Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Why it is renowned

The Louisiana is the most visited museum of modern and contemporary art in Scandinavia, with more than 700,000 visitors a year and six to ten exhibitions a year.¹ Its sculpture park holds works by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Richard Serra, and its collection runs from Giacometti, Picasso and Warhol to Yayoi Kusama's Gleaming Lights of the Souls.¹ The New York Times wrote that no museum has used streaming video more ambitiously than the Louisiana, whose Louisiana Channel has filmed artists and writers since 2012.¹

The story

The museum takes its name from a villa built in 1855 by Alexander Brun, whose three wives were all called Louise.¹ The businessman Knud W. Jensen bought the property in 1955, and the architects Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert added low buildings joined by glass corridors; the museum opened in 1958.¹ After seeing Documenta II in Kassel in 1959, Jensen turned the Louisiana towards international art, and Roy Lichtenstein and Sam Francis later made works for it after visiting.¹ A literature festival with about forty writers a year has run since 2010.¹

What to know it by

• Sculpture parkWorks by Calder, Moore and Serra between the two wings, above the sea
• Giacometti GalleryAlberto GiacomettiOriginal sculptures from the collection
• Gleaming Lights of the SoulsYayoi KusamaMirror room installation
• Louisiana Channel2012Films with artists, writers and architects
• Louisiana Literature2010Literature festival in the museum and the park