Mikkel Bogh

My research interests are largely directed towards Western art and culture from the seventeenth century until the present day, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth and twentieth/twenty-first centuries. In recent years, my research has focused on mobility, encounters, exchanges and historical connections between Western culture and the non-Western world. Based on my background in critical theory, phenomenology and recent image anthropology, and drawing inspiration from comparative art historical research and historical analysis ranging from Aby Warburg over Hans Belting, Georges Didi-Huberman and Griselda Pollock to Anna Tsing and Saidiya Hartman, I have more than thirty years’ experience with the analysis of art and its modes of operation. This includes close analysis of individual works, of a wide range of historical contexts, and of the various institutions of the world of art, such as the museum and the collection. In these endeavours, I have been particularly interested in the relationships between the works of art, visual culture, the exhibition space, topography and the viewer. After some twenty years of holding leading positions at cultural and educational institutions, several of my research contributions at conferences and to anthologies have been based on experiences from actual strategic work with museums and artistic education. During my years as a senior manager/director, I have maintained and developed my academic work as an art historian, making contributions to peer-reviewed catalogues, curating exhibitions, and engaging in teaching and lecturing. Similarly, I have continued, after leaving the first part of my university employment in 2005, to supervise and assess PhD projects in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In my time as museum director, much of my research has been an extension of and supported the institutional strategic efforts within the fields of exhibition, research and dissemination, which I have been responsible for implementing. These priorities are reflected in my publications, accounting both for their timing and for their variety in terms of subject matter.

My current and scheduled research centres on two projects. First, an ongoing project on the art museum – especially when taking the form of a National Gallery – and its current societal function seen in the light of the changing roles of national galleries through the ages. The book is based on current studies of museology and institutional critique, as well as on my own observations and experiences garnered over the course of nine years as a museum director. It will be written with general audiences in mind, ensuring a wide reach and supporting its potential to generate and inform public debate. Secondly, I am working on a project called ‘Travelling Images’. It constitutes an account of an entangled art history from the late Middle Ages to the present day written through the lens of travel, transport, migration, border crossings, territories and trade in both people and materials.

I have worked with institution management and leadership since 2001, first as head of department at The University of Copenhagen (Department of Literary Studies, then Department of Arts and Cultural Studies) and as deputy head of the Graduate School of Art, Literature and Culture, from 2005 as rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ Schools for Visual Arts, and from 2014 as director of Statens Museum for Kunst. Since 2023 I have been the director of The Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Practice-based Art Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Creating a strategically reflected framework for higher education and for the research conducted by myself and others has been a key focal point of my management efforts during these years. When I left the university in 2005 for pastures new, I did so with a particular wish to help forge new relationships between institutional practices, theoretical research and artistic knowledge production. As then-chairman of the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s committee for art history research, I and the foundation’s director jointly took the initiative to set up a PhD and postdoc programme (the Mads Øvlisen fellowship programme). It included both theoretical and practice-based projects, a novelty in Danish contexts at the time.

My work in top management has involved the strategic development of institutions in close collaboration with students, teachers and the Ministry of Culture and in ongoing dialogue with a large network of fellow managers and academics in Denmark and other countries. Ensuring the uniqueness of art education within the framework of the Bologna Process and the work of opening and sharing the museum’s collection and research with a wider user demographic, for example through digital initiatives and outreach programmes, have been central to my strategic efforts. Strategic partnerships with, for example, the Fonden for Socialt Ansvar (The Foundation for Social Responsibility) and the National Centre for Art and Mental Health can be seen as expressions of these efforts, as can the establishment of the museum’s satellite branch SMK Thy in Jutland.

After nearly thirty years as a scholar and a manager within higher education and the museum world, I have built a large professional network in Denmark and internationally. This network includes artists, academics, museum professionals and managers at universities, museums, exhibition venues, archives and art academies, especially in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Europe and the USA. The network extends continually through collaborative projects with research centers, universities, museums, collegiate forums, board work, and more.