Lunar landing
A new Danish mission to explore the cultural pull of the moon
Late in his life, Mark Rothko abandoned
the ecstatic hues of his best-known work in
favour of a darker palette, creating a series of
black-on-grey paintings that seemed to reflect
his declining mental state (the great abstract
expressionist would eventually take his own
life in 1970). Yet Marie Laurberg, curator
at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern
Art, believes they reflect far more than an
inner struggle. Honing in on a particular
painting, borrowed from Washington DC for
an upcoming exhibition, she says: ‘It’s from
- And it looks exactly like the landscapes
brought back that year by the first astronauts
on the moon. It talks about emptiness in
a landscape devoid of any signs of life.’
The exhibition, ‘The Moon: From Inner
Worlds to Outer Space’, anticipates the 50th
anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s giant leap
for mankind. It offers a kaleidoscopic view on
the Earth’s only natural satellite, covering art,
of course – stretching from the Renaissance
to the present day – but also disciplines as
diverse as astronomy, design and film. It’s an
ambitious exhibition, seven years in the
making. Laurberg once thought it impossible.
‘During my job interview, Poul Erik [Tøjner,Louisiana’s director] asked, “What is the
dream exhibition that you’ll never be able to
make?” And I said, “An exhibition about the
moon,”’ she recalls. ‘I wanted to pair art with
images from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter. It’s not easy to find a museum that
is prepared to take this leap of imagination.’
Happily, Laurberg found a kindred spirit
in Tøjner. ‘Art world boundaries are constantly
moving,’ he says. ‘There’s a cultural aspect
in every work of art, and similarly, a lot of
cultural and scientific artefacts contain
aesthetic values and potential narratives.’
Under Tøjner’s directorship, the museum
has staged crossover exhibitions on the Arcticand the Arab world, though this is the first (^) »
MARIE LAURBERG AND PAUL ERIK TØJNER,
LOUISIANA MUSEUM CURATOR AND DIRECTOR,
RESPECTIVELY, WITH A PROJECTION OF
ROSA BARBA’S 2015 THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE
PHOTOGRAPHY: GIULIA MANGIONE WRITER: TF CHAN ∑ 189