- Date
- Tuesday 21 May 2019, 13:00 - 16:00
- Type
- General
- Room
- M7-39
- Space
- Van der Goot Building
Please join on May 21st for a talk on the internationalization of museums by Marta Edling and Pella Myrstener of Södertörn University, Sweden, and Laura Braden of the Arts and Culture Department, ESHCC.
13:00 - 16:00
Exhibiting in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War.
Marta Edling, Professor of History and Theory of Art, Södertörn University
This project investigates the meaning of international in a Swedish art context during the Cold War 1945-1989. The project title refers to key concepts for how art has been narrated, where influences emanate from Western capitals such as Paris or New York to a Northern periphery. However, when revisiting archives of museum and public art galleries across Sweden another history unfolds. It turns out artists from across all of Europe exhibited frequently in Sweden but we have also registered more exhibitions than expected by artists from continents such as Africa and South America. The seemingly self-evident hierarchies of Western/Eastern Europe and centre/periphery dichotomies becomes if not dissolved, at least less evident.
The aim of this project is to explore the heterogenic nature of international art in Sweden, a country with art scenes poised between a Wester/Eastern European divide. The overall purpose is to present a complex history on the relations, exchanges and dependencies that support the presence of international art in Sweden.
The project is based on comparative methods and structured analysis of empirical data in a diachronic and synchronic perspective. It will develop international research on the meaning of peripheral in an art historical context. Preliminary analysis indicates that problematizing the idea of international art will present a counter-colonial understanding of international, both in historical periods and in our present.
14:30 – 16:00
Exhibitions with foreign modern art in Sweden 1945-1965
Pella Myrstener, Södertörn University
As soon as World War II ended, modern foreign art was exhibited in Sweden. Art from both Eastern and Western Europe as well as other parts of the world, despite the hard conditions and aftermaths of the war. But what art was exhibited? What were the international, or rather transnational connections and strategies for Swedish art institutions during this early post-war period? Earlier research has mostly focused connections to Paris and New York, but is there more to find in the archives?
his project examines the foreign art exhibited at Stockholm and Gothenburg’s main art institutions during the period 1945-1965: Nationalmuseum, Moderna museet, Liljevalchs konsthall and Konstakademien in Stockholm and Göteborgs konstmuseum and Göteborgs konsthall in Gothenburg. It opens up with a quantitative study where I collect data regarding the nationality of the exhibiting artists, the artistic medias that were shown and the sender / organizer of each exhibition.[1] Data from the Stockholm institutions has showed interesting and not so well researched exhibition collaborations with the Nordic Countries, Eastern and Southern Europe as well as North and South America. It points out to Sweden’s interesting position between East and West in the new political landscape that developed during the Cold War. The quantitative collection of data from the Gothenburg institutions will be made in the autumn of 2019.
The result of this quantitative study will point out what to look further into and constitute the basis for the following part with case studies, such as one on the circulation of graphic prints in Europe after World War II. I plan to go back to the archives again and study exhibition catalogues, correspondences and press material of certain exhibitions to track the strategies of the Swedish institutions, for a qualitative analysis which I believe will problematize such notions as ‘international’ and ‘national’, ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, but also what is considered “Modern Art” during this time.
Data collection has been supported with Excel sheets and coding by Laura E. Braden, Assistant Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. This collaboration is also done within the bigger project Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War: https://www.sh.se/forskning/var-forskning/forskningsdatabas/forskningsp… (2019-03-29)