Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art sits in Humlebaek, 35 kilometres north of Copenhagen on the coast of the Oresund strait, and it got its name from a coincidence about wives. The estate on which it stands was named by its first owner, Alexander Brun, in the 1850s, after all three of his successive wives, each of whom was called Louise. When Knud W. Jensen, a Danish cheese wholesaler with an interest in art, bought the property in 1958 and opened a museum, he kept the name. The conjunction of that domestic history with what is now Scandinavia’s most visited modern art museum, drawing over 700,000 visitors a year, is a decent encapsulation of what makes Louisiana unusual: it takes unlikely material seriously.

Jensen’s concept was to make a museum that felt nothing like the traditional white-cube institutions he disliked. He hired architects Jorgen Bo and Vilhelm Wohlert, who spent several weeks walking the property before designing anything. The result is a series of low white-rendered wings that thread between the original 1855 villa and the cliff edge above the water, connected by glass-enclosed walkways and opening continuously onto the sculpture garden. You move through rooms of paintings, then through a passage where you can see Alexander Calder’s stabile against the sky and water beyond, then back into paintings. The building is not a container for the art; it is part of the experience.

The Collection

Louisiana holds around 4,000 works. The permanent collection covers post-war modernism through to contemporary practice and is genuinely strong rather than representative. Alberto Giacometti’s elongated bronze figures appear in several locations, including in dialogue with the landscape through the glass walls. There are works by Henry Moore, Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois, Asger Jorn, Yayoi Kusama, Anselm Kiefer, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, and Roy Lichtenstein, among many others.

Kusama’s Gleaming Lights of the Souls, one of her infinity mirror rooms, is a permanent installation and reliably draws a queue. It is worth the wait. The mirrored room with its hanging lights and reflective floor becomes something genuinely disorienting in a way that photographs do not capture.

The exhibition programme runs six to ten major shows per year alongside the permanent displays. In summer 2026, the museum is presenting Lucian Freud (through 27 September) and a Sophie Calle survey running through early autumn. Check louisiana.dk for the current schedule before you go; the shows here are consistently better programmed than many comparable institutions.

Tickets and Hours

Entry costs DKK 145 (approximately 19 euros) for adults. Students with a valid card pay DKK 130. Children under 18 enter free. No advance reservation is required or necessary; turn up and buy at the door or online. Online tickets are valid for one year from purchase and can be used on any opening day.

The museum is closed on Mondays. Tuesday through Friday it is open 11:00 to 22:00 (10:00 to 22:00 in July and August). Weekends close at 18:00. The late evening closing on weekdays is genuine: the museum is open until 10 pm, which is an unusual luxury and gives you a very different experience of the sculpture garden and cafe in the evening light. The Copenhagen Card covers entry, which may tip the calculation for visitors planning several days of museum-going in the region.

Getting There

Take the train from Copenhagen Central Station (Kobenhavn H) to Humlebaek. The journey takes around 42 minutes, trains run every 20 minutes, and the cost is covered by the standard metropolitan zone fare (or included in city travel passes). From Humlebaek station, the museum is about a 10 to 15 minute walk along the coast road, or a short bus ride (number 388, stop at Humlebaek Strandvej/Louisiana). The address is Gl Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebaek.

There is no particular reason to drive. Train is faster when you account for parking, and arriving by train puts you immediately in the coastal landscape.

Eating

The Louisiana Cafe inside the museum is better than museum cafes usually are. It serves lunch from midday to 16:00 and dinner from 17:30 to 21:00. The kitchen takes the food seriously and the view over the water from the cafe terrace is the point. This is a legitimate reason to time your visit around a meal rather than an afterthought stop.

For something lower-key, Linds Kaffebar at Humlebaek station is a small coffee bar popular with both locals and museum visitors and a reasonable stop before or after. Restaurant Sletten, a ten-minute walk north along the coast, is the highest-regarded dining option in the immediate area with a focus on seafood and a direct water view.

Where to Stay

Most visitors to Louisiana come as a day trip from Copenhagen, which is the sensible approach. The train journey is short, the museum does not require more than a day, and Copenhagen has far better accommodation options than the immediate Humlebaek area.

If you want to stay in the area, the town of Helsingor is 12 kilometres north and reachable by the same train line. It has a range of hotels in the 100 to 200 euro range and offers the additional draw of Kronborg Castle (the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet), which is worth the trip on its own. Radisson Blu Hamlet Hotel in Helsingor is the most prominent option and has direct views of the castle.

Practical Notes

The sculpture garden is free to walk through without entering the museum, though this gets you access only to the outdoor works. On warm days the garden draws large numbers of people who bring food from the cafe and sit on the grass between the sculptures. It is a genuinely pleasant way to spend an afternoon even if you have no particular interest in art.

The museum building is fully wheelchair accessible. The sculpture garden has some uneven paths but the main routes are manageable.

Tuesday evenings, when the museum is open late but less full than at weekends, are the best time for a relaxed visit. The combination of the evening light on the water, the Kusama room, and dinner in the cafe afterwards is the version of Louisiana I would recommend to anyone visiting Copenhagen with a free evening.