Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, commonly known as Glyptoteket, is an art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1882 by Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914), son of the founder of the Carlsberg Breweries, the museum houses his private art collection. The name derives from Greek: "glyphein" (to carve) and "theke" (storing place), with "ny" meaning "new" in Danish. Primarily a sculpture museum, it holds particular distinction for its antique Mediterranean sculpture and its collection of Auguste Rodin's works, considered the most important outside France. The museum also maintains significant holdings of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, as well as Danish Golden Age art.

Carl Jacobsen began collecting art in earnest during the 1880s, with a particular interest in antique art though he also acquired French and Danish sculpture. In 1882, he extended his private villa with a winter garden where sculptures soon outnumbered plants, and that same year he opened the collection to the public. By 1885, this "house museum" had expanded to 19 galleries, with Vilhelm Dahlerup designing the first 14 and Hack Kampmann adding the last four plus a redesign of the winter garden.

As the collection outgrew these premises, Jacobsen donated it to the Danish State and the City of Copenhagen on 8 March 1888, on condition that they provide a suitable building. A site was chosen on a ravelin outside Holcks Bastion in the city's Western Rampart, just south of Tivoli Gardens, though Jacobsen had preferred a location on the emerging city hall square. The museum opened on 1 May 1897, initially displaying only Jacobsen's modern collection of French and Danish works from the 18th century. In January 1899, Jacobsen donated his antique art collection, necessitating further expansion designed by Kampmann with a connecting winter garden by Dahlerup, inaugurated in 1906.

The museum marked the centenary of its antique collection in 2006 with a major renovation programme directed by Danish architects Dissing + Weitling and Bonde Ljungar Arkitekter MAA. A 1996 extension by Henning Larsen had added an infill in one of the courtyards. The museum continues to receive financial support from the Carlsberg Foundation and is partly funded through a levy on every bottle of Carlsberg beer.

The Glyptotek's collections comprise more than 10,000 works of art, spanning from antiquity to the early twentieth century. The museum's identity as a "glyptothek" reflects its primary focus on sculpture, though its holdings are notably broader.

The Antique collection forms the largest in Northern Europe and concentrates heavily on sculpture. The Greek, Roman and Etruscan collection includes 950 sculptures and Etruscan antiquities purchased through German archaeologist Wolfgang Helbig, who served as Jacobsen's broker in Rome for 25 years. The Etruscan collection ranks among the most extensive outside Italy. The Egyptian collection numbers more than 1,900 pieces, dating from 3000 BCE to the 1st century CE, representing Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom and the Roman Period. It was founded in 1882 with Jacobsen's first Egyptian acquisition, a sarcophagus from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and was augmented by excavations sponsored by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation in the early 20th century under English Egyptologist W. M. F. Petrie. The Near Eastern collection spans 7,150 years.

The modern collections centre on French and Danish art of the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strength in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The French collection includes works by Jacques-Louis David, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas and Cézanne, as well as Post-Impressionists including van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard. The Danish collection features Golden Age paintings. The museum holds all of Degas's bronze sculptures, including his series of dancers, and numerous works by Norwegian-Danish sculptor Stephan Sinding.

Among the museum's signature works are its extensive Rodin collection, regarded as the foremost outside France, and its complete set of Degas bronzes. The French painting collection includes notable works by Édouard Manet (Le Buveur d'Absinthe, L'Exécution de l'empereur Maximilien), Claude Monet (Jean Monet endormi, Moulin à Zaandam, Ombres sur la mer à Pourville, Sous les Citronniers, Les Pyramides de Port-Coton, Belle-Île-en-Mer, La Cabane sur la falaise de Varengeville, Inondation à Giverny), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Jeunes Filles), Edgar Degas (Toilette après le bain, La Petite Danseuse de 14 ans), Vincent van Gogh (Paysage vu de Saint-Rémy, Les Roses roses, Le Pont du Carrousel et le Louvre, Portrait de Julien Tanguy), Paul Gauguin (more than 30 paintings including Femme tahitienne avec une fleur, Double portrait d'enfants, Arearea no varua ino, Fleurs et chats, Apatarao, Bord de mer), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Portrait de Suzanne Valadon, Portrait de Monsieur Delaporte), and Paul Cézanne (Autoportrait au chapeau, Baigneuses). Other significant works include Jacques-Louis David's Portrait du comte de Turenne, Gustave Courbet's Trois jeunes anglaises à la fenêtre, Jean-François Millet's La Mort et le Bûcheron, Jules Bastien-Lepage's Le Mendiant, and Alfred Sisley's La Machine de Marly, Le Bac de l'île de la Loge, inondation and Les Champs ou les Sillons. The antique holdings include several mummies displayed in a crypt-like gallery below the main exhibition spaces.

The museum building is celebrated for its architectural elegance and the synthesis it creates with the artworks it houses. The complex comprises three distinct wings connected by a central Winter Garden.

The Dahlerup Wing, the oldest part, is a lavish historicist structure with a red brick façade and polished granite columns in Venetian Renaissance style. It houses the French and Danish collections and opened in 1897.

The Kampmann Wing, added for the antique collections, is a simpler neo-classical building arranged as galleries around a central auditorium used for lectures, small concerts, symposiums and poetry readings. It opened in 1906.

The Winter Garden connects the two wings with mosaic floors, tall palms, a fountain and a dome of copper and wrought iron that admits warm light into the green space. This element was designed by Dahlerup to link the original and expanded buildings.

The Henning Larsen Wing, completed in 1996, is a minimalistic infill constructed in a former inner courtyard. It is connected to the Winter Garden by a broad, gently rising glass-roofed marble staircase. This addition meets advanced security standards for handling antique art, with a regulated climate control system that ensures continuous conservation of both the museum's own and loaned works, enabling the Glyptotek to host international exhibitions.

The museum stands on Dantes Plads in central Copenhagen, separated from the Tivoli Gardens by only a street. The site was formerly part of the city's western rampart fortifications.

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is located in Copenhagen Municipality, in the centre of Copenhagen. The museum is owned by the Danish State and City of Copenhagen following Jacobsen's 1888 donation, and continues to receive support from the Carlsberg Foundation. Official meetings and banquets are sometimes hosted at the museum, such as the certification of Polio-free Europe on 21 June 2002. The museum maintains a website at www.glyptoteket.dk offering information in English and Danish.