NEWS AND PRESS RELEASES
NEW PROJECT FOCUSES ON SPIRITUALITY IN A MODERN WORLD | 07.04.2026
How do people find new directions in life? What happens when faith, values or worldview change? Based on personal stories about seeking new spiritual or religious paths, the project examines diversity in modern forms of faith. Some have actively converted to a religion, while others have moved in more personal or alternative directions – without necessarily themselves using words such as “religion” or “conversion”. Common to them is an experience of change and searching.
Through interviews we meet people who share their experiences of breaking with the familiar, asking questions and finding new ways to understand themselves and the world. At the same time, we collect and document objects that have had significance in their journey – it can be everything from religious symbols to everyday objects with special personal value. Together, the stories and the objects give an insight into the diversity that characterises modern faith and spirituality today.
The project is to result in an exhibition in Farum Kulturhus, which will be shown in autumn 2026.
AUGUSTINUSFONDEN SUPPORTS THE PROJECT ‘IN THE PAST WE MADE HISTORY’ WITH DKK 200,000 | 15.03.2026
The Migration Museum of Denmark has, together with photographic artists Tina Enghoff and Kent Klich as well as RSS Press, received a grant of DKK 200,000 from Augustinusfonden for the incorporation of the digital archive ‘In the Past We Made History’ and the development of an artistic and documentary book under the same name. The archive originates from extensive documentation work about the historical refugee flow in 2015-2018. Enghoff and Klich have revisited 89 former asylum centres and emergency accommodation sites and photographed buildings, rooms and surfaces – physical traces that disappear with time. A significant part of the archive has been created together with people with experience of flight, who have actively participated in the selection of photographs and the decision about what should be preserved.
IA-SPROG SUPPORTS THE PROJECT RETURN TO UNCERTAINTY WITH DKK 350,000 | 30.01.2026
For many years there has been focus on migration and integration in Europe. Less attention, however, has been directed at the reverse phenomenon – repatriation, i.e. when foreigners or descendants return to their country of origin. With a new grant from IA-Sprog, this project will examine how returning migrants experience their linguistic and cultural identity in the home country. We wish to shed light on how linguistic skills, cultural experiences and understanding of identity develop in connection with repatriation. It is particularly interesting to examine how returning after many years in Denmark is experienced. Not merely as a geographical change, but as a profound change in individuals’ lives. The project therefore aims to shed light on how repatriated people experience life in their original home country after a longer stay in Denmark, seen from several perspectives.
NEW PROJECT ON MIGRATION IN THE NORDIC REGION HAS BEEN LAUNCHED | 01.12.2025
History is full of examples of migration; forced by politics, war, climate change or voluntary because of love, studies and work. But do we always follow up on the results of migration and integration? Do we always learn from these examples, and do we always build inclusive societies that are attractive both for the newcomers and for the inhabitants? In this project, the project partners (Kivik Museum, Swedish Homeland Association of Finland, the Culture Department in Landskrona, Association of German North SchleswigersOig the Migration Museum of Denmark) will create a smaller exhibition with an exhibition catalogue that highlights inclusion and integration in order to create greater knowledge about questions such as: How can we build welcoming societies for the future with a view to successful inclusion, regardless of whether the reasons for migration are forced or voluntary? How can we as social institutions help change traditional viewpoints from seeing immigrants as people who must be “integrated”, to people whom we as a society can also learn from. We wish to draw conclusions and learn from examples from history and contemporary societies about how migration and integration work, and to pass this knowledge on through an exhibition and a conference.
ISAM B AND THE MIGRATION MUSEUM OF DENMARK OPENED THE DOOR TO A NEW DANISH HISTORY | 08.05.2025
Both hearts and spaces of memory were opened when the Migration Museum of Denmark in Farum launched its new collection project Generation 2 – with Isam B as musical co-narrator.
The project, which focuses on the children of the guest workers of the 70s, sets the stage for something as rare as a co-created collection: A Danish history told with those it is about – and by them. It is not only about archives and exhibitions, but about creating a shared space of memory across generations and ethnicities. A history in which more people can see themselves reflected – and which embraces that migration is a part of all of us and a human condition.
Fadime Turan, who is herself part of the so-called 2nd generation, spoke about the longing to be reflected in the official narratives: “Where is our history? and who should tell it?” she asked – and answered: “Of course we should ourselves.” A clear invitation to the audience to contribute with memories, things and voices – and not least the “gold” hidden in drawers and hearts around the country, which contains important cultural heritage.
And then Isam B came. With lyrical warmth, wit and musical power he led us through both his own roots and our shared future. He called his band “guest workers” and immediately struck the tone: A nod to history, without remaining in the past. It was Arabic phrasing and Danish reflection side by side. When he rounded off with “I was born in Denmark”, it was impossible not to feel the weight of the words – and the hope in them while the evening sun cast its red rays through the cultural centre’s glass construction.
It was all a reminder that there are many ways to be Danish – and many stories that deserve to be heard. The Migration Museum of Denmark and Generation 2 have set the stage for something important: A living, inclusive and co-created Danish history. And it already feels like the beginning of something big.
GRANT FOR NEW PROJECT ABOUT YOUNG DESCENDANTS | 06.01.2025
At the end of 2024, the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces granted money for a new project between the Migration Museum of Denmark and MARK| Museum for a New Danish History, which focuses on people affected by migration who find themselves at a multicultural crossroads. The project builds further on knowledge and experience from the initiative ‘Co-created Collections’, which the two museums have carried out during the past year.
In ‘MOSAIC’, the Migration Museum of Denmark focuses on stories about home and identity among young descendants (15-30 years). The aim is to collect material and immaterial testimonies together with the target group. Testimonies that can be communicated to a broad audience in order to nuance the understanding of (multiple) home-belonging and in the long term be preserved as part of our shared history for future generations.
NEW RESEARCH SHEDS LIGHT ON CROSS-BORDER MUSEUM COLLECTION | 03.01.2025
At the Migration Museum of Denmark we start the new year with new research that sheds light on cross-border museum collection.
Based on his fieldwork at the Migration Museum of Denmark, Mathias Dolmer Rasmussen (anthropologist and former research assistant) has published new research that sheds light on how museums – by “following people” across time and space – can collect testimonies that provide a bodily sense of movement and experiences of displacement.
In his article ‘Moving evidence – an argument for a cross-border museum collection’ in the journal ‘Nordisk Museologi’, Mathias argues that transnational documentation can place movements across borders at the centre of museums’ collection, research and communication about migration – and thereby challenge museum tendencies to confirm nationalist narratives about migration.
Would you like to become wiser about that subject? Then find the article right here: https://journals.uio.no/museolog/
FURESØ MUSEUMS PARTNER IN COLLABORATION ON DIALECTS IN DENMARK | 26.11.2024
In collaboration with the Alexandra Institute, Furesø Museums, including the Migration Museum of Denmark, have become a new partner in the nationwide project, CoRaL, which focuses on dialects in Denmark. The project collects speech datasets with recordings of more than 1,000 people’s dialects and accents from all over Denmark. The recordings are to help the development of Danish speech technology, so that computers and artificial intelligence can better understand Danish speech and answer in a sensible way in a Danish context. The dataset will be made freely available to everyone, so developers, companies and public institutions can benefit from the new knowledge.
