HUMLEBAEK.- Since its launch in 2012, the English language Louisiana Channel has published almost 750 videos featuring some of today’s most celebrated names within art and culture. A good 16,000 times a day, users all over the world are watching a video produced in the small Danish town Humlebaek, north of Copenhagen. At a time when a large number of museums worldwide are closed to the public, Louisiana Channel and its audience are experiencing the value of the freely available videos – and they will keep on publishing two new ones every week.

Recently, the channel’s YouTube site passed a magical 100,000 subscribers and the total screenings amount to a significant number of millions. Louisiana Channel has become an ever growing and important global platform presenting videos about art and culture. The editorial staff of Channel – intended as the digital wing of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art – focuses right now on making the many films more visible and available – as an alternative to all that has had to close down due to the corona virus.

“We regard Louisiana Channel as a public service media including something more and something else than a digital extension of the exhibitions. We produce culture and we document the arts in dialogue with the artists – to a growing global audience. In the course of very few years, Louisiana Channel has become a huge and unequalled documentary project. In this way, we maintain a strong tradition of mediation whilst at the same time thoroughly engaging in a new and changing media picture”, says Louisiana director, Poul Erik Tøjner.

Greatly backed by the artists
Louisiana Channel was originally based on the idea of making use of the potential of Louisiana’s vast international network of artists, authors, architects, etc. The editorial staff receives every week enquiries from international media, educational institutions and museums, all requesting the use of the videos ranging from short interviews to in-depth portraits. It often happens that the videos gain new relevance because the content is not time-related in any way.

Louisiana Channel is not a means to attract more visitors to the physical museum but to offer insight into and experiences of art and culture – in the long run not only beneficiary to Louisiana but to the art museums in general. The videos are greatly backed by the artists who are eager to participate – they want to be part of Louisiana Channel.

Viewers from around the globe – including a young target audience
More than half of the viewers of Louisiana Channel are young people aged 18 to 34 years old and they comprise a highly global audience. They watch a.o. portraits of some of the most recognized architects in the world i.e. Norman Foster, Peter Zumthor, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, and Renzo Piano. They watch videos of the authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith and Michel Houellebecq. They are fascinated by legends as Yoko Ono, David Hockney and Yayoi Kusama, but they are also eagerly sharing videos of younger stars as the author Sally Rooney and the artists David Shrigley and Sterling Ruby. They engage in the history of the artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay - gaining new relevance with the recent passing of Ulay: In three days, more than 80,000 viewers clicked on the channel’s videos with the performance couple – not least initiated by the New York Times quoting from and linking to one of the channel’s videos in their obituary.

Within the last twelve months:
• The number of YouTube followers has grown by 35,000, now counting 106,000

• The total number of monthly views have grown from 500,000 in February 2019 to 660,000 in February 2020

• The number of hours of watched video monthly has grown from 37,000 hours in February 2019 to 43,000 hours in February 2020