STOCKHOLM.- In 2019, Moderna Museet’s collection have been completely rearranged and nineteen rooms have been thoroughly remodelled.

The Moderna Museet collection belongs to the Swedish people, and consists of some 140,000 works of art. It would be impossible to show all this art at once, so the presentation of the collection changes constantly. Normally, this would mean switching individual works, or maybe rehanging an entire room – but in 2019, Moderna Museet carried out a major rearrangement of its collection. The presentation highlights themes or individual artists. The rearranged rooms have titles such as “A room of one’s own”, “Collage and assemblage”, “After the wall”, and “Eccentric abstraction”.

2019 has been a busy year for the Museum’s curators, technicians, conservators and other staff involved in preparing the 297 works to meet the public. The collection display now features more works by women artists and more Swedish artists than before, including a major presentation of Siri Derkert. Many works – such as Lygia Clark’s Estruturas and Robert Gober’s Cat Litter – have not been shown before. Others, such as Sven X-et Erixson’s Dans Hall in Telemarken, Ola Pehrson’s Hunt for the Una Bomber and Mona Hatoum’s Home, are familiar works that have been in storage for a few years or on loan to other institutions in Sweden and abroad. A few of Moderna Museet’s most popular works – including Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram, Henri Matisse’s Moroccan Landscape, and Sigrid Hjertén’s Studio Interior – are presented in new constellations.

“Moderna Museet has one of Europe’s finest collections of modern and contemporary art. Presenting it in a thematic chronology not only sheds new light on the individual works. Juxtaposing works from different eras also further reveals the timeless power of art to convey human thoughts and emotions,” says Gitte Ørskou, director of Moderna Museet.

The curators of the Moderna Museet collection have summarised the idea behind the new display:

“The presentation is based on the premise that each era chooses its history. The art in the Moderna Museet collection stems from a period spanning more than a century, from 1900 to today. During this time, artists have observed, challenged, commented and reflected on the present, the past and the future. The overall structure is chronological, incorporating a number of themes and monographic presentations. The chronology is not traditional in the art historical sense. It is based on the artists’ visions and experiences and is therefore seen through the artistic, historic, economic and political development of the 20th and early 21st centuries.”