Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, also known as the Louisiana, is an art museum located north of Copenhagen, Denmark. Attracting over 700,000 guests annually, the Louisiana is Scandinavia's most visited museum for modern and contemporary art, hosting 6 to 10 exhibitions each year alongside a permanent display of Yayoi Kusama's Gleaming and Lights of the Souls. The museum is recognized as a modernist landmark in Danish architecture, and is noted for its synthesis of art, architecture and landscape, boasting a sculpture park with works by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore and Richard Serra. In addition to its permanent and temporary exhibitions, the museum has a shop featuring Danish design items, a restaurant with a view of the Øresund, and a three-storey Children's Wing hosting daily workshops. The museum is included in Patricia Schultz's book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

The museum is located by the Øresund coast in the North Zeeland region, some 30 km (19 mi) north of central Copenhagen and 10 km (6 mi) south of Elsinore. From the regional train station in Humlebæk, it takes 10–15 minutes to walk to the museum.

Since 1958, the Louisiana has presented international art and culture to a Danish and international audience. The annual programme features 6-10 temporary exhibitions. Between 2020 and 2024, the museum hosted exhibitions by artists and architects including Roni Horn, Franz Gertsch, Chaïm Soutine, Firelei Báez, Pussy Riot, Cave_bureau, Ragnar Kjartansson, Nan Goldin, Niko Pirosmani, Andy Warhol, Dana Schutz, Gauri Gill, Richard Prince, August Sander, Alex Da Corte, Dorothy Iannone, Forensic Architecture, Diane Arbus, Sonia Delaunay, Peter Cook, Jens Adolf Jerichau, Mika Rottenberg, Pia Arke, Mamma Andersson, Arthur Jafa, Troels Wörsel, Taryn Simon, Anupama Kundoo, Tetsumi Kudo, Per Kirkeby, and Nancy Spero. The museum has also showcased large-scale interdisciplinary exhibitions focusing on the Arctic, the Moon, the Ocean, and other topics.

The museum has a wide range of modern art paintings, photographic works, sculptures and videos dating from World War II onwards, including works by artists such as Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Roy Lichtenstein, Anselm Kiefer, Francesca Woodman, Pablo Picasso, Philip Guston, Yves Klein, Susan Rothenberg, Robert Rauschenberg, Germaine Richier, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, and Asger Jorn. Perched above the sea, there is a sculpture garden between the museum's two wings with works by artists including Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, and Jean Arp.

The Louisiana's collection is continually updated through acquisitions and donations. Recent acquisitions span a wide range of media and artistic expressions, featuring works by artists such as Roni Horn, Yayoi Kusama, Pipilotti Rist, William Kentridge, Marina Abramović, Cecily Brown, Dana Schutz, Sophie Calle, Alex Da Corte, Malene Dumas, Nan Goldin, Shilpa Gupta, Ragnar Kjartansson, Mona Hatoum, Arthur Jafa, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Ann Veronica Janssens, Amy Sillman, Jon Rafman, Tal R, Michel Majerus, Catherine Opie, Superflex, Rosemarie Trockel, Bouchra Khalili, Gauri Gill, Dora Budor, and Nina Beier.

Louisiana Channel is a non-profit web TV channel launched in 2012 and based at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. The channel has developed into the world’s largest archive of contemporary art, featuring the artists, with videos available on the channel's website, Instagram, and YouTube. According to New York Times, "No museum has used streaming video more ambitiously than the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art". And The Art Newspaper has stated that the Louisiana "punches hugely above its weight on its broadcast channel, going far beyond art and consistently featuring leading writers, musicians and architects. Louisiana does deep dives particularly well: a documentary about Ulay and Marina Abramović is exemplary, and a series of films in which artists including David Salle and Tal R discuss the influence of the painter Marsden Hartley reflects the incisiveness artists can bring to understanding the work of their forebears."

Launched in 2010, the Louisiana's literary festival, Louisiana Literature, celebrates exceptional writing from around the globe. Each year, the festival features about forty writers, who perform on stages around the museum and in the sculpture park, attracting more than 15,000 people each year. From 2022 to 2024, the festival featured authors such as Adania Shibli, Rachel Cusk, Kim de l'Horizon, Anne Boyer, Anne Carson, Colm Tóibín, Danez Smith, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Ali Smith, Tessa Hadley, Ian McEwan, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Wole Soyinka, Ocean Vuong, Torrey Peters, Deborah Levy, Laurie Anderson, Benjamín Labatut, Bernardine Evaristo, Édouard Louis, and Natasha Brown.

A few times a year, we read in the newspapers that now some city or municipality wants to have its own Louisiana, and there's only one reply to that: Even if you can create a building, you cannot create a Knud W. Jensen.