“We are very pleased that Furesø’s local history museum, Mosegaarden, will provide the setting for such an important and significant project. We hope that the citizens in the Furesø area would like to support the project and lend their voice, so that we can ensure the development of the speech technology of the future”, says museum director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen.
In connection with the project, Furesø Museums, in collaboration with the Alexandra Institute, are currently looking for research participants from the Furesø area who would like to donate their voice in the form of voice recordings. The recordings are used to develop and improve voice and chatbots for, for example, blind people, elderly people and citizens with special needs, as well as to ensure Danish researchers’ opportunity to develop technologies for the benefit of everyone. The recordings take place at Mosegaarden, Skovgårds Allé 37, 3500 Værløse on 8-9 January 2025. Participants should expect to spend 2.5 hours reading texts aloud and participating in conversations with other citizens. Both parts will be instructed by staff from the Alexandra Institute. As thanks for the help, all participants receive a gift card of DKK 400.
If you wish to participate, or if you know possible interested people, you must register via this link: https://forms.office.com/e/6GfGSmmmty. When we begin to approach the recordings, you will be contacted to arrange a specific meeting time.
THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK REGAINS THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF AEMI | 30.09.2024
At the end of September we participated in the annual AEMI conference (Association of European Migration Institutions) in Dudelange, Luxembourg. As chair of the network, head of the Migration Museum of Denmark, Cathrine Kyø Hermansen, opened the conference with a speech about the importance of sport, culture and art for inclusive communities and societies.
On the first day of the conference, our museum curator Emma Barnhøj Jeppesen presented results from the handicraft project ‘Saturday Crafts in a panel together with colleagues from other migration museums in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. The following day our research assistant Dragan Jovanovic told about his work with the guest workers of the 70s and their leisure life.
During the conference a general assembly was held, where Cathrine Kyø Hermansen was re-elected as chair for the second time. We are quite proud of that and look forward to even more collaboration with our good European colleagues.
POLITIKEN STOPPED BY AND SAW THE MUSEUM’S WILDEST OBJECT | 16.04.2024
“Imagine sitting in Denmark and then hearing that one’s child, who is thousands of kilometres away, has been seriously injured, and one cannot be there”.
Politiken stopped by the Migration Museum of Denmark to hear about the wildest object in our collection. We of course told the story of the little artificial glass eye, which you can currently experience yourself in our special exhibition ‘The Guest Workers- Stories from the 70s’.
DKK 255,000 FROM THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE FOR COLLECTION MANAGEMENT | 02.01.2024
The government has allocated an extraordinary grant of DKK 25 million in the Finance Act for 2024 for the collection work of Danish museums. This means that all state-recognised museums – including Furesø Museums – receive a separate contribution of DKK 255,000 for work with the collections. We are pleased with the contribution and look forward to getting started with the many new collection activities.
NEW GRANT FROM THE DANISH AGENCY FOR CULTURE AND PALACES FOR PROJECT ON CO-CREATED COLLECTIONS | 20.12.2023
At the end of 2023, the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces approved an entirely new partnership between the Migration Museum of Denmark and MARK| for a project that focuses on sustainable collection management. The institutions are set to receive a total of DKK 1.4 million over the next year. The grant is to be used to rethink the concept of collections and explore new ways of working with social and cultural sustainability in our collection and preservation practices – all in close consultation with Conservation Centre Vejle.
The aim is to strengthen the cultural and social representation in our collections. We do this, among other things, by challenging the existing concept of an object with an increased focus on intangible and place-based cultural heritage, while at the same time inviting the museums’ non-users to identify, assess the significance of and provide their perspectives on cultural heritage.
The project develops new strategies and methods for the museums’ collection work and sustainability initiatives through contemporary documentation, co-creation and inclusion of the museums’ non-users. With the project, the museums will challenge collection paradigms and definitions, bring people together and create value and ownership for non-users as well as develop methods for sustainable, ethical and co-created collection management as inspiration for the broader museum landscape.
Within recent years both Mark| and the Migration Museum of Denmark have revised their collection strategies and collection management, including with a renewed focus on challenging the classical object concept, rethinking the museum understanding of collections and testing new methods for active collection. With this shared starting point, the two museums in the project ’Co-created Collections’ will actively work to explore and integrate contemporary documentation and co-creation as methods in their work – especially with a view to creating new ways to include the museums’ non-users and thereby ensure broader representation in the museums’ collections, communication and research.
NICE REVIEW IN WEEKENDAVISEN OF NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION | 23.06.2023
Weekendavisen stopped by the new special exhibition ‘The Guest Workers – Stories from the 70s’ on the opening day, 10 June. A really nice review has come out of it. We are proud of the result and once again send thanks to the many people who share their stories, memories and perspectives in the exhibition.
THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK RECEIVES DKK 190,000 FOR HANDICRAFT ACROSS BORDERS | 22.06.2023
With a grant of almost DKK 190,000 from Sportgoodsfonden, the Migration Museum of Denmark launches during the summer a new project that sheds light on integration from a museum perspective. The project further develops the community-promoting initiative Saturday Crafts, which the museum has run since 2019, where women with different ethnic and religious backgrounds meet for workshops and conversations about their shared interest in handicraft.
During the coming three years the museum will, in close collaboration with designer Henriette Rolf Larsen, hold open workshops with instructors who focus on different handicraft techniques from cultural history and open up conversations about handicraft from the participating women’s home regions. During the workshops the women themselves also get the opportunity to try the different techniques and create handicraft works that communicate perspectives on their own life situations and experiences.
“Our society calls for a rethinking of the role of Danish museums in the major welfare agendas. At the Migration Museum of Denmark we believe that museums have a shared responsibility to be active contributors in the area of integration and make a difference for minorities who have made a contribution to our society. With initiatives such as Saturday Crafts, the Migration Museum of Denmark will show how Danish museums can function as cross-cultural meeting places that bring people together around cultural history and create space for shared experiences to be shared across borders”, says museum director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen.
The purpose of the project is to break down cultural and linguistic barriers and strengthen the women’s social networks, Danish language skills and knowledge of our society and history. At the same time the museum will also collect life stories and memories from the participating women, who represent a population group whose stories are generally overlooked in the Danish museum landscape.
The project ends with an exhibition at the Migration Museum of Denmark in spring 2026, where the women’s testimonies and handicraft works will shed light on life as a minority woman in Denmark and invite dialogue about the importance of inclusive communities for integration into Danish society.
The first workshop takes place on Saturday 29 July and is free and open to everyone who would like to participate.
