Aarhus Kunstmuseum - Anno 1859, 150 år jubilæum

On 6 January 1859, the museum opened its doors to the public, becoming the first publicly accessible art collection outside the capital. The collection was housed in a couple of attic rooms in the newly built City Hall opposite the Cathedral, where the museum was located from 1859 to 1877.

A group of citizens felt that it was important that people in other parts of the country also had the opportunity to see good art. The Aarhus Art Association of 1847 had already been formed, which now took on the task of acquiring a painting each year to be included in the museum's collection.

At the start in 1859, the collection only owned a few paintings itself, but after contacting the Ministry of Culture, 24 paintings from the Royal Collection of Paintings at Christiansborg were made available, which was the backbone of the museum's art presentation in the early years. However, the museum had to return these paintings to the National Gallery of Denmark in 1895.

For the anniversary exhibition, ARoS managed to re-borrow these paintings from the National Gallery of Denmark so that they - together with the museum's own acquisitions from that time - could give an impression of what kind of art was considered so important at the time that the population should have access to it, and therefore an art museum should be established in the city.