Many Modernities

At Museum Ordrupgaard, we are preparing a research-based exhibition that examines the generation of Danish female artists including Bertha Wegmann, Sofie Holten, Anna Petersen, Augusta Dohlmann, Anna Ancher, and many more, who from the early 1880s traveled to Paris to educate themselves and encounter modernity.

Through works by Danish and international artists such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, and others, we illuminate how the encounter with the French art scene, new networks, and modern ideas and living conditions shaped their artistic practice and self-understanding as both artists and women.

The exhibition challenges a number of established narratives about modernity. Were Danish and Nordic women actually more liberated than their French colleagues, or does this notion not do justice to the French women? And how should we understand the paradox that women were educated in French salon art – a tradition that has been considered old-fashioned and backward compared to Impressionism – while at the same time developing a modern artistic vision? By putting Danish artists in dialogue with both salon artists and Impressionists, the exhibition unfolds how, across styles, there were common ways of depicting and reflecting on modern life.

We show that female artists were not just passive recipients of international trends, but active participants and central actors in the development of modern art. Thus, Many Modernities nuances our understanding of what modernity was, and points to its many different expressions and paths.