Directors of the Copenhagen National Museum 1996 – 2017
Civilingeniør Knud Nørgaard og hustru Grethe Nørgaards Foundation in 2020 commissioned the portraits of the latest 4 directors of The National Museum that had not been represented either as a bust or a relief, like their predecessors, starting by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. The great sculptor H.V.Bissen carved his portrait bust in marble in 1860.
It meant a great responsibility for me to renovate a long sculptural tradition and somehow defend what portrait painting can give in the XXI century. At the same time as the 4 deeply complementary great personalities I have also, from the very beginning, wished to portrait a part of the museum’s scientific investigation.
It is part of the National Museum DNA, the fact that the founder Chr. J. Thomsen discovered and described the classification of Stone-, Bronze- and Iron ages, what created a revolution in archaeology; therefore I wished that these ages were represented in the portraits. The corner office in the National Museum’s main building at ”Prinsens Palæ”, which has been the common place for their everyday’s work is also depicted in each of the paintings.
STEEN HVASS ( Dir. 1996-2002 ) – EPIPHANY OF DISCOVERY (104x104x0,5 cm) holds a stone axe from the 3rd millenium B.C. in front of an aerial photograph which put him on the track for the excavation of the iron age village Hodde from 1st century B.C.
CARSTEN ULRICK LARSEN ( Dir. 2002-2008 ) – THE MIMETIC AND THE ETERNAL. TO RECOGNISE THE HUMAN SOUL IN THE CLOUD AND IN THE GRAVE URN. (104x104x0,5 cm) stands in front of Hankehøj, a hill from the bronze age , which I have synthesized from J. Th. Lundbye’s draft and painting; below there is an image of a bronze burial urn found in South Jylland.
PER KRISTIAN MADSEN ( Dir. 2008-2017 ) – PERSPECTIVE OF BELIEVE AND BELIEVE OF PERSPECTIVE. BEFORE THE RENAISSANCE (104x104x0,5 cm) is specialist in the middle ages; therefore his portrait shows the ceiling of Southern Borris and Vilslev Church. Moreover P.K. Madsen holds a jar from Sankt Hans Kilde excavations in Roskilde which he had described in a scientific article.
The fourth portrait, which cannot be seen for the moment, corresponds to RANE WILLERSLEV ( Dir. 2017 – ) TRANSCENDENS (104x104x0,5 cm) the present director, contains references to the period of the Vikings in form of diagrams on the investigations of the National Museum about the Jelling monuments.
THE BOOK
NATIONALMUSEETS ANSIGTER
LARS PHYSANTS DIREKTØRPORTRÆTTER
Mette Skovgaard and Thomas Lundby have written the complete history of all the busts and reliefs portraying the directors of the National Museum, from Chr. J. Thomsen to Olaf Olsen, as well as describing the process of the recently presented portraits and thereby also relating about more than 200 years of exciting development from the unorganised royal collection of archaeological objects until Denmark’s main and most important museum; the conservation and continuation of the country’s collective memory.
The new portraits can be seen in National Museum Ceremonial Hall at opening hours and the book is available at the museum’s book shop.
My very best regards,
Lars
THE PRESENTATION AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM CEREMONIAL HALL – 16th November 2022