FIVE BIG HEARTS FOR THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION | 11.06.2023
Politiken has today given five big hearts to the new special exhibition ‘The Guest Workers – Stories from the 70s’. We are proud of the result – and we send a big thank you to all the people who during the last many months have shared their stories, objects, photographs and perspectives with the museum. We hope that you will continue to share your stories, so that the chapter about the guest workers in Denmark can be documented as part of our shared Danish history.
FURESØ’S MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES RECEIVE 700,000 TO TELL ABOUT JEWISH LIFE, CULTURE AND HISTORY | 01.02.2023
With a grant of more than DKK 700,000 from the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces, the Migration Museum of Denmark, Furesø Libraries and the Danish Jewish Museum have begun 2023 with a new collaboration that sheds light on Danish-Jewish cultural history and contemporary life.
The initiative ‘Impressions, Imprints, Expressions’ is part of the national action plan against antisemitism, in which funds were allocated for collaborations between the country’s museums and libraries to carry out exhibitions and events about Jewish life, culture and history.
“During the coming three years, citizens in Furesø Municipality and the rest of North Zealand will experience the initiative unfold in a string of events about Jewish literature, music, food and other forms of culture as well as a large special exhibition at the Migration Museum of Denmark and Farum Kulturhus about Jewish identity and the history of antisemitism in 2025. By spreading information and knowledge about Danish-Jewish life, culture and history, we will contribute to ensuring that the national protection against antisemitism and hate crimes is maintained and strengthened,” say museum director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen and library director Ricki Elsgaard.
For the institutions, the initiative is an obvious opportunity to collaborate under a shared theme across fields of knowledge.
Tine Hessner, committee chair for Culture, Leisure and Sport, states “I am proud that our two cultural institutions have received such great recognition in the form of a special grant, which means that in Furesø during the next three years we will experience a special cultural focus on Jewish cultural history. The joint initiative connects professional fields across our local cultural institutions, and I look forward to the citizens of Furesø experiencing the fruits of it through music, art, literature and exhibitions. I am sure that there will be something for both young and old.”
CLOSED AT THE MUSEUM | 30.01.2023
Because of renovation of the museum’s floor, we are unfortunately closed to visitors in week 5. School classes, guided tours or other activities by agreement with the museum’s curators will be carried out.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY | 27.01.2023
Today marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January 1945. We remember and honour the many Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of people who were killed in the name of Nazism. Since 2005, the UN’s member states have held remembrance ceremonies and reminded each other of their obligations to combat antisemitism, racism and other forms of intolerance that can lead to abuses against minorities in society.
SATURDAYS IN THE SIGN OF INTEGRATION AT THE IMMIGRANT MUSEUM | 22.01.2023
The coffee is brewed, the tea stands ready and the biscuits are placed in the basket. There is a buzz of life and small talk as the Migration Museum of Denmark classroom is taken over by a good handful of women ready to spend Saturday in each other’s company. Led by designer and teacher Henriette Rolf Larssen, good advice about embroidery and knitting, crochet and weaving, textile printing and many other handicraft techniques is generously shared. Often the day starts with a presentation from a speaker who tells about a piece of handicraft from cultural history. Then it is time to get to work on one’s own crafts.
Once a month women with different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds meet for the community-promoting initiative Saturday Crafts. It all takes place at the Migration Museum of Denmark in Farum Kulturhus, where the women are allowed to cultivate their shared interest in handicraft.
Saturday Crafts was held for the first time at the Migration Museum of Denmark in spring 2019 and was inspired by a similar initiative at the Workers Museum and the National Museum. The idea behind the initiative was to use the museum as an open space where women with different backgrounds could meet and together form a network around their shared interest in handicraft. Through the years the museum has had the pleasure of visits from women with roots all over the world. From the USA and Portugal to Somalia, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan.
“Again and again Saturday Crafts shows us that community and friendships can arise across cultural, linguistic and religious differences. Here it is about taking part, daring to participate and reaching out to others. At the museum we are therefore happy to continue to provide the setting for the many valuable cultural encounters that arise and see integration play out – on a small local scale”, says museum curator Emma Barnhøj Jeppesen.
Has your appetite been whetted to become part of the community, and would you like to cultivate your interest in handicraft together with others? Then the Migration Museum of Denmark holds Saturday Crafts five times in spring 2023, where among other things we will look at crochet, Ukrainian art, embroidery and textile printing.
The dates are 4 February, 11 March, 15 April, 13 May and 10 June. On all the days the crafts take place from 11.00-14.00. The events are free and open to everyone who has time and would like to stop by.
SEMINAR ON YOUNG ASYLUM SEEKERS’ EXPERIENCES WITH INTEGRATION DURING THE PARADIGM SHIFT | 19.01.2023
Aalborg University and the University of Copenhagen invite you to a seminar at the Migration Museum of Denmark, where the most important results from the research project “Junctures of change in the integration of young refugees” are presented. Over a multi-year period, the project examines how young newly arrived refugees experience the encounter with the integration system, and how the young people create a foothold in their everyday lives under the changing political conditions that characterise Danish immigration policy.
The seminar offers both presentations and a photo exhibition with the young people’s photographs. Find the programme here.
The seminar is free, but requires registration at aot1@furesoe.dk.
NYT IS OUT | 16.01.2023
The newest NYT is out. Find our magazine at the Migration Museum of Denmark and Mosegaarden, in Farum Kulturhus or digitally on our website.
You can among other things learn more about our extensive work with Ukrainian refugees, which will soon reach one year. About stories from the labour migrants of the 70s, which will soon result in a new special exhibition at the Migration Museum of Denmark. Also read about Denmark’s first citizenship legislation, which came already in 1776.
FLEE AND MOOSA LANE AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK | 05.01.2023
The Immigrant Museum has obtained the rights to show the two award-winning films ”Flee” and ”Moosa Lane” for the next three years. Therefore the museum now offers schools and educational institutions the opportunity to visit the museum, get an introduction to flight and migration through time, and see one of the two films at the museum. It is of course free.
The programme starts with a 25-minute tour of the museum, where the students hear different stories of flight. Then the requested film is shown in the museum’s classroom. The programme can be booked via museerne@furesoe.dk
NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION WITH TESTIMONIES FROM YAZIDI WOMEN | 03.01.2023
The Yazidis are a Kurdish minority in northern Iraq as well as in Georgia, Armenia and Syria. Some have emigrated to Europe. The Yazidis’ religion is monotheistic and is believed to be more than 4,000 years old. The group is also called Ezidi and Yezidi. In the summer of 2014, Islamic State committed horrific abuses against everyone who did not submit to their rigid interpretation of Islam. Men were executed. Women were raped. And young girls were sold as sex slaves to the terrorist movement’s fighters.
The exhibition ‘Breaking the Silence’ includes paintings made by Yazidi women who have been persecuted, abused and sold as sex slaves by Islamic State. Stop by for thought-provoking paintings and personal stories from Iraq.
