Featured Events in Copenhagen in December, 2024 (June Updated)

What prompts activists to attack famous works of art in an attempt to spotlight the climate crisis? And why do people knock down statues when power changes hands? In the exhibition Iconoclasm – Art as a Battleground, the Glyptotek tells the story of our tempestuous relationship with art and what compels us to destroy it. For millennia, humans have not only erected statues, but also knocked them down or changed and destroyed them. Because, even though monuments are often made of durable materials such as marble and bronze, the ideologies, people and events they commemorate and preserve are rarely as enduring. Iconoclasm is not only a phenomenon of antiquity – art is still a battleground: one on which power relations and identities are challenged. The word ‘iconoclasm’ comes from the ancient Greek word eikon and a derivation of klaein (to smash or crush) and describes the deliberate destruction of images, monuments or symbols. The Glyptotek’s antiquities collection contains myriad examples of archaeological artifacts that were deliberately destroyed. Some of the destruction was motivated by political power shifts and religious upheavals; some was the result of economic and practical circumstances.