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New permanent exhibition on Danish Design in the 20th Century

Danish Modern

Danish design is known and loved – both at home and abroad. But what led to its success, which designs are central, and who are the major Danish designers of the 20th century? The exhibition DANISH MODERN unfolds the story of Danish design from the 1920s until the year 2000, focusing on the creation of some of the most iconic Danish design objects.

Danish Modern is an era, a style, a national brand. The style gained popularity in the mid-20th century and quickly became popular in the West. But what lies behind the notions of Danish Modern? In a new permanent exhibition, Designmuseum Danmark explores how Danish designers have methodically worked with design processes and tells the story of the success behind Danish design.

A farewell to the Victorian home
Modernists viewed the era’s crowded living rooms with heavy furniture, velvet curtains, carpets, plants, and an abundance of knick-knacks as an example of everything wrong with design and decoration. Danish Modern thus became their rebellion against the ‘style confusion’ they believed prevailed until the 1920s.

The exhibition DANISH MODERN invites the audience on a design journey from furniture professor Kaare Klint’s ‘Room for a Woman’, over the iconic German Frankfurter kitchen – which illustrates both differences and similarities between Danish and European modernism – to Verner Panton and Nanna Ditzel’s organic pop designs and the futuristic and cool high-tech designs of the 80s. In short, a fascinating journey through everything we now know as Danish design icons mixed with unknown designs by well-known designers.

Danish chairs from floor to ceiling
DANISH MODERN also brings back the popular ‘chair tunnel’ in a new, larger version with 125 chairs, both highlights and unknown chairs, from floor to ceiling. It tells the story of how Danish furniture draws inspiration from historical types from other countries. The chair tunnel is like a family tree of chair relationships and includes chairs from both Danish and international designers – Hans J. Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, Nanna Ditzel, Cecilie Manz, Charles Eames, Marcel Breuer, and Jasper Morrison.

Danish Modern on the world map – who are the designers?
The museum has created a large, brand-new Danish Modern ‘theater’, a comprehensive scenography that places the various designers in Danish and international design history. Why did Danish Modern break through internationally in 1949? Who were the individuals who shaped Danish Modern? We are presented with the designers’ personal belongings, thoughts, drawings, exhibition, and archive material.

Experience designs by Rigmor Andersen, Mogens Koch, Ole Wanscher, Børge Mogensen, Lis Ahlman, Grethe Meyer, Kay Bojesen, Gertrud Vasegaard, Poul Kjærholm, Hans J. Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Henning Koppel, Per Lütken, Axel Salto, Poul Henningsen, and many more.

 

Cool High Tech
In DANISH MODERN, the audience can also explore the design currents that built on or broke with Danish Modern in the decades that followed. High Tech emerged as a style in the 1970s and was particularly popular in the 1980s. It carried forth modernism’s fascination with the functional, celebrating technical and structural forms of expression. Inspiration was drawn from factories, industry, and laboratories. The most commonly used materials were stainless steel and glass. In Denmark, from 1970 to 2000, several designers continued the country’s ‘functional tradition,’ evolving it into a fully industrial approach to design. Much of the Danish industrial design in the period is more understated and rational than high tech design from other countries. In this way, it will be a continuation of Danish Modern, but in cool industrial materials. The exhibition shows i.a. design by Bang & Olufsen, Knud Holscher, Niels Gammelgaard for IKEA, Norman Foster and Ole Palsby for Eva Trio.

A break with Danish Modern
Postmodernism was a broad cultural movement which peaked in architecture and design in the 1970s and 1980s. It began as a revolt against modernism’s worship of the functional and production-friendly style. Instead, the postmodern designers found their inspiration in contemporary popular culture. They created an aesthetic that reflected the more fragmented and complex everyday life which mass media and the consumer society had caused. The movement is characterized by its devotion to superficiality and storytelling which gave way to more playful and colourful everyday products. Designers such as Philippe Starck were a strong exponent of the style, but the most radical and ground-breaking were the Italian design groups Studio Alchymia and Memphis. In Denmark, few designers embraced postmodernism, but designers such as Ernst Lohse, Ole Jensen and Ursula Munch-Petersen did.

Want to learn more? Book a guided tour of DANISH MODERN. Read more