Research

The Glyptotek is a research institution with particular focus on its collections and concomittant areas of interest. Research is central to work at the museum, stimulating, supporting, and informing large parts of its activites across departments, in everything from communication to exhibitions, cataloguing to publications.

Research at the Glyptotek contributes new knowledge about its collection of art and culture spanning thousands of years, makes it accessible and relevant to diverse contemporary audiences.

It supports the museum's mission to be a central locus for the experience of art, education, and innovation in both Danish and international contexts.

Generally speaking, white marble has been perceived as a typical image of antiquity. However, this lack of colour could not be further from the truth in terms of ancient taste. On the contrary. Antiquity abounded in colour: the art and architecture were both painted in every colour imaginable.

Sadly, however, after centuries or millennia, usually very little of the original paint has remained on the artefacts. This in turn led to the misperception of white marble as the epitome of classicism. This knowledge is nothing new; the topic has been a key part of the museum’s research since 2006.

As a result, the Glyptotek is now a global player in this field of research.

The museum’s interdisciplinary colour research – led by the archaeologist Cecilie Brøns in collaboration with Jens Stenger, a senior conservation scientist – is conducted in the context of a national and international research network.

In other words, the museum’s polychromy researchers collaborate with a variety of museums, universities and private companies in Denmark and abroad. The museum also has its own laboratory, where researchers examine artefacts – mainly from the museum’s Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Egyptian collections.

The project has resulted in several scientific publications and various kinds of interpretation/public engagement initiatives both in and outside the museum.

The research is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and Kirsten og Freddy Johansens Fond.

Read more about the Glyptotek’s colour research.

The Glyptotek houses one of the most important antiquity collections in the Nordic Region. Established by the founder of the Glyptotek, Carl Jacobsen, the collection was a key factor in the founder’s visions for the Glyptotek and its role in his time.

In her PhD project ‘Constructing the Past in the Present. Institutional Narrations and the Production of Classical Antiquity at the New Carlsberg Glyptotek’, Julie Lejsgaard Christensen explores how antiquity is constructed and mediated at the Glyptotek today through the museum’s presentation of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures.

The project investigates, on the one hand, the practice of the Glyptotek and how it is shaped in dynamic interaction between the institution’s past and present; on the other hand, the museum experiences that arise in the encounter between modern museum visitors, the ancient sculptures and the way in which the Glyptotek presents its collection.

Based on recent paradigm shifts in museology and antiquity reception, and with the employment of empirical studies and tests, the project challenges the established historical structures, paving the way for new perspectives that highlight the potential of a more discursive approach to the interpretation and mediation of antiquity.

However, the project also reveals that the practice of the Glyptotek is closely related to the identity and history of the museum as an institution. Thereby, the project argues that a change in the museum’s practice can only occur if the museum revises its self-perception. By discussing how such a revision can reposition the museum and its historical legacy, the project extends beyond the Glyptotek as an institutional context, identifying broader potentials and issues in the context of historically entrenched museum institutions, and their role and behaviour in a contemporary societal context.

The project is conducted in collaboration between the Glyptotek and Aarhus University, with support from the Ny Carlsberg Foundation.

In the research project 'Passion or Politics? The art collecting practices of Carl Jacobsen in a socio-economic and cultural political context 1878-1914', Vibe Nielsen examines the international influences that motivated the establishment of the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek: Which cultural political agendas are reflected in the collection and exhibition practices of Carl Jacobsen and how were the artworks he collected used – and exhibited – as tools to educate the public?

In continuation of previous research projects on the establishment and dissemination of ethnographic and botanical collections, founded in an era heavily influenced by European colonialism and exoticising museum representations of the world outside Europe, Passion or Politics? unfolds new perspectives on the development of the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the social currents that shaped them.

The three-year postdoctoral research project is supported by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation.

It is carried out in collaboration between the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen.