CHARLOTTENLUND.- Most of us have at least one of them: a houseplant. In fact, Denmark has the highest number of houseplants per person anywhere in the world. In the upcoming special exhibition Plant Fever. The World on the Windowsill, created by The Hirschsprung Collection and Ordrupgaard, the two museums are the first ever to focus on the houseplants that surround us in our homes and daily lives. The result is a major exhibition that unfolds across both museums.

With the exhibition Plant Fever. The World on the Windowsill, Ordrupgaard and The Hirschsprung Collection tell the story of how a wealth of imported plants, then regarded as highly exotic, made their way into Danish homes in the nineteenth century. A veritable plant craze spread, and soon those previously foreign plants became a natural part of everyday life. Houseplants feature prominently in nineteenth-century paintings and drawings. Yet the hidden stories of these plants and their global origins remain an unexplored angle in Danish art history. That is now being changed by The Hirschsprung Collection and Ordrupgaard.

The plants were moved across vast distances as part of the large-scale plant transfers that began in earnest in the seventeenth century – displacements that transformed the flora and fauna of multiple continents. While many of the plants were or became endangered in their native habitats, they flourished in European living rooms. The plants brought Europe’s colonial history into the home. At the same time, people and plants formed a bond that opened – and continues to open – up ways of entering into a more caring, diverse and historically aware relationship with nature.

A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE FAMILIAR AND HOMELY

The exhibition at Ordrupgaard spotlights the pot plants we keep in our homes. From Martinus Rørbye’s View From the Artist’s Window, 1823–1827, where the plants were typically interpreted as an allegory of human life, focus is now directed at pot plants as a motif in their own right. It soon becomes evident that, together, they represent several parts of the world, thereby giving the familiar and homely a global perspective. The pot plants unravel subjects such as colonialism, gender, class, environmental crisis, and interior design – and explain how the plants became part and parcel of our own identity story.

Through a series of major Danish works spanning the early nineteenth-century, represented by artists such as Martinus Rørbye, Kristian Zahrtmann, Anna Syberg, and Viggo Johansen – to the present, featuring contemporary artists such as Anna Aagaard, Camilla Berner, Jesper Christiansen, Randi & Katrine, and Viktoria Wendel Skousen – the exhibition shows that pot plants may unlock topical interpretations relevant to current social debate.

The exhibition also traces Ordrupgaard’s own history: the founding couple Henny and Wilhelm Hansen’s home from 1918 was very much formed by a vision of the good life attuned to nature – a vision that is still evident everywhere in the museum and outside in the art park.

The exhibition Plant Fever. The World on the Windowsill is part of the research project Hidden Plant Stories, involving scholars from Aarhus University as well as from The Hirschsprung Collection and Ordrupgaard. The comprehensive exhibition and research catalogue will be published by Aarhus University Press.

A podcast produced by Besyv, with contributions from the aforementioned research group – and Ordrupgaard's director Gertrud Oelsner, The Hirschsprung Collection’s director Karina Lykke Grand, and the exhibition’s curators Gry Hedin and Rikke Zinck Jensen – will be part of the exhibition.

This is the first time ever that Ordrupgaard and The Hirschsprung Collection collaborate on a joint exhibition shown concurrently at both museums. The exhibition at Ordrupgaard is curated by curator Rikke Zinck Jensen and art historian Pernille Leth-Espensen (PhD). The exhibition at The Hirschsprung Collection is curated by art historian Gry Hedin (PhD).

The exhibition design is created by exhibition architect and scenographer Anne Schnettler.