PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS
Saturday Crafts – Community, Stories, Connectedness
Farum Kulturhus, 7 March – 18 April 2026
For centuries, handicrafts have been a gathering point for people. Around the spinning wheel, with knitting needles and with a needle in hand, stories have been shared, identities expressed and a sense of belonging created. In the fabric, in the thread, in the patterns, communities and new connections emerge – small actions that bind lives and dreams together.
The handicraft initiative Lørdagssysler is an example of how the old tradition still flourishes in present-day Denmark. Since 2018, an interest in handicrafts has brought together people with very different backgrounds. Some have lived in the Furesø area all their lives, while several have come here from other municipalities or countries. Some carry with them memories of handicrafts from their childhood, while others are trying the old craft for the first time. In a shared space, past and present techniques are explored, while conversation, understanding and mutual curiosity go hand in hand.
The exhibition shows excerpts from the handicraft projects that have been created through Lørdagssysler. Each work bears traces of several hands – and together they form a mosaic of voices. Initiatives such as Lørdagssysler remind us that something as simple as a needle and thread can still create connections between people – across languages, cultures and generations.
Moving Europe: A New Chapter in Denmark – Young Ukrainians in Denmark
20 December 2025 – 1 April 2026
Since September, a class from Falkonergårdens Gymnasium has been working with the topic “Ukrainian Refugees in Denmark”. As part of the project, the students have found an angle on the topic, conducted research, made arrangements with potential interviewees and carried out interviews. In addition, they have developed ideas for a graphic identity, written texts and determined which elements the exhibition should consist of. All with the aim of producing an exhibition for the Migration Museum of Denmark. The result is the exhibition “A New Chapter – Young Ukrainians in Denmark”, designed and produced by Falkonergårdens Gymnasium.
About Moving Europe:
The project aims to strengthen the ability of museums, schoolteachers and young people to investigate and work with migration in their local area, including by collaborating with people with a migrant background. The partner museums collaborate with history teachers and their students to organise local and international youth events, where the young people themselves lead research projects on history and migration. Among other things, the students will co-create exhibitions, podcasts and a pan-European knowledge bank.
The Moving Europe consortium consists of: University of Hildesheim (Migration Lab), Young Islam Conference in Berlin, the Italian Museum of Emigration in Genoa, the Emigration Museum in Gdynia, the Historical Museum in Sarajevo, the Migration Museum of Denmark in Farum and Multikulturellt Centrum in Stockholm. The project coordinator is EuroClio.
The project is funded by the EU.
A Basic Guide to Human Rights
2 May 2024 – 1 August 2024
When the United Nations (UN) gathered in Paris 75 years ago, they declared their support for a new milestone in human history: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The background was that the world wanted to avoid repeating the brutal abuses that took place during the First and Second World Wars. Since then, the declaration has told us how we should treat others – and how we ourselves have the right to be treated as human beings.
From 10 December 2023 and for one year, the Migration Museum of Denmark marks the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the human rights declaration. Through a series of activities and an exhibition at Farum Kulturhus, we take the temperature of human rights in our own time.
Photo: Refugees in Europe after the Second World War. 1953. Danish Refugee Council.
THE FOREIGN CRIMINALS
2 September 2022 – 1 April 2023
The fear of criminal foreigners is not new in Denmark. It was also widespread more than 100 years ago. At that time, it was primarily Swedes who appeared in the Danish statistics on foreign criminals. 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 in the police’s criminal albums were not hardened and seasoned criminals. Many were ordinary people, such as domestic servants or labourers, who could not find work. They belonged to the poorest parts of society, and some turned to crime.
The historical criminal albums, which have been digitised by Genealogisk Forlag, give us the opportunity to meet 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.
The special exhibition also features more spectacular, scandalous and deadly stories about foreign criminals in Denmark. These include accounts of swindlers, anarchists, abortionists, hotel fraudsters, promiscuous women, male sexual offenders, violent men and female killers.
The exhibition opens on Friday, 2 September at 14:30. Both the opening event and the exhibition are free and open to everyone who wishes to participate.
