En lille pige, der leger under et juletræ 1846 - 1926

Curator: Oh, this drawing… it hums with such quiet intimacy. Editor: Agreed. I see a scene of contained joy and wonder, a single child and her toys lit by… candlelight, perhaps? There's a profound tenderness here, as if observing a sacred ritual. Curator: This is Henrik Bornemann’s "En lille pige, der leger under et juletræ," or "A Little Girl Playing Under a Christmas Tree.” Bornemann created it sometime between 1846 and 1926. It’s graphite on paper, so technically a drawing but reproduced as a print. Currently it is held at the SMK, the Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: Knowing that, the Christmas tree clarifies some of the shadows…It reframes how I see it. Is it just the soft focus, or is there an intentionally saccharine gaze? The way the hierarchy of care seems organized here, between dolls and toys, invites some thinking around gender expectations. It's domesticity but maybe too sentimental for our contemporary sensibilities. Curator: But look at the dedication to capturing the specific slump of her shoulders, or the detail of those dolls – one she clutches close, the other discarded beside a miniature tea set! It whispers of a very real, specific childhood moment. It speaks volumes about what and who are cared for. How these rituals perpetuate across time. Editor: I wonder about that performance of "realness." To whose eyes does the image appear "true?" The staged presentation here obscures how Christmas becomes something to perform. I have to wonder what other unseen or untold rituals hide behind such images. The choice to display such "domestic bliss," for whom exactly is this rendered? Curator: Maybe, paradoxically, its "staged" quality allows us a safe distance from which to contemplate our own performances—both for ourselves and others. We project ourselves back to what once was in hopes of reconciling how it impacts what is now and perhaps what is still to come. Editor: That's a generous interpretation, seeing as our museum itself engages in these selective narratives. I still come back to wondering if the quiet tenderness, even if constructed, still bears worth or relevance today. Curator: Absolutely, even if simply to reveal to us how narratives become culturally codified, creating, in the process, blindspots in both public memory and identity. So maybe these things—real and performed, true or staged—operate best in the in-between, opening more questions than are ever neatly answered. Editor: Agreed. Food for thought, for certain. Let’s move on, shall we?