On January 6, 1859, the art collection that became ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum opened its doors to the public in loft rooms of Aarhus's new town hall near the cathedral. ARoS's archived anniversary page states that the museum thereby became the first publicly accessible art collection in Denmark outside the capital. Its origins lay in the local Aarhus Art Association, founded in 1847, whose members argued that people beyond Copenhagen should be able to encounter significant art. The first display combined a small local collection with twenty-four paintings loaned from the Royal Painting Collection at Christiansborg, making the young museum both civic and national in scope.
The opening established one of Denmark's longest-running public art institutions outside Copenhagen.