The Collection

The Collection at Kunstmuseum Brandts holds 250 years of Danish art history. Here we show the best from the vaults, alongside prominent recent acquisitions.

The works in the exhibition reflect changing views of art over time. The Golden Age painters sought beauty in the ruins of ancient Rome. Social realist H.A. Brendekilde made Danish art history with his moving monument to the worn-out farm labourer who has collapsed in the field. The Concretists embraced abstraction as a free space and cultivated the clear language of colour and form. With a chronological presentation of the collection's most important periods, the exhibition shows how artists through time have tried to find their way in a complex reality.

Classics such as Jens Juel, H.A. Brendekilde, Vilhelm Hammershøi and Anna Ancher are shown side by side with artists such as Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, who have only in recent years taken their rightful place in art history. The modern collection includes works by Vilhelm Lundstrøm, Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Asger Jorn, Anna Klindt Sørensen, Viera Collaro, Niels Nedergaard and Kirsten Lockenwitz. The exhibition also presents a selection of the museum's recent acquisitions, including contemporary works by Kamil Dossar, Kåre Frang, Miriam Kongstad and Lisbeth Karline Poulsen.

The exhibition of works from the collection spreads to the museum's ground floor, where you can especially make the acquaintance of sculptures and plaster casts from important historical periods. The selection includes a few international names and ranges from Myron's “Discobolus” to Gerhard Henning's iconic female figure “Danaë”. The human body is a recurring motif in most of the sculptures, which show changing ideals of the body and depictions of men and women. It is striking how Michelangelo's sculpture “The Dying Slave” eroticises the male slave by portraying him in a traditionally female pose.

The very contemporary sculpture is represented by Amalie Jakobsen's just under three metres tall work “Future Rock”, which is part of the museum's recent acquisitions.