Opening with Music. Descendant. Curated by Lars von Trier

Live Music from Lars von Trier’s Film World On the opening day of Descendant. Curated by Lars von Trier, the Salon on Level 3 will be filled with music from Lars von Trier’s films. Pianist Stefan Vârtejaru will perform at the Bechstein grand piano three times throughout the day. The programme moves between Baroque, Romanticism and popular music, reflecting the broad musical range of von Trier’s films. It includes music associated with Breaking the Waves, Dogville, Antichrist, Melancholia, Nymphomaniac, The House That Jack Built and Dancer in the Dark – from Bach, Vivaldi and Wagner to Björk, David Bowie and Elton John. Stefan Vârtejaru studied at, among other institutions, the École Normale de Musique de Paris and the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He has performed as a soloist at venues in Sweden and internationally. Performance times October 10th 12.30 pm, 2.00 pm and 3.00 pm Each performance lasts approximately 30 minutes. The music programme is included with the museum admission ticket.

About the exhibition

The Thiel Gallery’s major autumn exhibition, Descendant, is curated by the Danish film director Lars von Trier, who will be 70 in 2026. For more than four decades, Trier has revitalised cinema by challenging conventions, reinterpreting genres and combining artistic experiment with a broad general appeal. His films are characterised by a strong visual awareness, and the fine arts have been a vital influence for him since his youth. This exhibition presents a variety of works that have fed into Trier’s filmmaking, and which he calls the “family” on whose shoulders he stands. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Vilhelm Hammershøi’s monumental work Five Portraits from 1901, which has had a magic allure on Trier. When he was 19, he travelled to Stockholm solely to see this painting at the Thiel Gallery. With Five Portraits as a starting point, other works, documents, personal items and films are connected by texts written by Trier, offering insights into how these inspirational sources have influenced his own creative practice. Along with Hammershøi, the exhibition features several other artists, including Caspar David Friedrich, Paul Gauguin, Carl Fredrik Hill, Edvard Munch, Ejnar Nielsen, August Strindberg, Rudolph Tegner, Jens Ferdinand Willumsen and Trier himself. Another seminal influence is the artist Per Kirkeby, who contributed visual elements to his films Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Antichrist (2009). The exhibition was produced in collaboration with the Willumsen Museum in Frederikssund, Denmark, where it was shown in the summer of 2026. Learn more