Classical Foundations: The Copenhagen Collections
Spring Semester only
| 3 credits
| Elective
Majors:
Art History
and
Classics
Classical Greek and Roman culture have served as the foundation of European art and architecture from the Renaissance to the present. This course forms a study of main elements of the classical heritage and ways in which it has influenced European art, architecture, and culture ever since the Renaissance. The course makes widespread use of the classical and neo-classical collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, the National Gallery, the Thorvaldsen Museum, the National Museum of History, and of great examples of neo-classical architecture in Copenhagen.
Field Studies
- Rudolph Tegners Museum
- Here, students actively compare the sculptures they have seen in the huge Copenhagen collection of ancient Greek and Roman art to the works of Danish symbolist sculptor Rudolph Tegners (1873-1950), revealing the influence of classical art on Danish culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
- Various Copenhagen Museums
- Students in Classical Foundations spend nearly half of their class time in local museums, like the Danish National Gallery, Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek, and the Statens Museum for Kunst, familiarizing themselves with the huge Danish collection of ancient art. This allows them to experience Copenhagen as a neo-classical city when the class visits local churches and collections art from the late 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, like that of Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Instructors
-
Thyge C. Bro
Mag. art. (Classical Archaeology, University of Copenhagen,
1984). Teaching assistant and external lecturer in art history at the University of Copenhagen, 1985-1998. External lecturer in classical archaeology at the University of Southern Denmark, 1998-2000. Teacher in classical art and archaeology at the Extension Service of the University of Copenhagen since 1986. Author of numerous articles and a book about the Arab Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta (2001). With DIS since 2006.
