ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum

Why it is renowned

ARoS is one of the largest art museums in Northern Europe, with 624,000 visitors in 2023.¹ Olafur Eliasson's Your rainbow panorama, a circular walkway of coloured glass on the roof, opened in 2011 and more than doubled the museum's attendance within two years, a rise The Art Newspaper reported.¹ Its exhibitions have shown Frank Gehry, Bill Viola, Cindy Sherman and Robert Rauschenberg, and James Turrell's skyspace The Dome is now part of the museum.¹²

The story

The museum was established in 1859, when the art association Århus Kunstforening af 1847 held its first public exhibition in the old town hall; it is the oldest public art museum in Denmark outside Copenhagen.¹ In 2004 it moved into a new building by the Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen, ten storeys high with 20,700 m² of floor.¹ The name joins Áros, the Old Danish name of Aarhus, with ars, Latin for art.¹ Its collection runs from the Danish Golden Age to today, and a basement gallery, The 9 Spaces, is named after the nine circles of Dante's hell.¹

What to know it by

• Your rainbow panorama2011Olafur EliassonCircular walkway of coloured glass on the roof
• As Seen Below – The DomeJames TurrellSkyspace
• The 9 SpacesBasement galleries for installation art