Foreword

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Art Bulletin of

Nationalmuseum

Stockholm

Volume 21

Foreword

The Editorial Committee

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

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4 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 21, 2014

Photo Credits

Fetti 1588/89–1623, Eduard Safarik (ed.), Milan,

1996, p. 280, fig. 82 (Figs. 2 and 9A, pp. 13 and 19)

© Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau (pp. 138–139) © Museen der Stadt Bamberg (pp. 140 and 142) © Archive of Thomas Fusenig (p. 141) © Nordiska museet, Stockholm/Karolina Kristensson (pp. 148–149)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,

is published with generous support from the Friends of the Nationalmuseum.

Nationalmuseum collaborates with

Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Malmén.

Cover Illustrations

Domenico Fetti (1588/89–1623), David with the

Head of Goliath, c. 1617/20. Oil on canvas,

161 x 99.5 cm. Purchase: The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7280.

Publisher

Berndt Arell, Director General

Editor Janna Herder

Editorial Committee

Mikael Ahlund, Magdalena Gram, Janna Herder, Helena Kåberg, Magnus Olausson and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson.

Photographs

Nationalmuseum Photographic Studio/ Linn Ahlgren, Olle Andersson, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Bodil Karlsson and Sofia Persson.

Picture Editor Rikard Nordström

Every effort has been made by the publisher to credit organizations and individuals with regard to the supply of photographs. Please notify the publisher regarding corrections.

Graphic Design BIGG

Layout Agneta Bervokk

Translation and Language Editing

Gabriella Berggren, Martin Naylor and Kristin Belkin.

Publishing

Ingrid Lindell (Publications Manager) and Janna Herder (Editor).

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published

annually and contains articles on the history and theory of art relating to the collections of the Nationalmuseum.

Nationalmuseum Box 16176

SE–103 24 Stockholm, Sweden www.nationalmuseum.se

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9 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 21, 2014 foreword

O n e o f t h e b i g g e s t challenges facing the Nationalmuseum is to create a new presentation of the collection for the refurbished museum premises in 2018. This involves identifying what makes the Museum unique in an international per-spective, what has previously not been high-lighted, and what needs to be enhanced. Over the past year, several project teams have performed inventories on the Muse-um’s rich collection, and made acquisitions for the parts that needed to be developed.

Research has been conducted for a long period, to improve our knowledge about the collection and uncover its hid-den potential to both specialists and the general public. This activity has resulted in several publications and exhibitions. The latest of these included the Italian pro-ject headed by Associate Professor Sabrina Norlander Eliasson. Italian Paintings: Three

Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stock-holm, Volume 1 – the first volume of two

cata-logues raisonnés – was published in spring 2015. This part of the collection has long been neglected, but a consequence of the Italian project is that we now have the opportunity to see one of last year’s most spectacular acquisitions, Domenico Fetti’s composition David with the Head of Goliath, painted around 1620 at the court of Man-tua (see article on p. 11).

One specific shortcoming in the Mu-seum’s collections concerns the number of women artists and designers. The Na-tionalmuseum now intends to correct this with targeted acquisitions for

vario-Foreword

The Editorial Committee

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

us parts of the collection. We are already seeing the concrete results of this effort. The Museum already has the world’s finest collection of women miniaturists, and it was extended this year with further artists. The same is true of portrait paintings and portrait photography, where key works have been acquired. Most recently, some thirty photographic works by Kerstin Bern-hard (1914–2004) were added to the col-lection (see article on p. 57).

This volume of Art Bulletin of

Natio-nalmuseum, Stockholm describes in detail

how the crafts section has similarly been enhanced through systematic acquisi-tions. These are primarily focused on the inter-war period’s large generation of wo-men artists active in metal crafts, a field that is not traditionally associated with wo-men. Among these are the now-forgotten silver designers Wilhelmina Wendt (1896– 1988) and Märta Rockström-Lindh (1904– 1996). Another noteworthy example is the more well-known Greta Magnusson Gross-man (1906–1999), whose famous lamp was bought for the collection.

