An Art Lover’s Guide to Copenhagen

The nexus of the Nordic region, Copenhagen continues to flex its cultural capital. Its food, fashion, and design scenes are attracting attention from travelers, with steady growth in the Danish tourism sector in recent years. Meanwhile, “Scandi girl” style and Nordic design tips flutter across the internet; Noma continues its 20-year run as the world’s premier restaurant; and do we even need to mention hygge? The ubiquity of the cozy concept in the Anglophone world shows the force of Danish influence.

For art lovers, Copenhagen trumpets a formidable network of galleries, dispersed across distinct districts, along with beloved and boundary-pushing institutions. Bonhams even acquired family-run Danish auction house Bruun Rasmussen in 2022 as a signal of commitment to the region. And of course, there’s CHART, the Copenhagen art fair that runs in late August, bringing together galleries only from the Nordic region.

With so much to see in such a compact city—locals insist it takes less than 15 minutes to get anywhere (read: on bike!)—we decided it was time to make the definitive guide. These are the must-visit galleries, museums, public art installations, and art world haunts in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen galleries

Copenhagen is home to more than 100 commercial galleries that are mainly clustered in three areas: Centrum (downtown), the Meatpacking District (not to be confused with New York’s!), and Nordvest (a residential and industrial area up north). In Centrum lies the classical Copenhagen architecture; in Meatpacking, light-filled warehouses; and in Nordvest, gritty industrial buildings. Of course, not all great galleries lie within these areas, so don’t overlook Brigade and von Bartha in Vesterbro or the experimental spaces of Frederiksberg.

The gallery scene in Copenhagen heavily emphasizes regional artists, with showings of international players who fit the general aesthetic of the Nordic countries. CHART director Julie Quottrup Silbermann told Artsy that “collectors here like work that reflects their lives,” which translates to artists all across the art world matrix (mediums, price points, geographic and cultural contexts, etc.).

In Kødbyen (Meatpacking District)

Tucked behind Central Station in the larger district known as Vesterbro, the Meatpacking District—literally, “meat town”—developed in the mid-2000s as the museum-size slaughterhouses became available and the art galleries moved in. It’s now perhaps the most concentrated area for art galleries, and its rise is owed to a few founding stalwarts who still operate there today, like V1 and Bo Bjerggaard.

“Our local community has always meant a lot to us,” said Jesper Elg, co-founder of V1. “Even though Vesterbro has become more gentrified over the past two decades, it’s still an eclectic neighborhood, where a lot of different people converge.”

• V1: “The V in V1 comes from our neighborhood of Vesterbro,” said Elg, who co-founded the gallery, arts platform, and collectibles shop alongside Mikkel Grønnebæk. It now spreads across three locations—V1 Gallery, V1 Salon, and Eighteen—and is considered a key Copenhagen tastemaker.
• Gether Contemporary: Tied to the district since 2014, Gether Contemporary deals in modern and contemporary work that it says “deviates from the standard and elicits novel ideas and emotions.” It focuses on debuting independent artists like Amalie Jakobsen and LuYang and building out their careers.

• Galleri Bo Bjerggaard: Perhaps the most internationally recognized gallery from Copenhagen, Bo Bjerggaard is often seen at art fairs like Art Basel and The Armory Show. Its roster includes market-loved painters like Chantal Joffe and Georg Baselitz, as well as Danish stars like Tal R.
• Gallery Poulsen: Though founded in 2003, Poulsen joined the Meatpacking pack in 2010. With a flair for the bold, the gallery participates in fairs that emphasize expressive artists, like Spring/Break and Art Market San Francisco.

In Centrum

Sharp-angled streets cut by neo-Gothic façades make this Copenhagen neighborhood postcard-perfect. Centrum houses both history and royalty, and the galleries around these parts have a classical elegance, even as they show contemporary work. As the historic center and cultural district, this area is known for the Tivoli Gardens, the Christiansborg and Amalienborg Palaces, and Kunsthalle Charlottenberg. It also harbors Nyhavn, the 17th-century canal known for its lively nightlife—once for sailors, now for sophisticates.

