Historian Janus Møller Jensen has taken up his position as the new director of the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen.
Jensen, 46, is an expert on the history of the medieval Crusades and has held senior positions at the museums at Nyborg Castle and Koldinghus Castle.
He took up his post September 1 following the retirement of Janne Laursen, who established the museum and built it, as a statement earlier this summer announcing Jensen’s appointment said, “from a small home office to a solid museum institution.”
Jensen’s appointment has been described as a generational change that will have a forceful impact on the museum’s future course, including a planned revamp of the core exhibition.
“We have high expectations for Janus,” Museum board chair Finn Schwarz said in the statement announcing Jensen’s appointment. “He unites in an excellent way the professionalism of the elite researcher and the narrative power of the elite communicator […] and we expect that his experiences and creative dynamics will lift the Danish Jewish Museum to a new level. The museum faces a number of large and difficult tasks over the next few years, where we, among other things. must have completed a renovation and rethinking of the permanent exhibition.”
In an interview with the Jewish web site mosaiske.dk, Jensen said he wanted the museum to play a more prominent role in discussing issues such as increasing antisemitism.
“I attached myself to the call for someone who could give the museum a more active voice in the current debate,” he said.
One must really ask oneself where this antisemitism comes from? In connection with my crusade research, it was not difficult to find the origin. But the question is, where is the source of it now? What channels is it coming from now?
The Danish Jewish Museum opened in 2004 in a boathouse basement of The Royal Library constructed in the early seventeenth century by King Christian IV. The interior of the museum was designed by Daniel Libeskind.
