A Visit to the Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen

Yesterday I walked north along the banks of the Tiber to the Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum. Along the way I saw this houseboat, that looked like a fun place to live, and with its potential to travel, serves as a counterpoint to the permanence of a place like the Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen.

Now on to the museum. Hendrik Christian Andersen was a Norwegian American artist who created many larger-than-life bronze and marble statues as well as thousands of drawings of his ideal utopian city. He lived in Rome for the majority of his life and entertained a prominent circle of friends including artists and writers who would drop by to visit at 20 Via Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. The house was built from 1923 – 1925 and has now been converted into a museum that displays many of his works. Free entry. Of particular interest for me was his detailed and finely-executed drawings of the the ideal city, evidence of his utopic and optimistic vision for the early twentieth-century. His drawings of the ideal city were created during a time when world’s fairs were just at their zenith. The bird’s-eye view perspectives shown in many of the drawings perhaps takes inspiration from panoramas and other large-scale depictions of viewing the world, inevitably aligned with progress and promoted through fairs such as the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. I will attach a few images here.