Photo: Emma Kirstine Bundesen, born Andersson. Sentenced to 30 days for receiving stolen goods. Danish National Archives.
BREAKING THE SILENCE
21 January 2023 – 5 March 2023
The Yazidis are a Kurdish minority living in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq as well as in Georgia, Armenia and Syria. Some have emigrated to Europe. The Yazidi religion is monotheistic and is believed to be more than 4,000 years old. The group is also referred to as 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. Islamic State spread terror everywhere, and the population fled in panic.
The exhibition Breaking the Silence includes paintings created by Yazidi women who were persecuted, abused and sold as sex slaves by Islamic State. Stop by to see thought-provoking paintings and personal stories from Iraq.
The girls and women receive trauma treatment through the relief and development organisation Mission East, where they use painting, among other things, to process their trauma.
By painting, they are able to put into words the horrific abuses they experienced while being held captive as sex slaves by Islamic State.
WHEN THE USA MEETS DENMARK
19 November 2022 – 15 January 2023
Daniel Brophy is an urban artist who, among other things, draws inspiration from 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 emerge about the very act of creation – through foreign temples and scenes from unknown stories and cultures.
Brophy holds 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 and elsewhere.
Daniel Brophy was born and raised in New Jersey – with churchgoing, visits to the local library and baseball games. Today he lives in Denmark with his wife and their twin daughters.
The exhibition is shown in GangGalleriet at Farum Kulturhus.
Opening reception Saturday, 19 November at 12:15. Free admission.
THE THIRD DIMENSION
19 November 2022 – 8 January 2023
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 visual world 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.
Tomoko Konae is of Japanese origin and trained as a graphic artist at Osaka University, Japan. Her architectural crochet art was developed in Denmark, where she has worked with sculptural wall installations since 2018. Konae crochets “geometric graphics”, not textiles, as the graphic forms fascinate her. ”I try to give my works originality and uniqueness by expressing specific contours using soft materials – yarn – and crochet techniques.”
УКРАЇНА – THE DILEMMAS OF WAR
28 June 2022 – 31 August 2022
On 24 February, the world changed. For the first time in decades, people are fleeing from bombs and shells falling on European soil. In an instant, several million Ukrainians have had to make the difficult decision to leave their homes, their families and their friends. This decision has been followed by a series of choices, dilemmas and coincidences. Where should I go? How do I get there? Where should I live? How will I support myself? Was it the right decision to leave? And when should I return home?
On the other side of Ukraine’s borders, the war has likewise caused millions of people to make a choice. A choice to drop everything they are doing in order to drive to the border and help refugees reach safety. A choice to open their homes to complete strangers and offer them a safe place to live. A choice to donate a T-shirt, an old bicycle or an older phone to those who arrive with nothing.
These choices, dilemmas and coincidences have brought more than 150 Ukrainians to Furesø, where they are being accommodated by the many Furesø residents who have chosen to make their homes and help available. It is precisely their personal stories that are in focus when the Migration Museum of Denmark opens the exhibition “УКРАЇНА” on Ukraine’s Constitution Day, 28 June 2022. The exhibition is free and can be seen in the foyer of Farum Kulturhus until 31 August.
DEAD AND BURIED – THE END OF A JOURNEY
1 September 2021 – 23 July 2022
The exhibition decodes the cultural history behind different burial traditions in cemeteries and burial grounds in Denmark. The focus is on selected groups of immigrants, religious minorities and refugees who, over time, have died and been buried in Copenhagen.
The exhibition is based on the burial chapels of St. Peter’s Church, the Mosaic Northern Cemetery, Assistens Cemetery and Vestre Cemetery. These four cemeteries and burial grounds bear witness to the fact that immigration is a timeless phenomenon. At the same time, they constitute a cultural prism through which key immigrant groups in Danish cultural history can be explored.
AMONG GREENLANDERS IN DENMARK
11 March 2022 – 1 July 2022
Through stories from Greenlandic informants, the exhibition presents the 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 the summer. After that, it will travel to four Greenlandic Houses in Denmark.