The girls and women receive trauma treatment through the organisation Mission East, where they use painting to process their traumas
COLLABORATION WITH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE COPENHAGEN AND THE DANISH FOUNDATION FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP | 02.01.2023
In 2021 the Migration Museum of Denmark participated in a larger project together with University College Copenhagen and the Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship. The purpose was to create inspirational videos for teachers and educators about how they can promote innovation and entrepreneurship among students when they visit external learning environments. The Migration Museum of Denmark collaborated with Skolen på Islands Brygge, where the students among other things had to complete the programme “Your exhibition” and build their own proposals for how an exhibition could look. The idea was to examine how innovation and entrepreneurship can promote learning and interest among the students. A fine video has come out of it. Find it here.
70s STORIES – NEW COLLECTION PROJECT | 20.12.2022
Labour immigration to Denmark has been going on for centuries – with varying intensity and with more or less regulation. The period from 1970 and up to today can tell us much about how people experience a temporary stay transformed into a permanent existence with everything that it entails and brings with it. Many of those who came around 1970 today live a retired life in Denmark, some have left this world, others have returned to the home country, and many of their descendants in Denmark face identity-related challenges.
Last year the Migration Museum of Denmark launched a new large collection project together with some of the original labour immigrants and their descendants. The purpose of the project is to document life stories, photographs, objects and other testimonies, which in future are preserved for posterity and as a part of our shared Danish history.
INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS DAY | 18.12.2022
In recent years conflicts, unrest and climate change have pushed millions of people into migration. At present 1 out of 78 people on earth is displaced from their home.
Today we mark and celebrate ‘International Migrants Day’ – a day set aside to recognise migrants’ important contribution to our society and history.
NEW PUBLICATION ABOUT THE HISTORY OF CITIZENSHIP | 17.12.2022
Take a look at the newest issue of the journal GRANSK, where our curator Emma contributes an article about the Indføds-Retten of 1776.
At the end of the 18th century the multinational and multilingual Danish realm was characterised by immigration. It became a circumstance that the absolute monarch Christian VII and his political government had to deal with. On the king’s birthday in 1776, the debated royal ordinance, Indføds-Retten, was published.
As a constitutional law, Indføds-Retten was the first cornerstone in Danish citizenship history. A history that since then, under the influence of nationalism, migration, human rights and much else, has only become more complex. The royal ordinance now serves as an example of the ideas of the past with notions of the state, the citizen and the individual’s relationship to themselves and each other – thoughts that also today are negotiated in citizenship contexts. Precisely for that reason Indføds-Retten and its many branches are still worth engaging with – especially when, in just a few years, we mark its 250th anniversary.
Read the article here.
DANISH MIGRATION HISTORY IN UKRAINIAN | 15.12.2022
Yesterday our Ukrainian museum host Tanya showed displaced compatriots around the museum’s exhibitions. Here the Ukrainians who attended learned about the Dutch on Amager, the Polish beet workers on Lolland and the conditions for other refugee groups that have sought refuge in Denmark through time. Afterwards there was an invitation to discussion, where reflections on the Ukrainians’ conditions in Denmark and place in Danish migration history were discussed. A thousand thanks for a pleasant and inspiring event!
On Saturday 17 December at 11 Tanya holds another free guided tour in Ukrainian. Registration can be made here.
Spread the word to the Ukrainians you know!
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY | 10.12.2022
All people have rights, simply because they are human beings.
On 10 December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN. The background was a strong wish among politicians and organisations around the world to avoid a repetition of the brutal abuses and horrors that had taken place during the Second World War. Since then, the declaration has been a guideline for how we have the right to be treated, and how we have a duty to treat others.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights formulates the fundamental and inviolable rights that are common to everyone – and cannot be removed. The declaration consists of 30 articles, which among other things deal with the right to life, freedom and security as well as the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech and good working conditions.
Join in celebrating International Human Rights Day and support the fight for human rights in all countries.
RELIGION AND THE MUSEUM | 07.12.2022
The newest publication of Danske Museer focuses on the relationship between religion and museums. We have therefore contributed a short article about the co-creation of exhibitions between museums and religious minorities.
Through centuries, religion and immigration have interacted in Denmark. We therefore cannot portray migration without talking about religion. We hope that the articles in Danske Museer will inspire even more partnerships about the communication of religion at museums in Denmark.
NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION WITH JAPANESE AND DANISH ARTISTS | 23.11.2022
Tomoko Konae is of Japanese origin and trained as a graphic artist at Osaka University, Japan. Her architectural crochet art was developed in Denmark, from where she has worked with sculptural wall installations since 2018. Konae crochets “geometric graphics”, not textiles, because the graphic forms fascinate her. “I try to give my works originality and speciality, by expressing specific contours using soft materials – yarn – and crochet techniques.
Thomas Bay has over a number of years developed his very own style and typically works from a theme. And the vast majority of works are given a title – a title that is inseparably connected to the image. For some of the works, it is best to know the title in advance, in order to understand the idea behind the motif. Bay’s world of motifs ranges from colourful psychedelic patterns to biomorphic figures in delicate pastels. His work ”The Lottery of Life” however has a more philosophically weighty meaning, as it visualises the contrast between the biological body – with its physical needs and the thinking human being.
NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION ABOUT THE MEETING BETWEEN THE USA AND DENMARK | 17.11.2022
Daniel Brophy is an urban artist who, among other things, lets himself be inspired by the mystery of the universe and questions such as; – where do we come from? and – where are we going? Questions that both nourish his imagination and visual world. From here images now grow forth, about the act of creation itself – through foreign temples and scenes from unknown stories and cultures.
Brophy has a bachelor’s degree in art and art history from Kean University, New Jersey. His works have been exhibited in New York City, New Jersey, Miami, Denmark, Ireland etc. Daniel Brophy was born and raised in New Jersey – with churchgoing, visits to the local library and baseball games. Today he lives in Denmark together with his wife and their twin daughters.
The exhibition opens Saturday 29 November at 12.15 and can be seen in GangGalleriet at Farum Kulturhus. Free admission.
MIGRATION MUSEUM NETWORK IN PARIS | 20.10.2022
These days members of Migration Museum Network gather in Paris for a seminar that deals with some of the themes that the museums are working with right now, and the challenges they meet in their work. The seminar’s main focus is among other things on how we can ensure that the museums become places where migration history can be shared and debated by everyone – regardless of background.
Migration Museum Network is an association of museums from all over the world that continuously share knowledge and exchange experiences – all centred around the subject of migration.
The Migration Museum of Denmark participates in the seminar online.
CONSTITUTION CEREMONY AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK | 05.10.2022
Yesterday the Migration Museum of Denmark once again had the pleasure of providing the setting for the biannual constitution ceremony together with Furesø Municipality. 16 citizens in the municipality received their Danish citizenship, and it is always a festive, moving and enriching day to witness.
As mayor Ole Bondo Christensen emphasised in his speech, the new Danish citizens are part of a long history of people who have come to Denmark. If we look back in history, people have in fact always migrated – because of work, love and education, as a consequence of war, persecution and unrest or for many other reasons.
