Moderna Museet Research Articles

Rethinking Art Museum Spaces and Investigating How Auxiliary Paths Work Differently

It has been recognized that one of the key issues in designing museums is the interaction between the layout of space and the layout of objects, and spatial configurations are strongly related to didactic narratives, social implications, and curatorial intentions. However, it has not yet been examined thoroughly how museums work from a spatial perspective. Apart from the layout of objects, spatial configurations play an important role in creating various walking sequences, ranging from main routes to auxiliary paths. Art museums in particular can be characterized by such deviations generated by the auxiliary path, but they are hardly understood from this aspect. Therefore, this study aims to explore the auxiliary paths and examine how they work through in-depth theoretical analysis based on space syntax. By analyzing four art museums in terms of isovist attributes, syntactic measures, spatial sequences, and possible trails, it has been concluded that in the cases of the Uffizi Gallery and the Moderna Museet, spatial sequences work conservatively, so that auxiliary paths are channeled back to the gathering space. This is because the walking experience is strongly correlated with visual syntactic features such as connectivity, integration, and intelligibility. Conversely, walking sequences in the case of the Centre Pompidou and the Alte Pinakothek work generatively, and auxiliary paths are rarely related to the gathering space because the walking experience is strongly concerned with visual geometric properties such as isovist area/perimeter and occlusivity.

Promoting and Curating US Experimental Cinema in Europe: "The Western American Experimental Film" Tour in 1963 and the New American Cinema

Promoting and Curating US Experimental Cinema in Europe:"The Western American Experimental Film" Tour in 1963 and the New American Cinema Miguel Fernández Labayen (bio) and John Sundholm (bio) Introduction This article is born out of the finding of the program poster of "The Western American Experimental Film" tours in Stockholm (Fig. 1). We found the poster in the archive of Moderna Museet, Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art, when researching the New American Cinema screenings in Europe. Not having ever heard of this program before, we began to trace its origins and history. Somehow, we were confronted by an object, an event, and a past, which had not been written about and had left no trace in the narratives about the presence of US experimental cinema in Europe in the 1960s. Later on, when trying to revisit the program for "'The Gatekeepers exist to be overthrown.' Amos Vogel—Reprisen und Repliken (II)," a film series devoted to Amos Vogel that ran from November 8 to 15, 2021, at Arsenal in Berlin, it turned out to be very difficult and, in some cases, impossible to get hold of the prints. It looked as if the films had also disappeared. The aim of this article is two-fold: on the one hand, we map "The Western American Experimental Film" tour of 1963 in Europe; on the other, we question why some films and filmmakers have vanished from the circulation and the reproduction of American experimental film culture. Hence, even if not being completely omitted from history (or otherwise the remains of the tour would not exist), many of the films and filmmakers within the tour have hardly left any traces in a history, that of the New American Cinema, that we think we know. As such, we approach the Western Experimental Film tour as one of the deviations of the history of the circulation of the New American Cinema in Europe, [End Page 183] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The poster of "The Western American Experimental Film" at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Courtesy of Moderna Museet. [End Page 184] a deviation that opens the historiography constructed around the so-called New American Cinema Expositions of 1963–64 and 1967–68 both spatially and temporally, and brings into the fore what have become invisible objects overshadowed by the tours organized by Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney. In order to address the question of why certain films seem to have disappeared from circulation and thus have also been omitted from history, we will look in particular at "The Western American Experimental Film" tour in 1963 as an example of the branding and dissemination of US experimental film culture in the making in Europe in the 1960s. Through a look at promotion, programming, curating, and reception, we will explore the creation of discourses and ways of conceptualizing a set of films. This strategy would become the basis for the New American Cinema apparatus and its aspirations to control the interpretation of the films, which culminated in the 1967–68 film exposition and the publication of P. Adams Sitney's highly influential book Visionary Film in 1974, based on Sitney's experience of travelling with and curating the second grand tour.1 In this way we will also challenge the transcendental historiography of Visionary Film by establishing different histories, written from the perspective of each specific place and its own time-space configuration. That is, contrary to a vision that creates a common denominator for a set of films—establishing an object and following it through time and space—we ground the films in the specific venues where they were/are being screened. These places have their own specific history of screenings, and they are connected by personal and professional affinities to other localities (which do not necessarily have to be situated within the same national boundaries). The organization of the tour The first chronological trace that we have found about the organization of "The Western American Experimental Film" takes us back to the spring of 1963. In March of that year, Bruce Baillie contacted the cine club at Stockholm's Moderna Museet.2 In the letter, Baillie announced that...

