Widely Varying Styles. Selected new additions to the collection

Works selected for this exhibition stretch from the 18th century until today and have come to the museum in many different ways: through private purchase, nerve-tingling auction and generous donation. Some acquisitions represent new names to the museum, such as Ask Bjørlo (b. 1992), Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (b. 1978) and Liza Walker (b. 1967), while others build upon previous purchases of artists we have followed over many years.

Caroline Friederike Friedrich (1749–1818) and Bitten Schei (b. 1950) are examples of how the museum works to increase the proportion of female artists in a collection, this being developed in the light of new perspectives in art history.

Although what the museum has the opportunity to buy and what we receive as gifts necessarily implies an element of chance, the new works in the collection nevertheless reflect a conscious policy, different from that of 10 years ago and no doubt different from that of ten years from now. The exhibition does not provide a common thread, rather a number of different threads you are at liberty to unwind. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from one of the featured works, a Tegneklubb drawing which is, in turn, a fragment of a larger narrative about a group of artists commenting on society and the artist’s role.  

Today, the National Museum’s collection contains more than 400,000 works in visual arts, crafts, design and architecture. The oldest works are almost 3,000 years old, the most recent from this year.

Read more about how the museum collects and what has been purchased in recent years.