ARoS: Aarhus Museum of Art

On April 7th, Seelite of Denmark produced a dynamic lighting environment for the Grand Opening of ARoS, Denmark’s new Museum of Art. Located in Denmark’s second city of Aarhus, the event launched a new era for the city’s 150 year old art museum.

The lighting event was one of the chief attractions of the opening of the Museum, a new 17,700 square meter, $50 million building designed by Danish architectural firm Schmidt, Hammer and Lassen.

Lighting design and programming for the lighting event was by Steen O. Larsen of lighting supplier Seelite who made extensive use of Martin MAC 2000 Performance, MAC 600, MAC 500 and MAC 300 fixtures, as well as other lighting. All Martin gear was supplied by Seelite through Martin Scandinavia.

The 10 story museum, one of Scandinavia’s largest, is in the form of a 52 x 52 meter cube. Through the center of the cube is a curved area called “museumsgade” out of which a distinctive spiral staircase emerges with adjacent balconies. It was in this space that the lighting atmosphere was created.

”The idea was to emphasize Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen’s architecture and to recreate the color of a traditional fireworks show inside the museum,” Steen commented. “We also wanted to illuminate the room in a different way than the architecture was meant to be - to show another way of looking at the structure, showing the building in something other than daylight.”

Upon the arrival of guests, Steen wanted the room to look as the architect intended in daylight, with no artificial light. After the official opening speeches however, as it began to get dark outside, the dynamic lighting was initiated, first in white for a subtle beginning and eventually transitioning into an eight-minute lightshow using brilliant color. The show consisted of 27 cues to the music of Nils Petter Molvær. After the show Steen then had eight cues programmed, which faded into each other over a period of a minute, changing colors with modest movement. The sequence repeated until the guests were gone.

As ‘Aros’ is in fact the river around which the original town of Aarhus sprang up, Steen sought to summon this past by creating impressions of this “river mouth” through water, night sky and fire effects. He employed the MAC 2000 Performance animation wheel to create fire and water patterns while MAC 600s washed the space in an abundance of rich color.

Steen used color for more than just decoration however. For example, he used different hues to show the contrast between the outer and inner sides of the balconies. Also, MAC 300 washlights were placed on the spiral stairs to light the underside of the spiral in order to create a contrast between the sides of the spiral and the underside of the spiral, which is visible from below. MAC 500 profile spots were located on each side of the room and used to project gobos onto the balcony and ceiling. Additional color wash fixtures were located on each end of the room to illuminate bridges.

Steen used a Martin Wireless DMX 512 Pro Diversity and three Martin Wireless DMX 512 transmitters in the control solution. He explains, “We chose a wireless solution because it was difficult to get the control signal around to the various balconies without compromising safety in the building and polluting the room with cables running between the different levels.”

The Grand Opening took place in front of a thrilled audience, among them HRH Queen Margrethe, HRH Prince Henrik, HRH Crown Prince Frederik and his fiancée Miss Mary Donaldson. After the show, the Royal Family personally thanked Steen for his work.