Yesterday the new citizens had the opportunity to share a little of their stories: about their way to Denmark and about life here, which for many has lasted several years. The stories show us how diverse migration is, and that difference and colourfulness help us to inspire each other.
We look forward to taking part in many festive constitution ceremonies in the future.
AEMI CONFERENCE IN PORTUGAL | 30.09.2022
Yesterday Cathrine opened the international AEMI conference in Fafe. This year the conference is about flight and host societies.
At present more than 100 million people worldwide have been driven to flee. That corresponds to 1 out of 78 people having left their home to seek safety somewhere else. During the past year we have seen several examples of this. First with the evacuation of Afghan citizens. Then with the reception of Ukrainian refugees.
As a museum we have a responsibility to document their stories as part of our national history. We do this through two large collection and documentation projects. By creating a contemporary archive with interviews, objects, photos and videos, we hope that future generations will gain a better understanding of the important historical events that unfolded in 2021 and 2022.
NEW MUSEUM DEFINITION | 25.08.2022
At the general assembly of the International Council of Museum (ICOM), a new museum definition was adopted yesterday. We can recognise very much of our work with migration and minority history in the definition, and we are especially pleased that ICOM this year focuses on important values such as inclusion, diversity and sustainability. We look forward to continuing to implement and bring these goals into play in our future projects and work.
NEW EXHIBITION ABOUT FOREIGN CRIMINALS OPENS AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK| 18.08.2022
On Friday 2 September at 15.00 the Migration Museum of Denmark opens its doors to a new special exhibition about foreign criminals. Both the opening event and the exhibition are free for everyone.
The fear of criminal foreigners is not new in Denmark. It was also widespread more than 100 years ago. Back then it was primarily Swedes who appeared in the Danish statistics on criminal foreigners, but other nationalities were also represented. The special exhibition ‘The Foreign Criminals’ puts faces to some of these foreign destinies. Literally, as the convicted foreigners were immortalised in the police’s criminal photo albums.
The majority of the foreigners who were immortalised were not hardened criminals. Many were ordinary people, such as domestic servants or labourers, who could not find work. They belonged to the poorest in society, and some turned to crime. In the special exhibition we also meet more spectacular, scandalous and deadly stories about swindlers, anarchists, abortionists, hotel fraudsters, promiscuous women, sexual offenders, violent men and female killers.
The historical criminal albums have been digitised by Genealogisk Forlag and give us the opportunity to meet a part of our more shady past face to face. They are a reminder that the dream of a better life in new surroundings sometimes falls apart. That was also the case back then.
Would you like to take part in the exhibition opening? Then read more here.
RELIGION SHOULD TAKE UP MORE SPACE AT DANISH MUSEUMS | 21.07.2022
We have spoken a little with Kristeligt Dagblad about religion at Danish museums. Our participation in the interdisciplinary research project ‘Religion – Living Cultural Heritage’ has in fact confirmed an important experience that we encounter every day at the museum: that migration history cannot be understood and communicated without religious perspectives.
It is therefore important for us to make the museum a democratic space for open conversations about religion and religious identity. Until this Saturday you can, for example, experience the special exhibition ‘Dead and Buried’, which dives into different burial traditions among religious minority groups in Denmark. We hope you will stop by – and share your own experiences with religion. You can find the link to the article here.
THANK YOU FOR A FANTASTIC OPENING | 28.06.2022
For weeks we have looked forward to opening the doors to the new special exhibition УКРАЇНА | The Dilemmas of War. It happened today under bright sunshine. Thank you to everyone who attended for creating a moving and fantastic atmosphere. Thank you to the many people who during the past months have shared their story with the museum. And thank you to the many interpreters who have helped us create understanding in the documentation project and the exhibition.
You can experience the exhibition until the end of August. So stop by Farum Kulturhus during your summer holiday.
UKRAINE REFUGEE STORIES AT MUSEUM | 27.06.2022
»We cannot simply close our eyes to these events and process them in four years, or when they are over,« says Emma Barnhøj Jeppesen, museum curator at THE IMMIGRANT MUSEUM, who tomorrow at the new exhibition ‘УКРАЇНА – The Dilemmas of War’ in Farum Kulturhus.
We have spoken with Kulturmonitor about our documentation project with Ukrainian refugees. Read along here.
THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK ON RADIO4 | 21.06.2022
Our research assistant Mathias has today been on Kulturmagasinet Kræs at Radio4 to tell more about our collection of testimonies from Ukrainian refugees in Denmark and the upcoming exhibition that opens 28 June. You can hear more about that project here.
UKRAINIAN REFUGEE STORIES AT MUSEUM | 16.06.2022
The Migration Museum of Denmark invites you to the opening of the new special exhibition ”УКРАЇНА – The Dilemmas of War“ on Ukrainian Constitution Day, 28 June at 17.00. Come and gain insight into some of the choices that Ukrainian refugees in Furesø Municipality have faced during and after their flight to Denmark.
Through testimonies, objects, photographs and audio recordings, the exhibition focuses on some of the dilemmas and coincidences that have led around 150 Ukrainian refugees to Furesø Municipality, where they have been met by the many Furesø citizens who have chosen to make their homes and help available.
At the opening museum director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen welcomes everyone, after which Furesø’s mayor Ole Bondo Christensen (A) opens the exhibition. Both the exhibition and the opening event are free and open to everyone who would like to participate.
The exhibition is based on an extensive documentation and collection project that the Migration Museum of Denmark launched on the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February this year. By meeting Ukrainian refugees, Danish host families, volunteer drivers and other initiators, the museum has during the past months established an early collection of accounts, objects, photographs and audio recordings, which in future will be preserved for posterity and thereby become part of our shared Danish history.
“The situation around the Ukrainian refugees occupies a great deal in many people’s awareness and will also in the future be a shared point of reference that we can all look back on. Therefore the Migration Museum of Denmark is making an early effort to ensure that the many accounts that we are currently witnessing do not disappear for posterity, but instead are documented and preserved. In this way we create a foundation of sources that hopefully can give future generations a better understanding of the situation”, says museum director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen.
Experience the many testimonies unfold in the museum’s special exhibition in the foyer of Farum Kulturhus until the end of August and follow the new chapter of Danish migration history while it is being written.
Contact museum curator Emma Barnhøj Jeppesen at ebj1@furesoe.dk for further information about the exhibition and the museum’s documentation and collection project.
NEW RESEARCH ANTHOLOGY ABOUT RELIGION AT THE MUSEUM | 09.06.2022
We have written a contribution to a new research anthology about how Danish museums can integrate and communicate religious perspectives in their collections and communication. Our contribution focuses on co-creation with source communities and shows how religion can be an entry point for ensuring more minority perspectives in our shared national history.
You can find the anthology completely free here.
