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Arthur Køpcke's Archive

About The Arthur Køpcke Archive

The Arthur Køpcke Archive was acquired by Aarhus Art Museum – now ARoS – in 1979. It contains texts, news clippings and notes by Arthur Køpcke, 128 so-called Reading Passages by Køpcke, letters related to exhibitions at Galerie Køpcke and various documents pertaining to the management of the gallery. In addition, there is a small collection of texts by other artists. An inventory of the archive can be found in Birgit Hessellund (Ed.) (1989). Arthur Køpcke Arkivet. Aarhus Kunstmuseum [The Arthur Køpcke Archive. Aarhus Art Museum], Aarhus Kunstmuseums Forlag.

The recent digitization only includes the material related to Galerie Køpcke – in Hessellund’s inventory, this includes Section III, ‘Breve vedr. udstillinger i Galerie Køpcke’ [Letters pertaining to exhibitions at Galerie Køpcke], and Section IV, ‘Galerie Køpcke’s drift i øvrigt’ [The general management of Galerie Køpcke]. The selection was made because the now digitized material has so far been unknown to the general public, while Køpcke’s own texts and Reading Passages are widely published (see, for example, Arthur Köpcke, (1994). begreifen erleben. Gesammelten Schriften herausgegeben von Barbara Wien [Understanding experiencing. Collected writings published by Barbara Wien]. Barbara Wien).
Most of the close to 500 letters in the archive date to 1958–60 and deal, in particular, with the early phase of Køpcke’s engagement as a gallery owner. There is a substantial amount of material in other collections and archives – including Archiv Sohm in Stuttgart, Sammlung Hahn in Vienna and The Gilbert and Lily Silverman Collection in New York – which may have been handed over by Køpcke himself (or perhaps Tut, after his death), including correspondence concerning the gallery dating from 1961 to 1963.