LECTURE: SCULPTURE AND THE PUPPETRY OF POWER - ART, MATERIALS AND COLONIAL DYNAMICS IN 18TH CENTURY DENMARK-NORWAY BY MATHIAS DANBOLT

Sculpture and the Puppetry of Power: Art, Materials and Colonial Dynamics in 18th Century Denmark-Norway

In the gardens of Fredensborg Palace north of Copenhagen lies Nordmandsdalen – a monumental sculpture park of 70 full-figure sandstone statues depicting Norwegian, Sámi, and Faroese fishermen, peasants, and other laborers. Erected between 1764 and 1784 under King Frederik V, the sculptures were carved by the royal sculptor Johann Gottfried Grund. Yet the story of Nordmandsdalen does not begin there. The figures were modeled on a series of wooden dolls and ivory miniatures made by the Norwegian mailman Jørgen Garnaas in Bergen – objects that were later reproduced as copperplate engravings, porcelain figurines, sandstone, and, more recently, in new versions in plaster, and concrete.

Taking its cue from the exhibition Nordmandsdalen: Art, Power, and Materials in 18th Century Denmark-Norway (co-curated by Danbolt and currently on view at KODE Art Museum, Bergen), this lecture explores how art and material culture served as instruments of representation and control in the royal courts and public life of the 18th century. What does it mean that the king’s garden was filled not with gods and heroes, but with sculpted images of “ordinary” people? Rather than marking the birth of a democratic art tradition, Nordmandsdalen reveals the instrumentalization of the image of the common people in the absolute monarchy’s puppetry of power—showing how art, materials, and images were entangled with the economies of trade, colonialism, and extraction that shaped Denmark-Norway’s place in the world.

Mathias Danbolt is Professor of Art History at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Over the last decade his research has focused on the contact zones between art history and colonial history in a Nordic context with an emphasis on memory politics, monuments, and art in public space. He is currently leading the collective research project Moving Monuments: The Material Life of Sculpture from the Danish Colonial Era (Novo Nordisk Foundation, 2022-2026) and is co-curator of two ongoing exhibitions, Nordmandsdalen: Art, Power, and Materials in the 18th Century Denmark-Norway (co-curated with Tonje Haugland Sørensen, Helene Birkeli, Morten Spjøtvold and Peder Valle) at Kode Bergen Art Museum, and Recast (co-curated with Amalie Skovmøller and Ida Højgaard Thømøe) at Royal Library Fiolstrædet in Copenhagen. His new monograph Tropaganda: Kunst, kolonialisme og kampe om historien is out on Strandberg Publishing in December 2025.

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