Musset for Sofart, (Maritime Museum of Denmark) holds a whole range of exhibitions telling the story of Denmark as one of the world’s leading shipping nations of the past and present. The new maritime museum of Denmark is built around the old dry dock of the Elsinore shipyard in front of Kronborg Castle and it is designed by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) a renowned architecture company.
The museum takes you on a journey past the tempting song of the mermaids and deeper into the maritime history. The museum collections are presented in evocative and dramatic settings, with film projected directly onto the unique buildings interior.
(Figure 1, Maritime Museum of Denmark exterior and interior.)
The Journey through the Building:
The narrative of the building starts off by a film projecting images of families and/or loved ones of Our Sailors. Moving further into the building through a narrow ‘corridor’ like space the exhibition entitled The Gate to the World, (Figure 1) displays sailor related products such as Haribo sweets and explains the actions of the sailors in the ports.
(Figure 2, ‘Our Sailors’ and ‘The Gate to the World’.)
This leads to the section Abroad, where the building becomes brighter and feel more open due to the increase of the ceiling height. Now deep into the building the next exhibition is Navigation and World Views which I believe relates back to the narrative of the voyage as the Sailors are deep into the travels making home feel like an age away.
(Figure 3, ‘Aboard’ images show the interior and exterior of a vessel like exhibition.)
Running along the back of the building is the area Ships of all Time where you find yourself squeezed and filtered into a point where the route turns perpendicularly. After the transition you find yourself in a narrow enclosed space with torpedo’s overhead that envisages the ship and sailor In the shadow of War.
(Figure 4, ‘In the Shadows of War’ torpedo and bullet holes in exhibition.)
The next stage displays the fruits of their labor from the sailors and how they brought back artifacts for the aristocrats such as rich fabrics, and goods; hence entitled Tea Time – The First Globalisation. The next stage The World in your Shopping Basket , you find yourself on the bottom level of the building with high open ceilings and brings you to the present day showing the amount of vessels on the waters today.
(Figure 5, ‘The World in your Shopping Basket’ displaying the world’s biggest model of a container ship.)
The final exhibition that is situated underneath the Temporary exhibitions feels almost bare and stark that it relates to the section named Time Wreck. From this area the stairs leads up to a beacon of light shining from the top of the building that is the exit, I read this element as a metaphor for the sailors coming home and a religious symbol for the unfortunate that lived that might have been lost, the light representing as the gateway to Heaven.
(Figure 6, Stairwell from ‘Time Wreck’ to the Exit.)
Jessica Taylor-Tibbott 