Exhibition Review: Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life

Exhibition Review: <i>Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life</i>

Hilma af Klint and the Need for Historical Revision

Hilma af Klint and the Need for Historical Revision

‘Not so much a line as a star’: Donald Judd in the Low Countries, 1965–71

Historiographical accounts of the American artist Donald Judd, and of minimalist art in general, have focused primarily on the debates surrounding the emergence of his work in the United States, and New York in particular, from the mid to late 1960s. Little is known about Judd’s early exposure in Europe, from the artist’s inclusion in a group show at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1965, until his first solo show in Europe at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in 1970. Based on hitherto unpublished material from archives in the Netherlands and Belgium, the region commonly known as the Low Countries, this article aims to show that in the very same years that the artist established his formal and conceptual language in the US, his work also met with exponentially growing institutional and critical interest in Europe.

Seep Between the Mortar: Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Digital Media at Tate

A computer sits in the stores, carefully boxed away after recently returning from exhibitions overseas. Distantly tied to the object is a “vanguard vision” of what might have been possible for the object, the museum, and the Web.[1] Diab DS-101 Computer is both a computer and an artwork.[2] It was created by Richard Hamilton after being invited by Ohio Scientific to create a minicomputer in 1983. What it eventually became evolved out of changes in technology between 1983 and 1989, as well as changes in the company (Ohio Scientific was bought by Diab, which was then bought by Bull Computing in 1990). It appears sculptural in an exhibition, but it had another imagined future. In 1994 Tate curators received a proposal in the post from Hamilton. Would they repurpose Diab and display it, not just as an artwork but also use it as the gallery’s internet server? This would mean that while on display visitors could interact with it, but it could also connect the museum to the internet. There was another element to the proposal. There were other versions of Diab DS-101 Computer: Hamilton had one in his studio in Northend (a village in Oxfordshire), there was one in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, and one in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Hamilton proposed Tate connect all of these versions in the “infovoid” of the internet rhizome.[3] This repurposing of the artwork as an internet server or a meeting in the “infovoid” of different “Diab’s” never happened; it was too risky to place the museums’ infrastructure on a single artwork on display.

Lose Yourself – Editorial

A logical sequence of bright-lit, white-walled spaces has become the dominant architectural model of presenting modern and contemporary art and design around the globe. However, since its first appearance in the early decades of the twentieth century, the introduction of this “white cube” model has been paired with its disruption: artists and curators have created chaotic structures in which the art breaks out of its increasingly sanitized cage and visitors are asked to engage physically, getting lost in what can best be described as labyrinthine exhibitions that often meander, both inside and outside the vicinity of the museum territory. Multiple layers instead of optical clarity, immersion instead of spectatorship, proximity as opposed to distance, chance versus rationality; these are some of the dichotic terms that come to mind when considering the relationship between the labyrinthine exhibition and its white cube alter ego. The theme of this issue of Stedelijk Studies digs deeper into both the history and topicality of labyrinthine exhibitions as curatorial model. Renewed interest in this topic arose in conjunction with the large-scale retrospective of Jean Tinguely organized in 2015–2016 by the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In the Stedelijk’s version of the exhibition several rooms were dedicated to the exhibitions Tinguely had (co-)curated at the Stedelijk and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in close collaboration with museum directors Willem Sandberg (Dylaby) and Pontus Hultén (HON), as well as artists such as Martial Raysse, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, and Per Olof Ultvedt. The first exhibition, Bewogen Beweging (Rorelse Konsten), the lively overview of kinetic art which traveled from the Stedelijk to Moderna Museet and the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek in 1961/1962, was overwhelming, chaotic, and participatory. The two following exhibitions, Dylaby (1962) in the Stedelijk Museum and HON – en katedral (1966) in the Moderna Museet, have become truly remarkable exhibitions in the history of curating. Walking into a large vagina, shooting paint, gazing at the stars in a planetarium, dancing the twist, plowing a path through a room filled with balloons… the exhibitions might easily be considered more as theme park attractions than serious art shows, comprising theatrical props instead of works of art.

Niki de Saint Phalle Playing with the Feminine in the Male Factory: HON – en katedral

HON – en katedral (SHE – a cathedral, June 4–September 4, 1966) at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, was structured as a giant, reclining woman filling the entire space of the museum’s largest room, more or less to its edges (fig. 1). She was painted white with patterns of clear colors over parts of her body. Entering HON – en katedral (hereafter simply Hon) through its vagina, the audience found themselves walking and climbing in something that has been referred to as a kind of amusement park. The image of the invasive, female body placed directly into the heart of the museum institution served to disturb power relations within artistic networks and cultural life at a time when both the representation of women and gender positions in the arts were being challenged.

