Carl Nielsen Museum
The Man Behind the Music
Odense City Museums commissioned us to create a new visitor experience dedicated to Carl August Nielsen, Denmark’s most celebrated composer. The ambition was to create a place where visitors discover the man behind the music and feel his music as a living force, full of Nielsen’s spirit.
The Carl Nielsen Museum won European Museum Academy's main prize, the Micheletti Award in 2024, and was nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award that same year.
The central challenge of the brief was to create a visitor journey that reveals the man through his approach to music. Marred by a turbulent marriage and the struggle to be recognised, Nielsen’s life was complex. He poured those experiences into his art.
His unique style, approach to structure and creative process reflect Nielsen himself. We chose to focus on his craft, leaving the visitors to interpret the meaning of his music. To allow space for visitors own interpretations of Nielsen’s oeuvre, we created a narrative framework that focuses on the work itself, its quality and artistry, rather than the meaning behind the music.
The visit is composed of three movements. The opening movement, Calibration, is when visitors to tune into the experience. They are introduced both to Nielsen and the exhibition’s visual language. The second movement, Exploration, delves into individual fragments of Nielsen's music. The third and final movement, Immersion, brings the journey to a dramatic climax. Here, visitors embrace the music in its totality.
Additionally, we developed the full graphic identity of the Carl Nielsen Museum, designing signage, labels, mediation tools, a mobile app and a multilingual visitor guide to ensure one seamless museum experience.
The challenge was to translate Nielsen’s musical language into a visual and sensory journey, creating continuity from the galleries to digital and print. Each gallery was given a distinct chromatic identity — from black in Calibration recalling archival photographs, to gold in Exploration inspired by brass instruments, culminating in an immersive orange finale — while classical-inspired typography and animated texts echoed rhythm and tempo.
This progression was carried across all supports, with the printed guide itself shifting from black to gold to orange, ensuring that every touchpoint mirrored the music’s composition and reinforced the immersive impact of the museum.
Partners
Coda to coda
Nulty
University of Copenhagen
Images
Gareth Gardner
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