CONCLUSION OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT ‘RELIGION – LIVING CULTURAL HERITAGE’ | 08.06.2022
During the past couple of days the research project ‘Religion – Living Cultural Heritage’ has been concluded with a couple of productive days in Aarhus, where experiences, thoughts and ideas have been exchanged with skilled colleagues from museums and universities across the country. We look forward to continuing the work of ensuring dialogue about religiosity and religious perspectives in our collection and exhibitions.
RELIGION RESULTS AT CONFERENCE IN AARHUS | 08.06.2022
Yesterday we had the pleasure of holding a dilemma workshop at Aarhus University together with skilled colleagues from Den Gamle By, Museum Silkeborg and Christiansfeld – Museum Kolding. Here good thoughts and experiences were exchanged about entering into co-creative partnerships with source communities on the communication of minority religion. The workshop is part of the research project ‘Religion – Living Cultural Heritage’, which focuses on museums’ communication of religion.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN BERLIN | 30.05.2022
For the next two days we are participating in the international conference ‘Images of Migration’ in Berlin organised by the University of Hildesheim. Being among some of the most skilled migration researchers in the world gives plenty of food for thought. But fortunately there is also a little time to enjoy some of the city’s many institutions that communicate migration history. For example, Topographie des Terrors gives a sober suggestion for how difficult, but important subjects can be communicated. Here, among other things, forced relocations and refugee stories under the Nazi regime are documented.
CALL FOR PAPERS: REFUGE AND HOSTING – PATHS TOWARDS INCLUSION | 01.05.2022
September 28th – October 1st, 2022. City of Fafe, Portugal
The 32nd AEMI Conference will be hosted by the Museu das Migrações e das Comunidades (Museum of Migration and Communities; MMC) in Fafe, Portugal. As a pioneer of migration history in Portugal, MMC started as a virtual museum in 2001. In 2008, MMC has been located as a museum for visitors in the Municipal House of Culture in Fafe.
A new call for papers has been issued. Read it here: .
LECTURE WITH JOURNALIST NAGIEB KHAJA | 25.04.2022
Monday evening the Migration Museum of Denmark and Furesø Library invited to a lecture with the award-winning journalist, documentary and expert on the complex Afghanistan and the Afghan people, Nagieb Khaja. He has many reporting trips to Afghanistan behind him and is known for grappling with the events and the people who are involved.
He is, if anyone, a person who can frame the story of the country and give perspective and explanation to some of the many questions that inevitably attach themselves to it. Why was Afghanistan invaded? Why did it develop in a completely wrong direction, and what are the mistakes that the USA and its allies have made?
At the lecture Khaja gave his view on why things went so wrong with the withdrawal, which last summer led to dramatic situations and the life-saving evacuation of Afghans.
NEW POP-UP EXHIBITION AT DOKK1 | 08.04.2022
On Friday 8 April the Migration Museum of Denmark opened a new pop-up exhibition in the cultural centre Dokk1 in Aarhus. The exhibition focuses on the Danish Sikh community and the Sikhs’ life and culture in Denmark.
The exhibition is financed by the inter-institutional research project Religion – Living Cultural Heritage, in which the Migration Museum of Denmark participates together with the Centre for Contemporary Religion at Aarhus University, Den Gamle By, the Danish Jewish Museum, RUC and Romu.
The exhibition can be experienced until 28 April 2022.
NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITION | 11.03.2022
On 11 March 2022 the Migration Museum of Denmark opens a new special exhibition about Greenlanders in Denmark. Through stories from Greenlandic informants the exhibition communicates complex experiences found among Greenlanders in Denmark. About identity. About being divided between two cultures and two languages. About what “home” means.”
Knud Rasmussen’s House is behind the exhibition, which can be experienced at the Migration Museum of Denmark until summer. After that it will travel around to 4 Greenlandic houses in Denmark.
The exhibition is part of the large Creative Europe project Identity on the Line. The project gathers stories and testimonies about migration and identity in 7 different European countries. The project culminates in a joint exhibition that travels between the countries – and which comes to Denmark this summer.
“70s STORIES” | 01.03.2022
You are hereby invited to a round-table conversation at the Migration Museum of Denmark, Stavnsholtvej 3 in Farum. You can choose between two dates: Saturday 5 March at 14-16 OR Saturday 26 March at 14-16. We invite everyone who took part in the event at the Migration Museum of Denmark on 27 November, and others who would like to tell their personal story about coming as a ”foreign worker” to Denmark 50 years ago. We would also very much like to hear what descendants or others have experienced or heard about life as an immigrant in the 1970s. The round-table conversations will be professionally moderated. The purpose is to identify and select relevant accounts and actors who in the long term can contribute to shedding light on labour immigration in the 1970s.
”70s stories” is a collaboration between the Migration Museum of Denmark and Indvandrerhistorisk Selskab. Register by email: indvandrerhistorisk.selskab@gmail.com and write whether you are coming Saturday 5 March or Saturday 26 March.
NYT IS OUT | 01.02.2022
The museum’s magazine NYT is out, and you can among other things read much more about our upcoming pop-up exhibition at Dokk1 in Aarhus, about our documentation project in Center Sandholm and much else. Find it at the museum or in a digital version right here.
THE RED CROSS AND THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK IN UNIQUE COLLABORATION | 01.12.2022
The Migration Museum of Denmark temporarily opens a “branch office” in Center Sandholm. The purpose is to collect accounts from the recently evacuated Afghans. The collaboration can be expanded to also include other newly arrived asylum seekers and refugee groups in the future. Unexpected migrations arise, raise questions and disappear again. Migration is both fleeting and changeable. But every time, those who come to Denmark leave traces in our society. To sharpen our understanding of society, precisely those traces from present-day migrations must be documented but also discussed and put into perspective.
“For the museum it is important to be present where history unfolds. Therefore it makes very good sense for our documentation work that we are physically present in Center Sandholm. In that way we can help present the history of the evacuated Afghans and preserve it for posterity as part of our shared Danish history”, says museum and archive director Cathrine Kyø Hermansen, the Migration Museum of Denmark. She continues:
“Migration is a subject that is always relevant to our society. When new events in the area of migration arise, the museum makes a great effort to collect testimonies, document developments and put the events into perspective in relation to both the present and the future. The situation around the evacuated Afghans is in many ways already historical. Therefore we are building a foundation of contemporary collection that both now and in the future can
help us understand the situation.”
It is the first time that the Red Cross in this way enters into a collaboration with a museum. “Both for our Afghan residents and for us in the Red Cross it is a completely obvious opportunity to contribute to the telling of history. In the case of the evacuees from Afghanistan, the individual person’s account can be an important piece in the work of collecting knowledge. At the same time they can in this way help create understanding of their situation and the violent events that meant that in a very short time they had to leave their country. Some of the Afghan residents have long university educations in their baggage. For them it is an extra plus that some of them are involved in the process”, says Senior Consultant in the Red Cross Maja Rettrup.
Quite concretely, the collaboration results in the Migration Museum of Denmark establishing a temporary office in Center Sandholm, so that the employees become a familiar part of the evacuees’ everyday life. It is of course completely voluntary for the Afghans whether they want to participate or not, just as it is up to them whether they want to participate with name and picture, or whether it should be anonymous.
