Exhibition: Back to the Source

Glyptotek

Egypt – Back to the Source
10 Oct. 2008 – 8 Feb. 2009

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.

An Exhibition in Honour of the Egyptologist Valdemar Schmidt,
Creator of the Glyptotek’s Egyptian Collection

Visit 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.

Art Daily

The Glyptotek presents Egypt - Back to the Source, on view through February 8, 2009. The Glyptotek’s magnificent treasures from Ancient Egypt owe their presence in Copenhagen to brewing magnate and museum founder Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914). He wanted to go back to Ancient Egypt as ‘the source of art’ – the place whence the Greeks and the Romans drew their inspiration and which in turn was passed down to all later Europeans.

The Glyptotek’s collection is one of the fi nest in the world. On the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Danish Egyptology, this exhibition tells the story of Jacobsen, his Egyptologist Valdemar Schmidt (1836-1925) and their exploits – from excavations with the English archaeologist Petrie through collaboration with the museum and authorities in Cairo to the display of works back in Copenhagen. Egypt – Back to the Source focuses on a number of the collection’s supreme masterpieces, among them the Black Head of a King which Schmidt bought in Egypt in 1894.