For a Fragmentary Rereading of the 1960s Turn in Europe

Three recent publications offer a rereading of the turn of Western art in the 1960s: the first is a collection of academic texts (introduced by Serge Guibaut and John O’Brian) about the pivotal years 1959 and 1960, the second is a dense essay by Deborah Laks, derived from her doctoral thesis on Nouveau realisme, the third is a collective work devoted to Pontus Hulten and published by the Moderna Museet. All three offer a retort, through original yet uneven angles, to the negative outlook that...

Stockholm Literature … and Art

photo : routes north / www . routesnorth . com 96 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 As literary events go, Stockholm Literature is outstanding: a celebration of art and international writing held in Moderna Museet, the museum of modern art in a handsome city, autumnal sunshine glittering on its waterways. The program tempts with onstage conversations between two writers or between a writer and an artist. Some of the participants are already truly famous. This year, the guest list included, for instance, Don DeLillo, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Hélène Cixous. Yukiko Duke, the artistic director of Stockholm Literature, is clear about the “fame issue”’: “It is very much not the case that we only invite internationally known writers. We feel that one of our prime aims is to introduce the reading public to writers who are not yet known or even published in Sweden.” In 2016 these included Moses Kilolo (Kenya) representing Jalada Africa, a pan-African writers’ collective; Hiromi Itō (Japan, based in the US); Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), Saša Stanišić (Bosnia -Herzegovina, based in Germany); and Dorit Rabinyan (Iran and Israel). Apart from the onstage talks, about which more later, the program featured readings of works in translation, talks on and prizes for translation, roving poetry readings in the museum collections, and live performances. The art component is central. Duke emphasizes how much it matters: though “we don’t have any kind of quotas to meet—just try to match writers and artists who might have something to say to each other—we always ask someone from the fine arts, but otherwise it could be any kind of art form—a performance artist, maybe, or a composer.” The art museum setting is vital. This year, one of the poetry readings took place as part of viewing United Enemies, a thought-provoking collection of works by Thomas Schütte (Germany). Another example: Sjón (Iceland) and his translator John Swedenmark talked about Sjón’s novel, which is set in 1918, surrounded by art from that period. Stockholm’s cultural establishment is sophisticated, self-confident, and wealthy. Even so, this amazingly diverse, culturally rich book fest started off as a symptom of an insecure publishing industry: “difficult” books struggle, and translated works are all the more vulnerable. About a decade ago, two concerned people—one, a journalist and translator; the other, a producer and literary agent—came up with a festival concept that would focus on foreign literature , translation, and the arts. It took off with the right kind of backers: by 2013, the first program included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Teju Cole (US), and Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus; Nobel Prize laureate in 2015). What were the highpoints in 2016? The opening ceremony, with readings by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Joanna Kincaid, and Hiromi Itō, all of whom also spoke about identity and language. A session in which Daniel Birnbaum, the director of Moderna Museet, interviewed an unusually animated Don DeLillo about his long-standing interest in contemporary art. But little else could touch the final event that was, for one thing, a demonstration that longevity can be a wonderful gift: a warm, witty conversation between the dramatist and feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous (seventy-nine) and the choreographer and director Mats Ek (seventy-one). They were introduced by actors performing an extract from Cixous’s 1976 play Portrait de Dora (based on one of Freud’s most famous cases) and a short film from 1991, made by Ek, in a mischievous and loving tribute to his mother, the choreographer Birgit Cullberg: Cullberg (eightythree ) danced with two young star dancers. Anna Paterson, an ex-neuroscientist, is now a writer and an award-winning translator from the Germanic languages into English. Her own writing has focused on the relationship between literature and politics. Her most recently published translations are The Chosen Ones, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, and two photo-biographies of the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, and of the secretary general of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld. Stockholm Literature . . . and Art by Anna Paterson Outpost Skeppsholmen Island in central Stockholm, home of Moderna Museet where the Stockholm Literature festival takes place. ...

