From 26 March, the Glyptotek expands its weekly opening time by ten hours to offer a distinctly different museum experience after sunset. This has been made possible by new lighting throughout the building, a renovation that cost DKK 12 million and was funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation.
Created as a daylight museum in 1897, until now the Glyptotek has functioned as an art museum with very limited electric light. That has made visits during the dark winter months challenging for the public and has imposed natural constraints on the museum’s opening hours since it was founded.
‘The Glyptotek, Carl Jacobsen’s treasure trove, is a world-class museum with a collection that deserves the best possible setting. That is why the New Carlsberg Foundation decided to fund new lighting that will enable a growing number of visitors to enjoy the museum, also after dark,’ says Karsten Ohrt, the chairman of the New Carlsberg Foundation.
From 26 March, the daily hours are extended by one hour, to 18.00, and on Thursdays, the Glyptotek stays open until 22.00. In total, this adds ten hours a week, corresponding to almost three months a year under the previous schedule.
During the day, the sculpture halls at the Glyptotek will still be lit by the influx of natural daylight through the characteristic skylights and high daylight windows. The new lighting is more than an extension of the daytime experience of the art works. It is a new and flexible type of museum lighting that can be adapted for the individual halls and add to the experience by simple technical means.
The director of the Glyptotek, Flemming Friborg, says, ‘Our goal is to offer our guests an experience that revolves around the natural raw material of any museum: the works of art and their inherent narratives and sensuous nature. The innovative feature is the capacity for immersion. The Glyptotek should have a slow feel. It is a space for reflection, where art from thousands of years is brought together under one roof, and where a unique combination of art, architecture and greenhouse promotes a unique sense of contemplative calm. That sense of calm is the basis of our efforts to present and convey the artworks in the collection. The Glyptotek is an oasis and a historical prism – held together by one man’s almost absurd dream of bringing the cultures of the antiquity and the finest examples of French art at the time to Denmark in a single move. The new lighting is a renewal of brewer Jacobsen’s gift to the Danes – a gift that truly keeps on giving.’