The Red Cross contributes with counselling and facilitation of contact with Afghan residents who are interested in participating. The collection of knowledge will take place over a longer period. After the first conversations the same group of Afghans will be contacted again in six months. The Migration Museum of Denmark has its first day in Center Sandholm on Wednesday 8 December 2021.
TESFAYE AND MORTEN KJÆRUM DEBATE THE FUTURE OF IMMIGRATION AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK IN FURESØ | 10.01.2020
The future of immigration and the new government’s immigration policy are the theme when Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye (S) meets Morten Kjærum, head of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in Lund at the Migration Museum of Denmark in Farum.
Tuesday 14 January at 19-21 the Migration Museum of Denmark in Farum provides the setting for a debate evening under the heading “The Future of Immigration”. Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye and Morten Kjærum, head of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in Lund, meet for a conversation about immigration, integration, human rights in Denmark and the principles behind the new government’s immigration policy.
The event is the first in a series of meetings created in close collaboration between the Migration Museum of Denmark and volunteer forces in Indvandrerhistorisk Selskab.
The Migration Museum of Denmark is the only state-recognised museum in Denmark that works with migration history. Since 2012 the museum has dealt with immigrants, emigrants and refugees in Danish history.
LOVE AT LAST SIGHT | 01.09.2019
On Saturday 7 September the Migration Museum of Denmark opens its doors to the exhibition Love At Last Sight. The exhibition by the artist couple Ana Pavlovic and Vladimir Tomic, both educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation and it is the first time it is shown at a Danish museum.
The works in the exhibition are based on the universal feeling of alienation people experience when they migrate or flee to a new country. The works consist of video, sound installations as well as photographs, composed of biographical material collected from refugees and migrants from the Balkan region. All today living in Scandinavia. The material was collected in the period 1992-2007, from the impressions and experiences of the first days to approx. 25 years after arrival, when life has changed significantly.
At the exhibition Love at Last Sight we are presented with several works that have been awarded within the last couple of years. The work ”Letters” by Ana Pavlovic consists of two large pavilions, where behind light, delicate curtains we are invited into an intimate domestic atmosphere. Pavlovic came to Denmark as a 22-year-old from Serbia and a bombed childhood home in Belgrade and started over in life. Her works focus on the human psyche, on alienation and on the dichotomy between Eastern and Western Europe. The exhibition is therefore created on the basis of the artist couple’s own experiences as respectively a refugee from Croatia and a migrant from Serbia, in combination with the brutally honest material from many others. They are exchanges of letters between mother and migrated daughter, revealing both intimate thoughts and reflections from women who have had to make difficult and sometimes controversial decisions. We are met at eye level with stories of success and the opposite.
THE EMIGRANTS TRAVEL TO THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK | 14.03.2018
”The ship dropped anchor off New York at midnight. It was a magnificent sight to look towards the city with the countless lights or to look out at the illuminated ships that passed us. People were happy to have arrived – some for pleasure, others to create a new career for themselves – and we had difficulty falling asleep.” Alma Hjort Schmidt, USA 1907:
From around 1860 and up to approximately 1920 more than 300,000 Danes emigrated to the USA. It is a staggering number, in fact around 10 percent of the Danish population at the time. Despite that, the history of Danish mass emigration has not taken up much space in Danish history books.
The debate about migration, however, takes up more and more space in public debate today, and one consequence is that we Danes to a greater extent have begun to take an interest in the time when our ancestors travelled out, and why they travelled out. Therefore, on 7 April the Migration Museum of Denmark opens the doors to the new travelling exhibition The Emigrants from Museum Mors.
Based on the people of Mors’ own history, The Emigrants dives into the story of the thousands of Danes who crossed the Atlantic in the hope of a better future in the USA. And we are there all the way. From Mors and all the way over to the prairie, where the Danish migrants with their bare hands began the strenuous work of cultivating the land.
So come along when the Migration Museum of Denmark this April follows in the emigrants’ footsteps, and learn more about a thought-provoking piece of Danish history communicated through a local-history perspective.
FANTASTIC STORIES FOR THE SCHOOLS FROM THE MUSEUMS IN NORTH ZEALAND | 25.01.2018
Schools and upper-secondary educational institutions in North Zealand now have the opportunity to offer their students 12 exciting and educational teaching programmes under the heading ”Culture on the Move”. The teaching programmes have been developed in a collaboration between Furesø Museums/the Migration Museum of Denmark, the Museums of Helsingør and Museum North Zealand. The Danish Agency for Culture has supported the development work with DKK 374,000.
Who would not become curious to know more about the three transport ships that were ordered by Iraq and built at the beginning of the 1980s at Helsingør Shipyard, walk around Helsingør in search of historical places, encounter accounts of travelling to a new country as a Vienna child, come closer to an understanding of what the Refugee Convention of 1951 means, debate the conditions in the German refugee camps, dive into the sources about pirates and national heroes in the Øresund after the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 or immerse oneself in the archaeologist’s work with the archaeological finds in order to interpret oneself the shift from the hunter Stone Age to the farmer Stone Age and reflect on why it took place?
Common to all the teaching programmes is that the students sharpen their historical interest and knowledge through relevant communication at the museums. Much effort has been put into the teaching form, which ranges from city walks and dilemma games to panel discussions and role-playing. All programmes take their starting point in local history in the form of events, archaeological objects, sources, cultural environments and deal in different ways with identity, memory, cultural encounters, and mobility.
The programmes have been developed through a collaboration with teachers and students from North Zealand schools and upper-secondary educational institutions, and they support academic goals. In addition to the concrete programmes that the students directly benefit from, the project also includes follow-up research, which has made the museums wiser about the schools’ needs for supplementary teaching. The teaching programmes and a complete overview of the collaborating museums’ offers can be found at www.skolemus.dk. Where the offers can also be booked. Here one can also read more about the project Culture on the Move.
For further information contact: Lise Milan Nielsen, Furesø Museums/the Migration Museum of Denmark, limn@furesoe.dk 72165361.
PUT A FACE TO A REFUGEE | 18.01.2018
The exhibition ’Refugee’ tells personal accounts from some of the refugees who in these years are coming to the country. The exhibition is set up at Copenhagen Main Library until 28 January.
”They said that everything was okay. They said that we would get a seat, and that we could bring luggage, but on the way to the boat they suddenly began to say that after all we could not bring luggage, and that we had to throw our things away.”
At Copenhagen Main Library one can currently see the exhibition ’Refugee’. The exhibition aims to bring the visitor closer to the refugees who in these years are coming to the country. Through the exhibition’s personal accounts one gains insight into thoughts, feelings, dreams and hopes for the future from people who have had to flee from everything familiar in favour of a life in Denmark. People from Somalia, Eritrea and Syria. For what does it mean to set out on a long and often dangerous journey that marks a major shift in both geography and identity? What is it like to go from being a student, driver or female soldier in one’s home country to being a refugee? And what does one take along on the journey?