Stockholm Literature … and Art

photo : routes north / www . routesnorth . com 96 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 As literary events go, Stockholm Literature is outstanding: a celebration of art and international writing held in Moderna Museet, the museum of modern art in a handsome city, autumnal sunshine glittering on its waterways. The program tempts with onstage conversations between two writers or between a writer and an artist. Some of the participants are already truly famous. This year, the guest list included, for instance, Don DeLillo, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Hélène Cixous. Yukiko Duke, the artistic director of Stockholm Literature, is clear about the “fame issue”’: “It is very much not the case that we only invite internationally known writers. We feel that one of our prime aims is to introduce the reading public to writers who are not yet known or even published in Sweden.” In 2016 these included Moses Kilolo (Kenya) representing Jalada Africa, a pan-African writers’ collective; Hiromi Itō (Japan, based in the US); Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), Saša Stanišić (Bosnia -Herzegovina, based in Germany); and Dorit Rabinyan (Iran and Israel). Apart from the onstage talks, about which more later, the program featured readings of works in translation, talks on and prizes for translation, roving poetry readings in the museum collections, and live performances. The art component is central. Duke emphasizes how much it matters: though “we don’t have any kind of quotas to meet—just try to match writers and artists who might have something to say to each other—we always ask someone from the fine arts, but otherwise it could be any kind of art form—a performance artist, maybe, or a composer.” The art museum setting is vital. This year, one of the poetry readings took place as part of viewing United Enemies, a thought-provoking collection of works by Thomas Schütte (Germany). Another example: Sjón (Iceland) and his translator John Swedenmark talked about Sjón’s novel, which is set in 1918, surrounded by art from that period. Stockholm’s cultural establishment is sophisticated, self-confident, and wealthy. Even so, this amazingly diverse, culturally rich book fest started off as a symptom of an insecure publishing industry: “difficult” books struggle, and translated works are all the more vulnerable. About a decade ago, two concerned people—one, a journalist and translator; the other, a producer and literary agent—came up with a festival concept that would focus on foreign literature , translation, and the arts. It took off with the right kind of backers: by 2013, the first program included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), Teju Cole (US), and Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus; Nobel Prize laureate in 2015). What were the highpoints in 2016? The opening ceremony, with readings by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Joanna Kincaid, and Hiromi Itō, all of whom also spoke about identity and language. A session in which Daniel Birnbaum, the director of Moderna Museet, interviewed an unusually animated Don DeLillo about his long-standing interest in contemporary art. But little else could touch the final event that was, for one thing, a demonstration that longevity can be a wonderful gift: a warm, witty conversation between the dramatist and feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous (seventy-nine) and the choreographer and director Mats Ek (seventy-one). They were introduced by actors performing an extract from Cixous’s 1976 play Portrait de Dora (based on one of Freud’s most famous cases) and a short film from 1991, made by Ek, in a mischievous and loving tribute to his mother, the choreographer Birgit Cullberg: Cullberg (eightythree ) danced with two young star dancers. Anna Paterson, an ex-neuroscientist, is now a writer and an award-winning translator from the Germanic languages into English. Her own writing has focused on the relationship between literature and politics. Her most recently published translations are The Chosen Ones, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, and two photo-biographies of the prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, and of the secretary general of the UN, Dag Hammarskjöld. Stockholm Literature . . . and Art by Anna Paterson Outpost Skeppsholmen Island in central Stockholm, home of Moderna Museet where the Stockholm Literature festival takes place. ...

Rereading Rauschenberg’s Monogram

SummaryHiroko Ikegami has told the story of Pontus Hultén’s acquisition of Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram by the Moderna Museet and has given an admirable account of Rauschenberg’s role in the emergence of Stockholm as a leading centre for avant-garde art in the 1960s. Surprisingly, however, there have been remarkably few conventional art historical studies devoted to Monogram, notwithstanding its iconic status among Rauschenberg’s Combines. The first part of the present study situates Monogram and its goat more firmly within Rauschenberg’s biography and identity. The second reviews observations concerning the goat that Rauschenberg volunteered from time to time. These observations show that Rauschenberg himself never suggested that the goat in Monogram was anything other than a goat or that the tyre was anything more than a tyre. The next part of my study examines the physical and visual composition of the Combine. A fourth section reviews the reception of Monogram by earlier critics and scholars, focusing in particular on Kenneth Bendiner’s hypothesis that Rauschenberg created Monogram as ‘a specific re-working’ of William Holman Hunt’s Victorian painting The Scapegoat. Next, in a section headed ‘Rereading Monogram’, my paper identifies and discusses sources in Life magazine and in Sports Illustrated for eight of the photographic reproductions that Rauschenberg embedded in his goat’s ‘pasture’. This section also suggests that a funambulist in a wintry Alpine view that is pasted near the front of the goat’s ‘garden’ can be viewed as a type of portrait of Rauschenberg himself – one that accords well with the vertiginous nature of the artist’s creations from the late 1950s. Another section considers whether Monogram may be linked to Rauschenberg's interest in astrology. In this reading, the goat might be perceived as a type of Capricorn. The concluding sections of the paper consider the significance of automobiles and their tyres elsewhere in contemporary American society, literature and art.

