Taking it Easy

The past week I've pretty much been taking it easy, I needed a bit of a break after two hectic weekends of travel. However, over the weekend I did go to two museums, The Danish National Museum and the NY Carlsberg Glyptothek. The Danish National Museum is a large natural history museum which has exhibits on Danish history from pre-history through the middle ages, the Reformation and to the modern day. It also has the obligatory exhibitions on different "People's of the World" and of course Greek and Egyptian artifacts. I've discovered that I'm not a huge fan of natural history museums (I prefer art museums) but I really enjoyed the exhibitions on modern Denmark (1800s to present). Also, in the "People's of the World" exhibit there were a couple of rooms dedicated to Greenland (which is part of Denmark) that i thought were interesting, especially since I don't think you could find that info in another country. I think the Danish pre-history portion is the most popular and it has recently been redone by a famous Danish architecture firm, so I would definately recommend it.

The Glypothek was established by Carl Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg Beer and it contains mostly sculptures (Egyptian, Greek, Roman and more modern French and Danish), as well as some impressionist paintings and some ancient Mediterannean artifacts. The building is also really neat and is heavily influence by Greek architecture. It also has a large "winter garden" in the center that is kind of like a large greenhouse inside the musuem and has large palm trees and ferns etc. It was really beautiful and lush, which was, of course, very different from the outside.

Now, a bit about my classes:
I'm enjoying all of my classes so far and I think I am really getting a good sense of Danish culture and society through them. In Danish Politics and Society we went on a field study tour to the Danish Human Rights Institute where several people talked to us about what they did. We learned a bit about immigration and asylum, including the asylum centers and also a bit about Greenland, especially how their crime and punishment. Several interesting things: Denmark is really strict about giving immigrants asylum, you can only get asylum if you, specifically are being targeted, therefore, very few people actually get asylum in Denmark. Greenland, which is part of Denmark but has some degree of autonomy basically doesn't have prisons. If someone commits a crime their philosophy is to reeducate that perpetrator while keeping him/her part of society (if someone does something really bad, like murder, they get sent to Denmark to serve their sentence). While it does seem strange to keep the criminals in the society, this practice apparently arose out of the small Greenland villages that needed everyone participating in society in order to survive. Needless to say, this stragtegy is very different than in America.

Some other interesting things about Danes I've learned: historically, Danish people have not tended towards revolutions, they got rid of an absolute monarchy, established the current constitution and resolved the conflicts between labor unions and the companies without any revolution. Also, as opposed to many countries where the labor unions and companies are engaged in a struggle against each other for the upper hand, a main goal for both the labor unions and the companies in Denmark is to increase production in order to increase profit and therefore pay. Finally, way back in 1899, the labor unions and the companies made negotiations that gave the labor unions the right to exist and established a precedent for negotiations before strikes. Therefore, my teacher said strikes weren't very common in Denmark, and if they were, they didn't last for long. However, shortly after he said that, the bus drivers went on strike (causing my bus line and many other to be canceled, so I have to walk to school), so I'm not really sure how common strikes are.

The large bulk of the schoolwork i do is for my architectural studio class. Right now, we have been working on a project for a couple of weeks that will be due the middle of March. Our project is urban infill and we have to design a gallery space to display four pieces of art/music pieces. The four pieces are a jukebox designed to play famous music, speeches and soundclips, a famous piano designed by Poul Henningsen, a famous danish designer, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, goldern horns from the viking age that were discovered in the 17th century and which are an important part of Danish history and finally a muscial symphony by danish composer Per Nogaard. Our project is confined to the footprint of an existing building (5 m x 9 m) and two stories. One of the main things we are supposed to consider is light. This is a major concern in Nordic architecture, which makes sense since it is so far north and there is almost no direct light in the winter and the sun never comes very high in the sky. Although the project sounds simple, the space is really small and everything can get complicated the more you think about it. But i feel like I'm learning a lot and I really like my studio professor, she is very knowledgeable and gives you lots of feedback and sources to look at.