Danish Modern

Danish design is known and loved – both at home and abroad, but what led to its success, which designs are central, and who are the great Danish designers of the 20th century? The exhibition 'DANISH MODERN' unfolds the history of Danish design from the 1920s to 2000, focusing on some of the most iconic Danish design objects.

Danish Modern is an era, a style, a national brand. The style broke through in the mid-20th century and quickly became popular in the West. But what lies behind the notions of Danish Modern? The exhibition DANISH MODERN explains how Danish designers have worked methodically with design processes and tells the story of the success behind Danish design.

A farewell to the clutter of Victorian homes Modernists viewed the overcrowded living rooms of the time with heavy furniture, velvet curtains, carpets, plants, and quantities of knick-knacks as an example of everything that was wrong with design and interior decoration. Danish Modern thus became their rebellion against the 'style confusion' they believed prevailed until the 1920s.

The exhibition DANISH MODERN invites the public on a design-historical journey from furniture professor Kaare Klint's Room for a Lady, over the iconic German Frankfurter Küche, which illustrates both differences and similarities between Danish and European modernism, to Verner Panton's and Nanna Ditzel's organic pop designs and the futuristic and cool high-tech design of the 80s. In short, a wondrous journey through everything we now know as Danish design icons mixed with unknown designs by famous designers.

Danish chairs from floor to ceiling DANISH MODERN also brings back the popular chair tunnel in a new, larger version with 125 chairs, both highlights and unknown chairs, from floor to ceiling, telling the story of how Danish furniture originates from historical types from other countries. The chair tunnel is like a family tree of chair relations and includes chairs by both Danish and international designers such as Hans J. Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, Nanna Ditzel, Cecilie Manz, Charles Eames, Marcel Breuer or Jasper Morrison.

Danish Modern on the world map – who are the designers? The museum has created a scenography that places the various designers in Danish and international design history. Why did Danish Modern break through internationally precisely in 1949? Who were the people who created Danish Modern? We are presented with the designers' personal items, thoughts, drawings, exhibition, and archival material.

Experience design by Rigmor Andersen, Mogens Koch, Ole Wanscher, Børge Mogensen, Lis Ahlman, Grethe Meyer, Kay Bojesen, Gertrud Vasegaard, Poul Kjærholm, Hans J. Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Henning Koppel, Per Lütken, Axel Salto, Poul Henningsen and many more.

Cool high-tech In DANISH MODERN, the public can also explore the design trends that built upon or broke with Danish Modern in the decades that followed. In the 1970s, the High-tech movement emerged, which became particularly widespread in the 1980s. The style continued modernism's fascination with the functional and cultivated the expression of purely technical and structural structures. Inspiration was drawn from factories, industry, and laboratories. The most used materials were polished steel and glass. In Denmark, a number of designers continued "the functional tradition" in the period 1970-2000, but now as purely industrial design. Much of the Danish industrial design in the period is more understated and rational than high-tech design from other countries. It thus became a continuation of Danish Modern, but in cool industrial materials. The exhibition shows designs by Bang & Olufsen, Knud Holscher, Niels Gammelgaard for IKEA, Norman Foster and Ole Palsby for Eva Trio, among others.

A break with Danish Modern Postmodernism was a broad cultural movement that began in the 1970s and had its heyday in the 1980s. The movement was a rebellion against modernism's functional and production-friendly design language. Postmodern designers and architects took popular everyday culture as their starting point and created an expression that reflected the fragmented reality provided by contemporary consumer and mass media culture. They cultivated the superficial and storytelling, more than they were interested in optimizing function. Everyday products gained a more colorful and playful expression. Designers like Philippe Starck were strong exponents of the style, but the most radical and groundbreaking were the Italian design groups Studio Alchymia and Memphis. In Denmark, there were not many designers who cultivated postmodernism, but designers such as Ernst Lohse, Ole Jensen and Ursula Munch-Petersen did.

Interested in knowing more? Book a guided tour here.