Qualla: Museum Jorn, Silkeborg

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit Nils Jepsen /user:Nico, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1964 the Guggenheim Foundation gave Asger Jorn one of its International Awards, along with a substantial sum of money. He cabled back: "GO TO HELL WITH YOUR MONEY BASTARD — STOP — REFUSE PRICE — STOP — NEVER ASKED FOR IT." It is the most quoted thing he ever did, and it is a poor guide to the man, because what Jorn actually did with art and money over the last two decades of his life was hand an extraordinary collection to a Danish provincial town of no particular art-world consequence. Silkeborg has it still, in a low white building beside the Gudenå, and it is one of the strangest and best museums in Scandinavia.

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Image: Nils Jepsen /user:Nico | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: Why This Town

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit Hubertus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jorn was born in Vejrum in northwest Jutland, not here. Silkeborg entered his life twice. As a teenager he came to train as a teacher at Vinthers Seminarium in the town — he was around sixteen, and he had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis at fifteen. Then in 1951 he came b...

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Image: Hubertus | CC BY-SA 3.0

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. In the autumn of 1948, Jorn founded CoBrA with Christian Dotremont and Constant. The name is an acronym of their three cities — Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam — and the work that came out of it was fast, figurative, high-colour and deliberately raw. The group lasted three years ...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: Thirty Thousand Works

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit JoBu1999, CC BY-SA 4.0. The collection is not a monograph. Museum Jorn holds over 30,000 works by more than 600 artists, and the point of the arrangement is to show what Jorn looked at, not only what he made. Hanging alongside his own paintings, ceramics, prints and drawings are Max Ernst, Francis Picab...

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Image: JoBu1999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: From One Room to a Building on the River

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit JoBu1999, CC BY-SA 4.0. The institution grew slowly and awkwardly around the gift. The Silkeborg og Omegn museum association made its first art purchases in 1940. In 1951 a single room in the town's local history museum was converted for modern art. An exhibition opened in a school building in 1961, the...

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Image: JoBu1999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum Jorn, Silkeborg: The Absent Founder

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:48:36 GMT

Photo credit Martinwm, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jorn died in Aarhus on 1 May 1973, aged fifty-nine, and is buried not in Denmark at all but in the churchyard at Grötlingbo on the Swedish island of Gotland. He never saw the building his birthday opens. The collection he assembled has roughly doubled since he stopped adding to i...

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Image: Martinwm | CC BY-SA 4.0