Background:
The exhibition “Behind the Façade – Discover the Architecture of the Glyptotek” is a journey through the development of The Glyptotek building, an architectural monument and extraordinary setting for the Glyptotek’s antiquities and 19th-century art.
The Glyptotek was initiated by brewery owner Carl Jacobsen in 1897, who hired architect Vilhelm Dahlerup to design a museum to house his family’s extensive antiquities. In 1906 Hack Kampmann completed an extension of the building, and in 1996 the museum acquired yet another extension, this time with Henning Larsen.
Exhibition concept and design:
The Glyptotekets architecture is explained and presented in four themes, divided between four spaces with the themes:
Introduction and The Glyptotek timeline
The background of The Glyptotek
The three architects behind the architecture
The Glyptotek and the future
In the exhibitions central space, the three significant architectural projects of the Glyptotek are interpreted as pavilions, exhibiting objects and building fragments alongside drawings and sketches.
With further inspiration from the architectural drawings, each pavilion takes departure from drawings and the expression of of the original design. This involved a detailed analysis of the each scheme and the extracting of key features to form recognizable geometric forms reflecting the design.
The pavilions draw upon significant features of each architecture project and the objects focus on materiality, building techniques, engineering, and manufacturing. Here visitors can interact with different materials such as concrete, mosaics, stucco lustro and bricks.
All the exhibition furniture is designed with the principle of a drawn line and a volume. The line is translated into black powder coated steel skeletons and the volumes into hand painted MDF volumes, using a colour that can be found in the three Glyptotek architecture project.
The walls of the exhibition spaces have been painted in colours originally used in the architecture and exhibited on the walls are a rich selection of drawings, photographs, artefacts and graphics explaining and highlighting the story of the Glyptoteks architecture.