The exhibition ’Refugee’ is a collaboration between Copenhagen Main Library and the Migration Museum of Denmark and shows a selection of interviews conducted by ethnologist Inanna Riccardi. The exhibition runs from now until 28 January. There is free access to the exhibition, which is set up on the ground floor.
DANISH EMIGRATION TO AMERICA | 01.12.2016
When it comes to migration, Denmark has not only been a receiving country. Many Danes have through time left the country to seek their fortune elsewhere. The vast majority of them emigrated to the USA in the years 1850-1920. Who were they? Why did they leave? Where did they settle? And what became of them and their descendants? Museum curator Freja Børsting answers these questions at the Migration Museum of Denmark on Thursday 8 December at 19:00.
There will also be some good tips to pick up on how you can find information about your own family in the USA. Freja has worked at The Danish Migration Museum of Denmark in Iowa in the USA and has written her thesis about the Danishness that still thrives in Danish-American communities. Thursday 8 December 2016 at 19:00. The event is free.
NEW EXHIBITION AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK: REFUGEES / REFUGEE | 26.04.2016
Based on interviews with 16 refugees in Furesø Municipality, the Migration Museum of Denmark now opens the special exhibition Refugee / Refugee, in which the refugees’ personal story is in focus.
The exhibition is based on three months of intensive fieldwork carried out by the Migration Museum of Denmark project employee, Inanna Riccardi, and presents refugees from three different countries: Syria, Eritrea and Somalia. Each refugee tells about life as it was in the home country before the person fled, about the flight itself and about how their life in Denmark has so far taken shape. Most of the stories are harsh and are about survival, deprivation and uncertainty. But for most of the refugees the new beginning in Denmark also represents a hope for a better and safer future.
The exhibition opens Tuesday 3 May at 17:00. The Immigrant Museum offers a small glass, and there will be an opportunity to greet some of the refugees whose stories are included in the exhibition.
NEW MINI-EXHIBITION AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK | 13.07.2015
As part of the Migration Museum of Denmark participation in the inter-municipal cultural project “Put Culture into Play”, project employee Inanna Riccardi has led a photo workshop for young girls from Farum Midtpunkt. The subject of the photo workshop is friendship, and the purpose of the workshop is to gain more knowledge about the life that teenagers who live in Farum Midtpunkt live.
Twice a week during May and June the participants have had photography lessons at the Migration Museum of Denmark, and they have likewise visited Copenhagen Photo Festival. The teaching has included several different activities: analyses of known photographs, instruction in the use of an analogue camera and in the different techniques one can use when photographing, developing film, conversations about the pictures the participants have taken etc. Each participant was given an analogue camera with black-and-white film.
The choice of the analogue camera is based on the fact that it was desired to use a tool that the young people know; the camera, but that the young people at the same time should be challenged in what they already know through the analogue. In addition, the analogue camera and the developing processes the film requires gave the young people the opportunity to follow the photo process from start to finish.
Through the photo process the participants got the opportunity to see their own reality with different eyes. They were among other things asked to photograph their daily routines and through that create a kind of “emotional map” of their everyday life, and the place where they live.
The participants’ photographs have now become a mini-exhibition that opens at the Immigrant Museum (Stavnsholtvej 3, 3520 Farum) Friday 31 July at 17:00. The Immigrant Museum offers a small glass, and there will be an opportunity to greet the young people who have participated in the project.
NEW EXHIBITION AT THE IMMIGRANTION MUSEUM OF DENMARK: HANNAH HABIBI | 15.05.2015
New special exhibition at the Migration Museum of Denmark invites debate about gender roles and religious norms. The English artist Hannah Habibi visits the Migration Museum of Denmark during the opening of the exhibition on 30 May. At first glance the humorous juxtapositions and striking subjects in the English artist Hannah Habibi’s art can make one smile, but her works are supported by a social commentary that at the same time gives her art depth.
With paintings that in their style are inspired by the American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, Hannah Habibi questions gender roles, religious norms and modern politics in a way that has been described as ‘thought-provoking’ by the newspaper The Times.
Hannah Habibi is based in South London. Her works were among other things exhibited at Sharjah Islamic Festival in 2014 and have been highlighted on the BBC. In 2011 Habibi won the award ‘3FF Urban Dialogues Artist Award’ for her works “Illumination” and “Chasing Paradise”.
Opening reception Saturday 30 May at 14.00. Hannah Habibi will be present during the opening. The Migration Museum of Denmark offers wine, water and snacks.
THE HELSINGØR TAPESTRY | 18.08.2014
On Friday 5 September the Migration Museum of Denmark opens its doors to a new special exhibition: the Helsingør Tapestry. The special exhibition is centred around the 31-metre-long Helsingør Tapestry, which came into being as an integration project over a two-and-a-half-year period in Helsingør.
37 female refugee and immigrant women from 12 different countries set out to tell their own special story with needle and thread. The finished result tells among other things about the women’s everyday life in Palestine and in Yugoslavia before and after war and during flight. It also tells about how the women experienced the encounter with Denmark. The women’s history is told from their ancestors’ work with, for example, tobacco production in Palestine and work in the fields in ex-Yugoslavia. For the Palestinians the consequences of the Second World War become a life in flight, and the same applies to the women from ex-Yugoslavia when President Tito dies and Yugoslavia later breaks apart.
The women and their families seek protection and they end up in Denmark, where a new chapter of their lives can begin. The encounter with Denmark becomes an encounter with a new language and with new traditions. The tapestry is supported by a frieze that tells about the folklore and crafts from the women’s home countries. The frieze shows the culture that the women have brought with them, inherent in themselves, as flashes of memory from a bygone time. Here there are also portraits of the participating women as well as a portrait of Queen Margrethe, which the participating women agreed should also have a place on the tapestry. The tapestry consists of 1,000,000 stitches and 50,000 working hours have been spent on it. The exhibition is shown until 9 January 2015.
½ – TWO NATIONALITIES | 01.06.2013
On 19 June at 16:00 the Migration Museum of Denmark opens a new special exhibition with photographs. Photo artist Diana Velasco exhibits two image series that, based on her own origin as Danish-Spanish, examine what it is like to have two nationalities. The exhibition is highly topical as the government has recently appointed an interministerial working group that is to examine the question of dual citizenship, which until now it has only to a very limited extent been possible to obtain in Denmark
One thing is the practical rules surrounding dual citizenship. Another thing is the people the rules will affect – among others children of parents with different nationalities. What does it really mean to have two nationalities? And does the duality mean something to the individual? Photo artist Diana Velasco addresses these questions in the exhibition ½ – Two nationalities. The exhibition consists of the two photo series; Family Album and Portraits.
The photo exhibition is shown at the Migration Museum of Denmark, Stavnsholtvej 3, 3520 Farum from Wednesday 19 June – Friday 18 October 2013. An opening reception is held Wednesday 19 June from 16-18. Everyone interested is welcome!
