around the personal collection of the brewer Carl Jacobsen (1842–1914), the son of the founder of the Carlsberg Breweries, who created one of the largest private art collections of his time. It was named after his brewery, Ny Carlsberg, with the addition of "Glyptotek", meaning collection of sculpture.

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek's Main Entrance

           

On 8 March 1888, Carl Jacobsen donated his collection to de Danish State and the City of Copenhagen on condition that they provided a suitable building for its exhibition, as he hadn't enough space to afford it. A site outside Holcks Bastion in the city's Western Rampart (in the old fortifications) was chosen to host the museum, which opened on 1 May 1897. At first it only included Jacobsen's modern collection with French and Danish works from the 18th century, but in January 1899 he donated his collection of Antique art to the museum which made a huge expansion.

                                   

The Glypotek houses over 10.000 works of art divided up into two principal collections.

The museum has a Department of Antiquities, which houses antique sculpture from the ancient cultures around the Mediterranean (Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman), as well as more modern ones such as a collection of Rodin works which is considered the most important outside France. However, it's equally noted for its more modern paintings, including a collection of French impressionists and Post-impressionists, and Danish Golden Age paintings.

The two main departments of ancient and modern art, offer a unique combination of art in impressive architectural surroundings.

The museum is divided in three parts (or wings)

- The Henning Larsen Wing is a the smallest one, added in an  inner courtyard, and hosts the collection of antiquies.

- The Dahlerup Wing is the oldest part of the museum, an historical building. The façade is in Venetian renaissance style. It houses the French and Danish collections. Dahlerup designed a Winter Garden which connected the new wing to the old building. It was inaugurated in 1906.

- The Kampmann Wing is a more simple, neo-classical building, built as a series of galleries around a central auditorium used for lectures, small concerts, symposiums and poetry readings.

Two of three wings of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

The Winter Garden and the Auditorium

Collections

Antique collection

The Antique collection displays sculptures and other antiquities from the ancient cultures around the Mediterranean.

- The extensive Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collection comprises marble statues, small terracotta statues, reliefs, pottery and other objects. The Etruscan collection is the largest outside Italy.

- The Egyptian Collection comprises more than 1,900 pieces, dating from 3000 BCE to the 1st century CE and representing both Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom and the Roman Period. Many of the objects in the collection were augmented when the Ny Carlsberg Foundation sponsored excavations in Egypt in the beginning of the 20th. The holdings include several mummies, displayed in a crypt-like gallery below the normal galleries. There are also scpultures from other cultures such as the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia or Persia.

French Collection

The main focus of the French Collection is 19th-century French painting and sculpture. The French Collection includes works by painters such as Jacques-Louis David, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, Bonnard, Gauguin and Cézanne, as well as those by Post-impressionists such as van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard. The museum also holds a large collection of French 19th-century sculpture by artists such as Carpeaux and Rodin (the Rodin collection being one of the largest in the world).

       Impressionist Painting (Pissarro - 1903)                     Post-impressionist Painting (Gauguin - 1959)

     Two sculptures by Auguste Rodin in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

                                                          

Danish Collection

The Danish Collection contains a large collection of Danish Golden Age paintings by painters such as Eckersberg, Købke and Lundbye. It also contains the largest representation of Danish Golden Age Sculpture in the country.

                Frederiksborg Castle (Christen Købke - 1835)                   The North Gate of the Citadel (Christen Købke - 1834)                               

Spanish artists such as Picasso or Miró also have representation in the museum.

Gal·la Garcia

Víctor Fortea