Past Presents and Present Futures: Rethinking Sweden's Moderna Museet

Abstract

The island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm was once a naval base. It is now a much-visited cultural oasis. It therefore encapsulates the notion of historic preservation as a dynamic phenomenon in which creative transformation is not just condoned but celebrated. This issue is explored through a case study of Moderna Museet, Sweden's national museum of modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1958, for four decades it operated from a former drill-hall on that military-turned-heritage island. The museum marked its fortieth anniversary by moving into a much-expanded building devised by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo. This emphatically unmonumental monument is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. The nature of this structure and its role in rethinking the museum is examined and juxtaposed with an art project that imagines the museum fifty years from now—a utopian future when the marvelous changes already witnessed on that little Swedish island are foretold on a truly global scale.