• Martin Asbaek Gallery: Polished, refined, and steeped in the contemporary practitioners of the Nordic region, Martin Asbaek is a leading man in the Danish gallery scene, representing artists like Eva Koch, Astrid Kruse Jensen, and Elina Brotherus. His gallery has a long history of working with women artists, beginning when it opened in 2005—well before the global art conversation shifted towards inclusion.
• Hans Alf Gallery: Hans Alf’s 4,000-square-foot space can accommodate both the main gallery’s exhibitions and a smaller project space. Alf has established the gallery as a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange, bringing Danish artists to global audiences while championing international artists to Danish collectors.

• Etage Projects: To the eternal question of “is it art, or is it design?,” Etage Projects suggests it doesn’t matter much if the object is great. The gallery certainly scouts practitioners whose work is just that. Founder Maria Foerlev has grown the audience for design darlings Minjae Kim, FOS, Sabine Marcelis, and Objects of Common Interest.
• Galleri Susanne Ottesen: For over 40 years, Susanne Ottesen has been a trailblazing gallerist in Copenhagen, a grand dame of the city’s art centers. Her roster, which includes Danish heavyweights like Bjørn Nørgaard and Per Kirkeby, can be loosely classified as a blend of conceptual and aesthetic practices.
• Galleri Christoffer Egelund: It seems like there’s nary a Scandinavian artist to show in Copenhagen who hasn’t had a touchpoint with Christoffer Egelund, whose eponymous gallery has been in operation since 2003. Egelund is known around town for his large social network, and his openings are often bustling.

In Nordvest

Dubbed the residential hipster district, Nordvest isn’t exactly New York’s Williamsburg circa 2002 or Berlin’s Mitte circa 2010. In Copenhagen, there’s a certain polish and luster even in the multicultural and “undiscovered” (by the well-heeled, at least) part of town. But when galleries like Andersen’s and Nicolai Wallner decamped to this part of town in the last five years, the arts community received it as a gesture of adventure.

“In the last couple of years, there’s been an influx of artist-run spaces, galleries, and art institutions moving into the neighborhood—and we’re not right beside each other, which encourages visitors to explore the area, going from one to the next,” said Nicolai Wallner director Gracie Roy Hess.

• Galleri Nicolai Wallner: This established gallery has long been instrumental to the global contemporary art landscape. It has scouted artists whom the art world now counts as household names: Dan Graham, David Shrigley, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Jeppe Hein. Around its 25th anniversary in 2017, the gallery built a new gallery complex to accommodate the scale and breadth of its artists’ practices. The move kicked off a wave of cultural and creative activity in a neighborhood that remains mostly residential but has real estate to spare.
• Nils Staerk: A player in the international space, Staerk is the kind of dealer who can balance the academic with elegance and cool. He has created an alliance with Nicolai Wallner: Their galleries in Nordvest share an address, and also count each other as partners-in-venture. Staerk works with artists who are known on the global art fair and biennale circuit—including Superflex, Olaf Breuning, Ed Templeton, and Matthew Ronay—and has another location in Centrum.
• Andersen’s: When founder Claus Andersen spent time in Berlin in the 1990s, it wasn’t so he could build an art program of next-gen talents. Yet that’s what happened, and Andersen has brought artists from his Berlin days—Anselm Reyle, Olafur Eliasson, and Tomás Saraceno among them—to the fore. In addition to running his blue-chip operation in Copenhagen, Andersen founded CHART art fair and the CPH:DOX, the documentary film festival. His other ventures include the magazines Øjeblikket and Magasin Schäfer, even the art bar Imbiss.
• Christian Askjaer: Beyond the blue-chip havens, Nordvest is also home to fun concept galleries. Photographer Christian Askjaer has converted his home/studio into an exhibition space for his own photography, which varies from vibrant architectural compositions to more abstract ones.

