The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, located twenty miles north of Copenhagen, Denmark, is famous for its enchanting seaside setting, distinctive architecture, and welcoming, unpretentious atmosphere. Constructed around a park, the museum occupies the grounds of a nineteenth-century estate, Louisiana, established by a beekeeping aristocrat who planted a collection of exotic trees and married three women named Louise. 100 years later, the art collector Knud W. Jensen purchased the estate, adopted the existing villa as the centerpiece of his new museum, and began planning an unconventional institution that would unite art and nature. The first extension to the villa, designed by Jørgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert, opened in 1958 and remains a masterpiece of modern architecture. Over the next four decades, the same architects would construct five more extensions that reflected changes in the character of contemporary art and the evolution of Louisiana’s collection. The result is a place for experiencing culture in every form, dedicated to the idea that art is life.
