the Napoleonic Wars, it was taken over by the bankruptcy estate of the Swedish businessman Peter Wilhelm Berg, and sold at a public auction to a group of investors led by the prominent Berlin banker Wilhelm Christian Benecke (since ennobled as Baron Benecke). The purchase, officially in the name of a Christiania-based merchant who acted as a strawman, was orchestrated by Benecke's young associate Benjamin Wegner, who came to Norway to evaluate the company and buy it if he saw fit. After few years Benecke and Wegner formally acquired all the shares, and the company legally operated as Benecke & Wegner. Wegner also took over as director-general (CEO), a position he held from 1822 until 1849. During Benecke and Wegner's ownership, the company saw a large expansion and became the largest company in the country. It employed more than 2,000 workers, and in its peak supplied 80 percent of the world market for cobalt pigments. Wegner also instituted many important social reforms for the workers. Reduced activity 1849–1898 The economic crisis resulting from the revolutions of 1848, in addition to the competition from the new and cheaper synthetic blue dye, ultramarine, led to the bankruptcy of Blaafarveværket in 1849. The company was sold to its most important business partner, Goodhall & Reeves of England. However, due to the economic recession, the new owners did not succeed in making the company profitable again, and in 1855 it was sold to a German company, Sächsischer Blaufarbenwerkverein. The production of pigment at the works ceased in 1857, but mining was kept up until 1898, when the company was dissolved. Museum and art gallery Today Blaafarveværket is a large open-air industrial museum and art gallery. In 1968 a project to make Blaafarveværket available to the public as an industrial museum was started, on the initiative of Kjell Rasmus Steinsvik and his wife Tone Sinding Steinsvik. In 1970 the non-profit foundation Stiftelsens Modums Blaafarveværket was founded. Blaafarveværket has since become one of the most important art galleries in Scandinavia, and has over the years exhibited the works of many major Norwegian and foreign artists. In the summer of 2003, the gallery hosted an exhibition of the paintings of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1993, the old cobalt mines opened as a tourist attraction, and the entire area now serves as a large open-air museum. Since the 1990s Blaafarveværket has been the largest and best