Exhibition: Egypt – Back to the Source
10 Oct. 2008 – 8 Feb. 2009
Glypkotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
Around 1890, the brewing magnate, Carl Jacobsen, founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, engaged Denmark’s leading Egyptologist, Valdemar Schmidt, to create an Egyptian collection in the newly-planned museum, and in the course of the following 35 years, Schmidt succeeded in putting together a collection of ancient Egyptian art matching Jacobsen’s other excellent collections of ancient art, from Greece, Etruria and the Roman Empire.
This exhibition is an opportunity to see the works which Schmidt brought back to Denmark from his extensive travels in Egypt. Other works on display come from excavations in that country which Schmidt persuaded the wealthy Jacobsen to sponsor.
Today it would be quite impossible to create a comparable collection, but Schmidt and Jacobsen lived in an age when the Egyptian authorities still permitted a limited, controlled export of antiquities. As a result, the Glyptotek today can present an Egyptian collection of truly international standing.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum of international stature in the center of Copenhagen. It houses over 10.000 works of art divided up into two principal collections: Mediterranean cradle of Western culture and Danish and French art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
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