Having to make yourself understood in a new language and find your way in a new country can often prove to be a long and demanding process. It involves not only a new vocabulary, but can also involve new ways of speaking and perhaps completely new social relations and cultural codes. With the project The Art of Language, we at JF Willumsens Museum, through close collaboration with Sprogcenter Nordsjælland – Frederikssund branch, wanted to investigate how the museum and art can be involved in teaching Danish as a second language.

Through his works, Willumsen provides access to a personal and sensual space, where the basic conditions of man and being human in the world are treated and translated into images, so that our curiosity is piqued and our senses and emotions are touched. With the project, based on the museum's collection, we want to investigate how the encounter with Willumsen's works and with art in general can create a need for a language, stimulate the desire to learn and strengthen the self-confidence of the language center's students.

The project involved a working group consisting of museum curator Louise Bugge Jacobsen, Monika Kallan and Maria Hansen from the North Zealand – Frederikssund language center, and Mads Haugsted, Associate Professor at DPU.

We offer a general introduction to the museum and JF Willumsen as well as a brief introduction to the current exhibition. The course lasts 1 1/2 hours.