KØN: Museum of Gender and Body Culture

Naked bodies, condoms, old sex education videos, feminist activism, and sisterhood. At the museum KØN, formerly known as the Women’s Museum, topics like gender issues, equality, body, and sexuality are discussed, explored, and exhibited.

The heavy wooden double doors are centrally located in the symmetrical building, which is rich in architectural details. The gables are curved, and the facade is decorated with gray elements that break up the red bricks, giving the building a striped appearance that stands out in the streetscape—even though it nestles behind Aarhus Cathedral.

Bastion for Gestapo

The building’s history doesn’t begin with feminism and gender debates. It begins with power, police, and a significant role during World War II.

In 1857, the building was constructed as a city hall, courthouse, and jail. Nearly 50 years later, a prison wing was added, and the entire building was modernized and decorated in the distinctive Art Nouveau style, which still characterizes the building. Flowers and intricate patterns were painted with tempera on the walls and ceilings.

During the same period, the building’s function changed to a courthouse and jail, and the nature-decorated rooms were divided between the police and the city/county council. When the Aarhus City Hall was completed in 1941, the city/county council moved to the new city hall, while the police remained.

A few years later, during World War II, the German security police Gestapo seized the building and turned it into their headquarters. With barbed wire around the walls and shutters on the windows, the building became a bastion for Gestapo’s suppression of Danish resistance in Jutland from 1944 to 1945.

After the war, the police moved back into the building until 1983. Various associations without a permanent address then used the premises until the Women’s Museum moved in the following year. Later, Mathilde Fibiger’s Garden was established next to the museum, and in 1996 the building was fully listed as a protected structure.

From Women’s Museum to KØN

When the grassroots movement Women’s Museum moved in, it was initially alongside the organization Mødrehjælpen (Mother’s Help). Aarhus Municipality allowed this temporarily to prevent the building from standing empty during the squatters’ movement of the 1980s. Meanwhile, the municipality made plans for a city museum, which never materialized, and the Women’s Museum was allowed to stay.

Since 1984, the museum has worked to disseminate and document women’s history, and it continues to do so today. However, the focus has expanded to include other genders, shifting from solely women’s history to gender history as a whole. As a natural result of this broader focus, the museum was renamed KØN in 2021. However, above the main entrance, the word “Kvindemuseet” (Women’s Museum) remains as a symbol of the museum’s spirit.

This is an English translation made with an AI-based service and subsequently reviewed by an editor. For any clarifications, refer to the original Danish version.