Exhibition
Willumsens’s World
Exhibition of the collection
For once J.F. Willumsen takes over the entire museum in an exhibition shedding light on multiple aspects of his wide-ranging oeuvre.
Highlights include Willumsen’s ceramics, 1890-1900, the relationship between Willumsen’s photography and painting, ‘The Old Collection’ – Willumsen’s own art collection as well as the creative process behind the making of two of Willumsen’s most famous works, Children Bathing on Skaw Beach and A Mountaineer.
Mama Mia
Willumsen’s Museum has a long-standing tradition of ground-breaking, experimental exhibitions curated by artists. Based on J.F. Willumsen’s life and works, their often subjective approach and what they choose from the museum’s collection of art, letters, photographs and notebooks cast an ‘artist’s eye’ on the materials, presenting Willumsen in the company of other artists or alongside the works of the artist curator. In the past artists Arme og ben (1978), Kirsten Justesen (1987), Claus Carstensen and Christian Vind (2013) have curated exhibitions at the museum. In some cases the curation by artists becomes part of their artistic practice, and the exhibition a work of art.
Keeping the tradition alive, we have invited Danish artist Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan (b. 1985) to curate an exhibition with the title MAMA MIA. In MAMA MIA Lind-Valdan presents an original sensual, feminist-based curation of works by Willumsen from the museum’s collection, alongside works by leading contemporary artists from Denmark and abroad.
Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan, who also uses the initials SALV, is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her body of works, which includes drawing, photography, performance and text, constitutes a feminist practice investigating bodily experience using a range of media.
June 17th – October 23rd, 2021
November 4th, 2022 – February 19th, 2023
Between Myth and Reality
In collaboration with CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark
An exhibition presenting the ceramic works of J.F. Willumsen (1863-1958) and Jean Gauguin (1881-1961) in challenging dialogue with the young artist Klara Lilja (b. 1989), who has made detailed studies of Willumsen’s glazes.
An exhibition connecting three artists across time: Willumsen and Gauguin representing ceramic art of the last decades of the 19th century and mid-20th century respectively, and Lilje representing the present. All three artists are connected by sculptural ceramic works that combine a figurative narrative and expressive style with glazes in intense colours. They also share an unorthodox approach to ceramic techniques, in which none of them trained formally. Largely self-taught, they bring alternative artisanal and artistic approaches to the medium of clay based on inspiration from other artists and practitioners of the craft. What they have in common is their experimental and exploratory approach to ceramics, investigating the innate potential of the medium. The ceramic works of Willumsen, Gauguin and Lilja create powerful, sculptural stories based on the intricate relationship between mass, form and glaze. Their imaginative works possess elements of the distorted and grotesque, as well as the courage to depart from contemporary norms and pursue new paths.