The exhibition is part of the large Creative Europe project Identity on the Line. The project brings together stories and testimonies about migration and identity in seven different European countries. The project culminates in a joint exhibition that travels between the countries – and will come to Denmark this summer.
ON THE WAY TO A NEW LIFE
28 March 2022 – summer 2022
Experience the small pop-up exhibition ‘On the Way to a New Life’, which focuses on the evacuated Afghans and the Ukrainian refugees’ new lives in Denmark.
The exhibition displays objects that the museum is currently collecting and that are on their way to becoming part of the museum’s collection. The objects are continuously replaced as the collection expands.
The exhibition can be experienced at Farum Kulturhus.
POSTCARDS FROM…
16 January 2022 – 27 April 2022
With powerful portraits and personal stories, the exhibition opens a window onto some of the many places in the world where people are forced to flee their homes and the people they love, to a new country and an often uncertain future.
Photographer Martin Thaulow has worked since 2014 to put faces to people fleeing both in Denmark and abroad. From there, he portrays the people and their difficult circumstances at eye level. The material was created during more than 40 journeys, where Martin Thaulow met, interviewed and photographed displaced people in the places where they were staying.
These are the stateless, those who came to Denmark and have been integrated, and those who never made it here. The exhibition touches on torture, victims of war, separation, deprivation, but also hope and dreams.
With the exhibition, Refugee Today aims to offer a different perspective on the collective term ‘refugee’ by portraying each person as an individual with a name, a face and a story. Today, the number of displaced people worldwide has reached 82.4 million human lives. This is an increase of more than 20 million since Martin Thaulow began his work in 2014.
THE SIKHS IN DENMARK – MEET THE SIKHS
Although the Sikhs came to Denmark more than 50 years ago, not many people know the people behind the brightly coloured turbans and the distinctive music of kirtan. With the special exhibition The Sikhs in Denmark – Meet the Sikhs, the Migration Museum of Denmark focuses in the new year on the Sikh community’s historical roots, religious views on life and Danish connections.
The history of the Sikhs is both long and complicated, with deep roots in the fertile landscape, religious diversity and cosmopolitan history of the border region of Punjab. In a Danish context, the religion can be considered relatively new. At the end of the 1960s, the first Sikhs appeared in Denmark as labour migrants, and later more also arrived as refugees or through family reunification. With fewer than 2,000 Danish members, the Sikhs are a small minority in Denmark, but Sikhism is the world’s fifth-largest religion with around 30 million followers.
With the special exhibition, the Migration Museum of Denmark has invited the Danish Sikh community inside and all the way into the engine room where the work takes place when new exhibitions are created from scratch. In close collaboration with dynamic individuals and the associations Øst Punjab Kulturforening and Sikh Ungdom, the exhibition’s texts and objects provide insight into the culture, religion, the history of Punjab and, not least, the Sikhs’ journey to Denmark.
During the spring, the museum will open its doors for a Sikh festival, which, with philosophical lectures, food, music and perhaps yoga on the programme, will bring life to the museum’s rooms. The exhibition is supported by Nordea-fonden and is also included as a practical case study in the research project Religion – Living Cultural Heritage, which is supported by the Velux Foundation.
LOVE AT LAST SIGHT
On Saturday, 7 September 2019, 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 this is the first time it is being shown at a Danish museum.
The works in the exhibition are based on the universal feeling of alienation that people experience when they migrate or flee to a new country. The works include video, sound installations and photographs, composed of biographical material collected from refugees and migrants from the Balkan region. All of them are now living in Scandinavia. The material was collected during the period 1992-2007, from the impressions and experiences of the first days to approximately 25 years after arrival, when life has changed significantly.
At the exhibition Love at Last Sight, we are presented with several works that have received awards within the last few 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 at the age of 22 from Serbia and from a bombed childhood home in Belgrade, and started her life over again. 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, combined with the brutally honest material of many others. They are exchanges of letters between a mother and her migrated daughter, revealing both intimate thoughts and reflections from women who have had to make difficult and sometimes controversial decisions. We are met face to face with stories of success and the opposite.
