Designmuseum Danmark

Why it is renowned

Designmuseum Danmark shows the work of Danish designers such as Arne Jacobsen, Jacob Jensen and Kaare Klint, beside Chinese and German porcelain.¹ Its library is the largest in Scandinavia for decorative arts and industrial design, and it hosts the Furnitureindex, an English-language database of more than 12,000 pieces of 20th- and 21st-century Danish furniture.¹ Lonely Planet counts it among the best museums in Copenhagen, for the work of Arne Jacobsen and for design in everyday things, from cutlery to typefaces.²

The story

The museum was founded in 1890 by Industriforeningen in Copenhagen and the Ny Carlsberg Museumslegat, to show craftspeople and manufacturers the best work of different ages.¹³ Its first building, by Vilhelm Klein, opened by City Hall Square in 1895.¹³ In 1926 it moved into Frederiks Hospital, built in 1752–57, which the banker Emil Glückstadt had given it and which Kaare Klint and Ivar Bentsen fitted out as a museum; Klint designed all its furnishings.¹³ It was called Kunstindustrimuseet until 2011.¹

What to know it by

• Frederiks Hospital¹1757The 18th-century hospital the museum has occupied since 1926
• The reading room³Kaare KlintLibrary for decorative arts and industrial design
• Furnitureindex¹2000Begun as the Palley Index; online at the museum since 2003