Mark Exhibitions
VOICES OF THE PLANTATION
On Friday 17 May, Mark | Museum for a New History of Denmark launched a new and evocative nature experience in Karensminde Plantation. The project Voices of the Plantation combines sound, art and cultural heritage in a sensory-rich audio walk, where six fictional storytellers – including the priest, the meadow farmer, the plantation foreman and the pottery girl – guide visitors through both history and landscape.
The audio guide has been developed as part of the initiative Life in the Plantation, which seeks to explore and enrich the storytelling of the plantation’s cultural history. Life in the Plantation is supported by the Region of Southern Denmark. Volunteers from the museum’s support association, Friends of Karensminde, have contributed by constructing the wooden elements featured in the installation. The project has received strong backing from Billund Municipality, whose departments have helped bring the idea to life.
The experience unfolds at six distinctive gateways – striking black wooden structures placed throughout the landscape – each one offering a new voice, a new perspective, and a fresh reflection on the natural and cultural significance of the plantation. Through immersive soundscapes and curated rest points with benches, swings, hammocks and staircases, visitors are invited to pause, listen, and view the plantation with new eyes.
Voices of the Plantation draws inspiration from the history of the site and invites audiences to encounter narratives spanning from the 18th century to the present – not as a single, linear timeline, but through six unique voices, each offering their own interpretation of the landscape and way of life.
The experience is free and accessible all year round, both during and outside of the museum’s regular opening hours. Designed especially for those seeking reflection and a deeper connection with nature, the audio walk welcomes all curious minds, across all ages.
YOUR PAST - OUR FUTURE
Your past – our future! That’s the title of this outdoor exhibition, which was created in a collaboration between the 7th grade at Grindsted Private School and Mark through the concept “Companies adopt school classes”, facilitated by The Relations Network.
Each sign stands as if it has grown out of the ground, and it seems far from random when one of the signs reads, “Hey you! I’m not your trash can! Courtesy of Mother Nature.” Mother Earth is putting on a demonstration with the help of the 7th grade class at Grindsted Private School. This ‘sign forest’ is a free space where students have been given the opportunity to speak their minds out loud. And they do so with courage, commitment and drive.
The exhibition is about man’s imprint on nature – a topic that Mark has adopted as a main theme in the communication of local cultural history, because it has roots in all the museum’s areas of responsibility: agriculture, industry and tourism. The landscape around us is created by people. The heathland, the fields, the plantation are all examples of cultural landscapes, not nature. Industry has impacted the environment in many ways and so does tourism. With these responsibilities, the museum is committed to the concept of sustainability.
Sustainable development is something that matters to all of us, and it is something that young people are concerned about when thinking about their future. This became clear to museum curator, Anna Louise Siggaard, when a few months ago she took the 7th grade class on a short walk around the heath, through the plantation, across the field and down by the water of the river Syrenøen at The Museum Farm Karensminde. The walk turned into a conversation about how nature is doing right now and what we can do to make nature better. The conversation planted the idea for this exhibition.
Listening to the audio files behind the QR codes on the signs is moving. “Should we just shut down Grindsted?” someone asks, referring to the debate about the pollution from the old Grindsted plant. The sentence expresses both frustration and powerlessness, which is precisely the point of this exhibition and a large part of the museum’s DNA: to give our citizens a space to express themselves, a place where it can be experienced and resonate with other citizens – both young and old. At the same time, we are made aware of the actions that can actually be taken to leave the earth better than we received it, and that gives us hope.
EARTH CARRIES YOUR MARK
When you move around the outdoor areas of the museum garden, you are met by large photo signs. All photos illustrate the title of the exhibition, 'Earth Carries Your Mark', and nature is grasped as a cultural-historical element.
As you visit the museum farm's gardens, meadow and fields, the large photos emphasize the area's history. You are reminded that the Museum Farm Karensminde was built next to the lush meadow because man has used nature's resources in agriculture, and that nature is an important part of culture.
We cultivate and use nature every day for crops both in the fields, in the greenhouse, in the garden and in allotments. We remove nature to make way for cities and construction, but we also bring nature into the cities. And when industry is abandoned, nature grows up again – completely without our help.
How does the earth carry your mark?
MAN AND NATURE
In the exhibition 'Man and Nature' you meet people who live in harmony with nature.
You meet the meadow farmer, the moor farmer and the poor who lived on the heath. You meet dairymen, factory workers, working class and city dwellers. You meet contractors and inventors who create development and sometimes pollution, and connection to this, you also meet Denmark's first minister for pollution control. You meet tourists who travel to ‘pig parties’ in Mallorca. You meet people who use nature as a stress reliever to find peace and balance.
And through all these meetings, you meet yourself. You travel through 400 years through three periods: Agriculture, industry and tourism. Your story is part of Denmark's history.
FROM MEADOW FARM TO MUSEUM
Stop by this exhibition in the Exhibition building before engulfing yourself in the wonders of live history in action at the Museum Farm Karensminde.
Step into the story of how it all began… This is where your journey back in time starts.
The Museum Farm Karensminde is today the last remaining of the seven original meadow farms in the village of Morsbøl, once strung like white pearls along the river. It still bears the marks of its heyday – from the whitewashed walls to the distinctive carriage gates.
The fields are cultivated as they were when Danish agriculture became mechanised and industrialised from the 1920s onwards. Here, old Danish livestock breeds graze. Here, farming, industry, and tourism come together in one shared story of the Danish landscape.
Right here, between meadow and heath, you stand in the middle of a story that stretches back to the 17th century.
For centuries, the meadows along the Grindsted River and the heaths to the south formed the foundation of a unique Jutland farming culture. On these fertile meadowlands, the meadow farmers’ way of life emerged.
They harnessed the river’s water, creating ingenious irrigation systems which, in dry years, ensured hay and pasture for the cattle – their most important source of income.
At Karensminde, too, such an irrigation system was laid out. It provided the basis for a prosperous farm which, over time, became the bailiff’s farm and a central presence in the local community.
