Rival Matisse exhibits put Danish museums at loggerheads
Denmark's avant-garde museum Louisiana, located in Humlebaek north of Copenhagen and the most popular museum in the country with some 500,000 visitors per year, will open "Matisse, A Second Life" on August 12, featuring 150 of the master's paintings.
The following day, Copenhagen's National Gallery, also known as Statens Museum for Kunst, will inaugurate its exhibit "Matisse og" (Matisse and), showing nine of his most famous works.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Both shows were designed to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of fauvism in 1905.
"I've always thought that it was a bad idea (for the National Gallery) to show Matisse at the same time as us," said Louisiana's director Poul Erik Toejner. He said he informed the National Gallery about his museum's plans back in 2003.
But National Gallery curator Allis Helleland rejected the criticism, saying one should expect her museum to "put Matisse on display at any moment". The gallery last held a Matisse exhibit in 1999.