Copenhagen museums

The list of heavy-hitting museums across Europe—including the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum, and the Pergamon Museum—is hardly complete without the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, just an hour by train from Copenhagen’s center.

There’s also a wealth of institutions in Copenhagen proper, with collections highlighting everything from ancient objects to ultra-contemporary Nordic painting.

• Copenhagen Contemporary: The vibrance of the city’s contemporary gallery scene is matched by this contemporary arts center founded in 2015, located in a 7,000-square-meter space on the waterfront.
• Art Hub: A platform with a broad footprint, Art Hub facilitates exhibitions, residencies, and programming throughout its own spaces as others in Copenhagen. Want to dive deep into the artist-run scene? Start here.

• Nikolaj Kunsthal: This 13th-century church has been converted into an experimental art center that includes fine art, performances, dinners, and other creative activations in the center of the city.
• Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark: Any art traveler should make an effort to head to the SMK, which traverses Denmark’s art history from ancient times to the present.

Public art in Copenhagen

Copenhagen’s public art is CHART director Quottrup Silbermann’s favorite best-kept secret of the city’s cultural offerings. “I would really go see a bit of the arts in the public space,” she advised.

Copenhagen is known as a city with classic public art—think commemoration statutes and marble memorials. But its public space is also a site of social engagement and architectural interventions, like playgrounds and third places. An emblem of the city is Edvard Eriksen’s iconic Little Mermaid (1913) statue—but so is the Olafur Eliasson–engineered Circle Bridge, a ship formed of five intersecting circles that serves as a pedestrian and bike bridge in the harbor.

Danish culture prizes both beauty and communality, values that extend to shared space.

• Metro stations: The city’s interest and investment in the arts is most visible in the Metro, where, in late spring 2024, five new pieces were unveiled across the city. Among them are Pernille With Madsen’s geological, archaeological tableau at Enghave Brygge and Superflex’s topsy-turvy installation of hyper-speed clocks at Havneholmen. Perhaps the most famous of the subway installations is Jeppe Hein’s array of whimsical metal balloons that hang from the ceiling of the Kongens Nytorv station.
• Full Length (2008): Originally commissioned for the National Museum of Denmark, this 13-ton, 12-meter-long bronze sculpture next to the harbor is one of Kirsten Ortwed’s most monumental works.
• Pigeons in the Tower (2015): Eva Koch’s site-specific audio intervention and video piece, tucked away inside the Christiansborg Palace tower, evokes the location’s history as a nesting spot for pigeons.

• Superkilen (2012): Tucked in the heart of Nørrebro, a diverse neighborhood known for social integration issues, Superkilen is a prime example of the socially engaged, participatory work that Superflex is known for. It features three distinct, color-coded community spaces—Red Square, Black Square, and Green Park—for recreational activities like for picnics, live music, and sports.
• Panum Institute: Just outside the Faculty of Medicine and Sciences is Alicja Kwade’s Pars Pro Toto (2020), her hulking marble spheres that evoke fragility and destruction. Nearby, Kirsten Ortwed’s Reflektor (2019) skulks around the North Wing of the Rigshospitalet.

Art world haunts

Is a city even an art town without a scene? There are a few regular haunts that host the art folk, and we hear (from the ones who’d know) that the spots are:

• Apollo Bar: Tucked inside Kunsthal Charlottenborg, on the former palace’s ivy-covered courtyard, Apollo Bar is the restaurant that brought attention back to Copenhagen’s culinary scene when star chef Frederik Bille Brahe took on the spot in 2017. Stop here after openings in the central district to share a bottle of wine in the courtyard.
• Beau Marché: This Franco-Danish concept space—where you can buy a sofa and eat haricot verts in one stop—is a must-visit for Quottrup Silbermann after she makes a day of the galleries in Centrum. (“Oh the French vibes!,” she exclaimed.)
• Folkhuset Absalon: Housed in an old church, this “extension of your own living room,” as it describes itself, got an expressively colorful and vibrant make-over thanks to artist Tal R. The community-forward and unexpected programming—communal dining, for starters—adds to the experience.