Urgent.Agency builds Museum Ordrupgaard’s identity on the idea of home

Museum Ordrupgaard began as a manor house in Denmark, built as the private home of art collectors Wilhelm and Henny Hansen, who lived there in the early 20th century and opened it up to others from the beginning. The institution that grew out of it now includes French and Danish art, designer Finn Juhl’s House, architect Zaha Hadid’s extension, an Art Park and a garden. Copenhagen-based Urgent.Agency, whose museum work includes Designmuseum Danmark and Thorvaldsens Museum, was commissioned to develop the brand platform, identity and website, work that also produced the name Museum Ordrupgaard. The brief was to make all of that easier to understand and more accessible, “without simplifying the cultural experience or lowering the level of ambition,” Museum Ordrupgaard’s Head of Communications & Marketing Ann-Sophie Lignell tells us. One visit takes in the collections, historic home and grounds. “What connects them is the sense that everything has been carefully considered: the relationship between art and architecture, between interiors and landscape, between materials, light, design and the way people move through the place,” Lignell adds. Urgent.Agency developed the identity around home and hospitality. “When you invite friends for dinner, you make choices,” Founding Partner & Creative Director Mads Quistgaard explains. “You consider who they are, what they might enjoy, what to serve, how to set the table and how the evening should unfold.” The identity adjusts its expression to what it is presenting. “Good hospitality is never one-size-fits-all – it is attentive, specific and considered,” Quistgaard continues. “Museum Ordrupgaard is almost the opposite of a white cube. It is personal, sensorial and beautifully patinated,” Quistgaard notes.