International opening - Museums Association

Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

International opening

Moesgaard Museum, Højbjerg, near Aarhus, Denmark
Nicola Sullivan
Share
The Moesgaard Museum, which specialises in prehistory and ethnography, is set in the grounds of an 18th-century manor in rolling countryside south of Aarhus, on the east coast of the Jutland peninsular in Denmark.
 
Designed by Henning Larsen Architects, the museum, which opened in October 2014, covers more than 160,000 sq feet, incorporating three exhibition spaces, an auditorium, conference rooms, a cafe and gift shop.
 
One of the museum’s most arresting architectural features is a slanted turf-covered roof, from where visitors can take in views of the forest, the ocean and its previous home – Moesgaard Manor.
 
Visitors come face-to-face with ethnographic exhibitions and archaeological displays covering the bronze, iron and Viking ages, which explore a number of themes including what it means to be human (where we have come from and where we are going) and the relationship between the living and the dead.
 
Some of the most memorable elements on display are preserved people from the bronze age, who were buried in oak coffins in Borum Eshøj near Aarhus; the world’s best preserved bog body, Graubelle Man; and weapons and other artefacts from the iron age.

The museum’s ethnographic exhibition, The Lives of the Dead, illustrates how people from around the world remember their deceased relatives – whether through Danish heirlooms, reburials in Uganda or Christmas celebrations among indigenous people in Australia.
 
Its latest temporary exhibition, The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army, depicts the story of how China’s first emperor united the Chinese empire and began constructing the Great Wall of China more than 2,000 years ago.
 
Among the items on display at the temporary exhibition, which opened at the beginning of April, are a selection of terracotta figures, including warriors, government officials and a horse, and 120 objects from the emperor’s tomb and the Qin and Han dynasties.

What makes the museum’s exhibitions stand out?
 
Jan Skamby Madsen: They look behind the objects to connect with the people who made them and tell the story about living in prehistoric times. We have the presentation of the objects, but the stories behind them are important to us. The exhibitions are all products of this way of thinking.
 
We have reconstructions of humans from the past. Natural science can tell us so much about how people lived, so the museum has been doing research on our skeletal material too. We tell the story about how life was lived. Visitors meet people from the past in the exhibitions, which conjure up the atmosphere of being there.

How did The Lives of the Dead exhibition come about?

It is important when focusing on people from the past to create a space where visitors can identify with them in the present. If you can identify aspects of emotion, that’s important for people today.

In what way does the museum’s design break new ground?
 
It’s rare for a cultural history museum to be created from scratch. Such museums are often obliged to make use of old buildings, but they don’t [facilitate] the exhibitions required. It was our desire to present our common history in an innovative way, which has provided the defining framework of reference.
 
We asked for big exhibition rooms with high ceilings so we could blow up some of the stories from the past. We built a complete mount from the bronze age so you can walk inside and see the graves, and we have the fortification of the Viking city in Aarhus. Visitors walk through a variety of exhibition landscapes; there is so much atmosphere and so many stories in the room that you can understand the history behind the objects in another way.

In what ways are the exhibitions interactive?

There are “expert screens” throughout the exhibitions, which allow visitors to interact with researchers. In around 205 AD there was a big battle. The enemy came from the eastern coast of Jutland and  a 1,000-strong army had to be mobilised in Denmark.

We have all the weapons, which the  enemy sacrificed in a lake. Overall, the museum has 15,000 beautiful weapons and objects from the army. Normally we would have exhibited them in a traditional way. Now, we have  displays across five rooms.

Visitors can experience what it was like when the enemy came to the coast and what it felt like to be in the houses when they were outside stealing cattle. They can experience how it was the day before the battle.

In an interactive way they can lay down the commander’s strategy for the battle. After that they are in the battle, with one army on their left and another on their right. This has all been recreated using animation and surround sound.  

Project data

Cost: 393m Danish kroner (£38m)
Architect: Henning Larsen Architects
Exhibition concept: Moesgaard Museum
Exhibition design: Moesgaard Museum’s exhibition studio
Landscape architect: Kirstine Jensen, DK Aarhus
Lighting design: Nikolaj Birkelund, DK Copenhagen; Henrik Vierø, DK Aarhus
Interactives: Moesgaard Museum; Art+Com, Berlin
Animation: M2Film, DK Aarhus; MarkFilm, DK Viborg



Leave a comment

You must be to post a comment.

Discover

Advertisement
Join the Museums Association today to read this article

Over 12,000 museum professionals have already become members. Join to gain access to exclusive articles, free entry to museums and access to our members events.

Join