Read more about the artists here:
ON THE RUN
‘On the Run’ is an exhibition about the experiences of primarily Syrian, but also other, refugees during their flight to Denmark.
Through objects and accounts, the exhibition tells about life in temporary refugee camps in Europe; about the refugees’ later fates and their attempts to create a meaningful life in the midst of chaos. The exhibition is a piece of contemporary history that also depicts the different reactions shown by Danes during the first wave of refugees in 2015. Some offered coffee and stood ready with warm clothes, while others put up homemade signs showing the way out of Denmark. On the Run shows all reactions. The exhibition is not about the refugee debate and does not take a position. The museum leaves that to the audience.
The exhibition was created in collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark and, before coming to the Migration Museum of Denmark, was shown at, among other places, Mosegaard Museum and the Danish War Museum.
The exhibition is supported by Sportgoodsfonden.
MIGRANT
We all carry the migrant’s DNA within us. Regardless of whether our eyes are blue or brown, we are descendants of migrants. The Denmark we know today was created and shaped by migrants who came here, but Danish migrants have also travelled abroad and left their mark on the world around them.
But what is it like to live as a migrant, to leave the familiar behind in favour of something new? Are there similarities in the experiences migrants have had that transcend time, place and culture? Can Turkish and Romanian migr… some of the people who have left their familiar and safe homeland and gone out into the world in the hope of a better life. Hear, among other things, the story of the bird lover Mehmet, of Mie’s grandmother, who speaks like the Queen, and of the boy Marius, who in the USA in 1892 writes a letter to his friend Laurits back home in Denmark. The exhibition also features contemporary interpretations of migration created by, among others, art photographer Diana Velasco and the artist group and internet phenomenon Gigis.
The exhibition could be experienced from 16 September to 1 March 2018 at the Migration Museum of Denmark.
THE POLISH BEET WORKERS
The Polish beet workers are a project intended to recall the history of the first wave of female Polish immigrants who came to Denmark in 1893 to work in the beet fields on Lolland and Falster.
The project is carried out by artist and designer Zaneta Kruszelnicka, creator of the Zan Kru brand, in collaboration with the Polish Embassy in Copenhagen and the Migration Museum of Denmark.
She is a clothing designer, and she has explored the form of the shirt that both then and now was a permanent part of the work uniform. The project is about the women’s physical and mental strength, determination and solidarity, which can also be found in the stories of contemporary emigrants and in the handmade prints on the clothing.
Zaneta Kruszelnicka experiments with the form and function of clothing and creates conceptual fashion that is also practical. The symbolic content of handicrafts such as braiding and spinning has made her aware of the narrative potential of textiles. She regards the production process behind clothing as a story worth telling, and therefore she often exhibits the construction of the garments.
The prints were created by the artist Marie Apoleika.
THE EMIGRANTS
The new special exhibition, The Emigrants, has travelled all the way from Museum Mors and is now on display at the Migration Museum of Denmark until Christmas. The exhibition is based on local history and tells, through personal accounts, about people from Mors who emigrated to America at the end of the 1900s in their search for happiness and a better life.
It is the small story that helps communicate the larger story of a chapter in Danish history, when more than 10 percent of the Danish population emigrated during the period 1860-1920.
At the opening of the exhibition The Emigrants, there was also a preview of Tamra Rosannes’ latest album “Divided Heart”, which is based on letters and archival material from Danish emigrants to the USA.
Photo: The Danish Emigration Archives.
AMERICAN HORIZONS, DANISH ROOTS
Welcome to a special exhibition about leaving. And finding a home. A new home far away from home.
The special exhibition consists of two main parts;
The first part is about Danish emigrants and their descendants in the USA and which objects have been and still are important to them in preserving their Danish cultural heritage. The second part is about a very special Dane who emigrated to the USA in 1830, namely Peter Lassen from Farum.
