The ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum is an art museum in Aarhus, Denmark. The museum was established in 1859 and is the oldest public art museum in Denmark outside Copenhagen. On 7 April 2004, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum opened with exhibitions in a brand new modern building, 10 stories tall with a total floor area of 20,700 m² and designed by Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen. Today, ARoS is one of the largest art museums in Northern Europe with a total of 980,909 visitors in 2017.
Apart from the large galleries with both permanent and changing exhibitions, the ARoS building features an arts shop, a dining café and a restaurant. The architectural vision of the museum was completed in 2011, with the addition of the circular skywalk Your rainbow panorama by Ólafur Elíasson. The installation has helped boost the museum's attendance, making it the second most visited museum in Denmark, just behind the well-known Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk.
The museum was established in 1859 and is the oldest public art museum in Denmark outside Copenhagen. The art collecting activities were initiated some years earlier in 1847 by the local art association of "Århus Kunstforening af 1847" and the first public exhibition was presented on 6 January 1859 in Aarhus' old Town Hall, located at the Cathedral, now housing the Women's Museum. The present building next to the Concert Halls is the fourth locality of the art museum and it opened here in 2004.
On 6 January 2009, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum celebrated its 150-year anniversary with a jubilee exhibition, displaying the same works as the very first exhibition in 1859, amongst others.[1]
Future constructionsIn the fall of 2014, ARoS announced plans for an expansion project titled "The Next Level". It includes "The Dome", a new big underground gallery and art installation, designed by American artist James Turrell. The project has been postponed several times, but construction finally began in 2022, and it is now scheduled for completion in 2025.[2] It is budgeted at kr 57 million, and also includes a reconstruction of the surrounding Concert Hall Park.[3]
NameThe name ARoS refers to the Old Danish name of the city Aarhus, Áros, while the capitalized letters of the name hint at the Latin word for art, namely ars.
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