COPENHAGEN.- In 2025, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark looks forward to presenting a series of new exhibitions and, not least, to opening SMK Thy, a watershed event that will give SMK a permanent presence outside the capital.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
29 MARCH - 31 AUGUST 2025
Michelangelo Imperfect
He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and his sculptures are world-renowned. In the spring, SMK will present an exhibition featuring one of the most influential visual artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).
The exhibition takes as its starting point SMK’s unique collection of historical casts after Michelangelo’s sculptures – most of which were acquired in the late 1890s for the then-new National Gallery of Denmark. The casts will be shown alongside newly-produced 3D-modelled and -cast facsimiles.
Want to delve deeper into Michelangelo's life and works? This comprehensive biography offers fascinating insights into his artistic genius and personal struggles.
Michelangelo’s focus was almost exclusively the human body, particularly the male form, in which he discovered boundless opportunities for expressing emotion and tension. He aspired to great, often impossible feats, earning him the nickname il divino – the divine. Yet his art also revolves around imperfection, incompletion and fragility, around being in process, feeling anxious, being faltering and hesitant. This is expressed in his biblical, mythological and allegorical subjects alike.
A little over forty of his sculptures are extant today. The exhibition includes thirty-six of these in reproduction, displayed alongside original sculpture models, drawings and documents. All in all, this is the most comprehensive presentation of Michelangelo’s sculptural work in 150 years.
12 SEPTEMBER 2025 – 12 JANUARY 2026
Drawing the Surreal
Richly imaginative collective works, imprints from a car tire, and freehand pencil strokes: in the autumn of 2025, SMK presents a major exhibition focusing on Surrealism’s use of the drawing.
The Surrealist movement emerged in France in the 1920s in response to the horrors of World War I. The Surrealists sought a fresh start, aiming to revolutionise society and liberate human desires and dreams. Drawing became one of their most important tools for unleashing the boundless human imagination and connecting with the subconscious. The exhibition provides insights into how the Surrealists used the drawing to explore their artistic projects – and to understand themselves, each other and their times through playful experiments and collective creative processes.
The exhibition includes works by Salvador Dalí, André Masson, and Méret Oppenheim. The Centre Pompidou has loaned 75 of their finest Surrealist drawings, which will be displayed alongside works from Danish and international collections as well as from the Royal Collection of Graphic Art at SMK.
SMK THY
In 2025, SMK opens its new facilities in Thy
In late summer 2025, SMK looks forward to opening SMK Thy, beautifully situated next to the Limfjord and a national park. The carefully restored repository of the former Doverodde Merchant’s House will be ready to host curated works from the National Gallery of Denmark and will provide the framework for a rich exhibition and activity programme.
The establishment of SMK Thy has been underway since 2018, while the reconstruction began in 2023. The renovation and opening exhibitions are both supported by the A.P. Møller Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation with a grant of 50 million DKK.
New works in the collection
SMK’s collection encompasses approximately 200,000 works – from early Renaissance prints to contemporary art. Over the course of 2024, SMK has acquired several new works, some augmenting our representation of artists already featured in the collection and others introducing entirely new artists.
One of the new acquisitions is Flemish artist Clara Peeters’s still life from around 1615. Her painting is now the earliest dated painting by a woman artist in the SMK collection. Peeters is one of the few known professional women artists from the seventeenth century. A total of 39 paintings bears her signature or an inscription with her name, making this acquisition one of the few surviving examples of her work today.
The work will be on display at the museum from 19 December.
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