The Aros Aarhus Art Museum in eastern Denmark will acquire a major piece by the high-profile Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson—a crowd-pleasing vast glowing yellow sphere that appears to hover in space (Presence, 2025)—as part of a new long-term partnership.
The initiative between the artist and the museum, called “Shared Futures”, also encompasses Thin Ice, a solo exhibition to open autumn 2027. “This exhibition presents key works from recent decades alongside new projects reflecting Eliasson’s growing engagement with the climate, ecology, and humanity’s relationship with its surroundings,” says a statement.
A new site-specific version of Eliasson’s installation Waterfall (2004) will meanwhile be installed on Aros’s Art Square from 9 October next year; Studio Olafur Eliasson will also create a publicly accessible library collection of books on Eliasson’s artistic production at Aros under the plans. In addition, the partnership includes a dedicated postdoctoral research position in collaboration with Aarhus University.
Eliasson's Waterfall (2019), installed at Tate Modern in London
Photo: Anders Sune Berg; Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York © 2019 Olafur Eliasson
Eliasson says in a statement: “Aros has supported my work in Denmark for many years, so it felt natural to make my online archive and library available there… the ambition is to show that museums can offer depth and focus for engaging with an artist’s practice in a more detailed, granular way.” The museum is also home to Eliasson’s rainbow rooftop walkway Your Rainbow Panorama (2011).
Eliasson's Your rainbow panorama (2011) at Aros
Tina Sørensen © Schmidt Hammer Lassen, 2026
Rebecca Matthews, the museum's director, tells The Art Newspaper: “I first met Olafur Eliasson when I was chief executive of the European Capital of Culture in 2017, when he created an extraordinary stage design for the performance Tree of Codes. We were supposed to have our photograph taken together, but it was pouring with rain, so we ended up standing in a colonnade, talking. I remember thinking: If I ever get to lead a museum, he will be the first person I call.” Matthews became director of Aros in 2022.
In December 2025, Eliasson appeared on The Art Newspaper podcast A brush with…. with Ben Luke. “His works can be deceptively simple or enormously complex, but often share a rigorous and reductive geometry, which may conversely produce expansive and multifarious perceptual, sensory and embodied effects,” wrote Luke.
