Sheyi Bankale (SB): Tell me about the Danish visual arts scene?

Anders Kold (AK): Until about 1990, it’s true that there wasn’t a contemporary ‘scene’ in the sense of an expanded awareness: a press awareness, magazines, galleries – whatever puts a ‘scene’ together. It was non-existent. There were always, of course, young artists and they did their stuff, but there was no apparatus on the lookout for them, and there was no incentive for anyone to be on the lookout for them, commercially. I mean other than the fact that Per Kirkeby and few other artists were famous outside of Denmark there was little interest from abroad. That, now, has changed. I’d like to say that there seems to be a tendency for people to explain what I just outlined out as if there is a continuum from about this time onwards, which also implies there were players who set out to engage Copenhagen, which of course is the case. I mean there are other cities in this country, there is a scene in Aarhus, but it’s a fact that the minute an art student in the academies of Aarhus or Odense has a chance to move to Copenhagen and join the Academy here he will do so. So Copenhagen it is. It’s not London, here. It’s not New York. Things don’t change radically, but I think it would be wrong to say that things haven’t changed significantly. If you look at the self-propelled, self-organised places – little editing houses with artists who publish things, independent galleries and exhibition places – they play a much more important part now than they did ten years ago. It’s also true that there were great initiators; the Arts Council started acting strategically in the 1990s, with a focus on contemporary art and international links. I was chairing the committee for Danish arts abroad, as part of the Arts Council, for four years.

In terms of galleries, there is another generation with different priorities following the well-established galleries of Nicolai Wallner and Nils Staerk. This is not a critique of them; they’re doing their business, and they’re doing it well, but there remains a great zest among younger people to play a different role, for example, IMO (In My Opinion). This is an independent gallery located in a spacious garage in Copenhagen, founded in 2009 by a number of artists and artists’ groups. I think this is brilliant because it is a critically motivated group of artists who decided to have a curator run their commercial gallery, but it remains an entirely artist-driven project. IMO is a highly original thing, and there are a number of other things that continue to expand the idea of a scene here. We have people coming to Copenhagen to see younger galleries and younger artists – the money is here in Copenhagen, the decision-makers, the politicians, the big companies, the galleries, the artists. Most of the very important institutions are here, that’s a fact.

SB: Who are the main protagonists?

AK: It’s difficult to squeeze everything into a box of five or six people – if that were really the case you wouldn’t be able to perpetuate a scene that could generate international interest. It’s always wrong when people tell the tale this way – it was never just two galleries, two collectors, or one museum that did it. And, it is not in the interest of the artist or the artistic landscape of Copenhagen to tell it this way – there is much more texture and – you know – who is to say who’s driving now, who is the driving force?

These versions of history often omit a particular circuit of people who are not just art lovers or rich collectors, but also people who have a particular feel for the ‘now’, like Galleri Susanne Ottesen. Ottersen would sometimes not be mentioned. Her gallery is of an older generation – she’s like the Marian Goodman of Copenhagen – but she keeps promoting really young artists.

SB: Surely you see the Louisiana museum as an important vehicle if not the driving force?

AK: We have bought more contemporary art than all the big Danish institutions together, and it would be for you to decide whether you deem it contemporary or not, but by our definition it is contemporary and it represents – if only by volume and impact – a position that is probably not typical. And, I would say, of course, we do as much for contemporary art as any other institution. Our visitor numbers amount to 600,000 people a year. Our position, here, is not to feed the art lovers of Copenhagen, our position is to present art to a very large population. If you want, we are the Tate Modern of Copenhagen, although, thank God, we are not that mega-big in terms of scale. How can we not be described as playing a crucial role? How can one get away with saying we are not part and parcel of contemporary art here? Try and think of Danish artists who wouldn’t show here, it’s impossible. I’m talking about raising awareness, which is what a scene does – raising the awareness of contemporary art. It’s part of what we do.

SB: Does this account to a fluid programme at Louisiana?

AK: That is because of what has happened over the last ten to twenty years – it was the policy that Louisiana was not solely about promoting Danish art because there were always other institutions whose main job was to follow that mandate. So we became the providers of what was described as international art at the time.

SB: Does this give you flexibility, and allow for shifts in direction?

AK: Absolutely, if the majority of Danish museums spent fifty percent of their efforts on international contemporary art or international art from say the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, our mandate would be very, very different. We are opting for a field of human consciousness that is art. It’s very true to say that the role and the success of Louisiana also depend on the fact that the mandate was free and that’s of course why it was made a private initiative. The question is why it didn’t spread more, and that’s a question of national character.

SB: What is the percent of acquisitions of Danish artists within the collection?

AK: As I said, it has increased from almost nothing to something; it’s not substantial, at all, but for the last eight or nine years we have consistently acquired work. It’s not signalling a 180-degree turn, but it is consolidating the fact that Louisiana cannot, with any seriousness or truthfulness, maintain the idea that it’s the provider of international art and not have any Danish artists in the collection. This is what’s changed; we have great artists that happen to be born here. It’s not like changing the machine, it’s just that the orientation cannot risk being phobic towards Danish art.

SB: Are there limitations to the Copenhagen scene?

AK: I think the limitations of the Copenhagen art world is to do with size. We have a major problem in that we don’t have a very good culture of critique. There is very little newspaper criticism – they write a lot about art, but there are not really any very independent voices out there. Most newspapers don’t even have professional full-time staff anymore. They ask students to review exhibitions, and they sack their dedicated staff of twenty years, and then they put them on a freelance contract – and pay half their previous wage.

SB: Has the advent of blogging changed this? Obviously, there is a debate as to whether much of what’s blogged is misinformed, uneducated…

AK: It hasn’t changed, and it certainly hasn’t compensated for the lack of printed media here. There isn’t one qualified Danish art magazine out there. They talk about Frieze, you know?! What we have done here for about ten years is to print a Louisiana magazine that, of course, reflected this institution but also showcased material that had nothing to do with the current exhibition. It considered culture as a whole, and I think we were right to do it. We printed 16,000 copies because we have 16,000 members. So, however one wants to describe it – influence or power or content – you can see that we were sending out to our members’ lots of stuff about contemporary art which we would argue they wouldn’t get otherwise. It is educational, and in that sense, we play a role that can, perhaps, be linked to that of the Tate, even if we are much less muscular and don’t go about it in the same way.

SB: How do you see the international profile of Danish artists, especially over the last ten years of its development?

AK: I think we have witnessed the advent of serious galleries that professionally collaborate with markets and advocate the work of their artists, also making sure that they are represented abroad. The world outside has started to pick up on Danish artists even if they don’t have a gallery, and increasing globalisation means that you can get an artist to show in Australia or India. It’s possible now.

SB: Is this drive self-initiated or supported by the Arts Council’s policy?

AK: I think the Arts Council has played an incredibly important role but, today, it’s driven by artists that are much more pro-active; they have their own network with other artists or with galleries, and they are connected in a number of ways. I think there’s still a certain hesitancy to promote young contemporary artists from abroad because that’s an unreliable mandate; these things come about slowly. Now, everyone is thinking “could there be a contemporary angle to it?” But, to have a guy for instance from Thailand represent that idea is still kind of new, and maybe not fully accepted here. It’s about museums asking themselves, are they better off exhibiting South African artists or an artist from Ghana as part of a group show? It’s not solely about young artists coming to Copenhagen, it’s about Copenhagen establishing itself in the art world, and that can be achieved in a number of ways.