Migrating facsimiles: When copies disappear from conservation control

A 2014 exhibition of Meriç Algün Ringborg at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, exploring identity and belonging involved the making of facsimiles. The installation included a sound work, booklets to be taken, and a book to be read. Exhibition copies were created of personal letters for open display which were not to be touched. Contrary to the artist's wishes, the work was constantly handled. Made for this one installation, the facsimiles transcended the exhibition and were returned with the work to the artist. The paper examines issues of authenticity and control from a conservation standpoint, and details discussions surrounding reproduction in contemporary art museum conservation practice.

Le Corbusier's secret laboratory: from painting to architecture

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887-1965), influenced the design, function, and construction of office and residential buildings as well as twentieth-century art and design. However, there has not yet been an extensive, precise examination of his role as an artist. For more than five decades, Le Corbusier oscillated between contradictory poles: his dedication to mechanical objects on the one hand, and his search for poetic form on the other. The mutual inspiration stemming from aesthetic versus creative took place in his secret laboratory, the artist's studio. This is the first publication to consolidate all of the facets of his oeuvre, and it arrives at new approaches toward understanding his paintings, drawings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, architectural sketches and plans, as well as his books and photographs. The book's five chapters cover a wide spectrum, ranging from the purist paintings and early villas to Le Corbusier's reinterpretation of values and his late works. Exhibition schedule: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, January 19-April 18, 2013

FAME AND PRESTIGE: NECESSARY AND DECISIVE ACCOMPLICES IN THE CASE OF HILMA AF KLINT = FAMA Y PRESTIGIO: CÓMPLICES NECESARIOS Y DECISIVOS EN EL CASO DE HILMA AF KLINT

This article examines the problematic status as a pioneer of abstract art of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. Her case allows us to reflect simultaneously on two types of important contacts in the recognition process of the artist of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the network of personal contacts, and, on the other, the network of institutional contacts as museums. The starting point are the different positions held by the MoMA in the exhibition Inventing abstraction, 1910-1925, and by the Moderna Museet of Stockholm in the show Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction. The study of the positions of proponents and opponents leads to the conclusion that, until now, Hilma af Klint has had the necessary accomplices to get her work known, exhibited and even, inside the art world, become somewhat famous. Time will tell, and sociological analysis suggests short term negative results, if in the future she will have the decisive accomplices for obtaining the prestige of being considered mostly as a pioneer of abstract art.

Collecting Geographies: Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art – Editorial

In March 2014, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam hosted the international academic conference “Collecting Geographies: Global Programming and Museums of Modern Art.” The conference was organized in collaboration with the international partners ASCA/ACGS at the University of Amsterdam, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam. Its aim was to take a closer look at new inquiries into the relationships between art institutions, globalization, and postcolonial discourse, including a critical assessment of the deployed terminology and those strategies that focus on local affinities within a larger art historical and global framework. An overwhelming number of more than 140 scholars, museum professionals, curators, and artists responded to the open call for papers, which urged a critical rethinking of many assumptions in the practice of collecting and exhibiting of so-called non-Western art, as well as the very categories of art and its institutionalizations. Eighty-one papers were selected for the conference. Eight papers are highlighted in this first issue of Stedelijk Studies.

‘HON—en katedral’: Behind Pontus Hultén's Theatre of Inclusiveness

Benoit Antille looks at ‘HON—en katedral’, Pontus Hulten's exhibition for the Moderna Museet that aimed at widening art audiences—anticipating, in the process, many of the unresolved problems that appear in today's socially engaged works.

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

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.

The Metamorphosis of Dorothea Tanning: On the Painting Insomnias

the paradoxical nature of Dorothea Tanning's painting Insomnias (1956–57) in Moderna Museet's collection becomes apparent at a very first tentative attempt to describe the image: as more and more d...

Looking for Signs of Life

there are some resonant parallels between what is generally considered the paradigm of modern museums, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Moderna Museet. In 1957 MoMA went from being a v...