Swedish book design is an important, yet relatively unknown, area of collecting for the Nationalmuseum, along with child-ren’s book illustrations. No deadline has been set for this collecting activity. By acquiring Elsa Beskow’s Tomtebobarnen, the Museum now owns one of the finest objects in the field. An equally invaluable part of Swedish children’s literature is Elsa Beskow’s illustrations to Alice Tegnér’s book of children’s songs, Mors lilla Olle och

andra visor (1903). The Museum already

owned three illustrations and was 2014 able to add Ekorrn satt i granen (Squirrel in the spruce tree) and Småjäntorna (Little girls are standing by the door) to its collec-tion (see article on p. 43).

Nordic art is often presented in the Nationalmuseum’s exhibition, but the Museum previously owned relatively few works from our neighbouring countries. Read more in the article on p. 23 about the Museum’s acquisitions, especially from the Danish golden era, with artists such as Constantin Hansen, Christen Købke, Peter Christian Skougaard, Martinus Rørby and the Norwegian artist Thomas Fearnley, who studied art in Denmark.

The Nationalmuseum has always play-ed a vital part in preserving the Swplay-edish cultural heritage. Unfortunately, our go-vernment assignment allows only limited possibilities when it comes to rescuing crucial treasures. Against this background, the Museum’s own funding has occasion-ally been used for such specific acquisi-tions – in 2014, a few priceless remnants of the collections at the manor houses of Biby and Skärfva could be saved, partly thanks to the Friends of the Nationalmu-seum. In view of this, it is especially plea-sing that a large tapestry on the theme of October, woven at Les Gobelins and a gift from Louis XV to Erik Sparre could be re-patriated, after having left Sweden nearly a century ago (see article on p. 49).

The introduction of a photographic col-lection within the National Swedish Portrait

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10 Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 21, 2014

foreword

that this will make it easier to share know-ledge about the Museum and its activities with a broader public. The Nationalmuse-um is striving to enhance its digital resour-ces by establishing new methods and gui-delines for digital publishing of research, including previously processed materials in our collections and research reports. The ambition is to make all the Museum’s digital resources more useful, informative and scientifically stringent.

Gallery has not only added numerous artists who had been missing, but has also substan-tially democratised the representation of a wide variety of persons. With the acquisition of some 20 portraits by a younger genera-tion of Swedish photographers in connec-tion with the exhibiconnec-tion Crossing Borders (see article on p. 123), the situation has changed significantly in this respect. The very successful exhibition, which was shown at several Swedish airports and at Gripsholm Castle, is an excellent example of how an outreach activity has influenced our collec-ting. Crossing Borders is also an example of how joint projects can generate new pos-sibilities to show art in settings other than those traditionally associated with art exhi-bitions. By collaborating with Swedavia, the Nationalmuseum reached a large and wide audience that usually does not visit muse-ums and galleries.

Inversely, some exhibitions are ba-sed on targeted collecting. For instance, this was the case with Slow Art, which was about time perspectives and production methods in the field of design. Originally opening at the Nationalmuseum in 2012, the exhibition toured Sweden before going on to Paris, where it was widely acknowled-ged. The same can be said, to an even gre-ater extent, of the exhibition Carl Larsson

– L’imagier de la Suède at Petit Palais in Paris,

co-produced by the Museum. This was the first monographic exhibition of Carl Lars-son in France, an ambitious venture, enti-rely in keeping with the Museum’s mission to promote international knowledge of and interest in Swedish applied art and design.

Similarly, in Sweden, the Nationalmu-seum has introduced several less known aspects of international art history, there-by offering some powerful art experiences. The exhibition From Tsars to Commissars:

Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum is one example from a successful

series of exhibitions on the theme of Rus-sian art.

This volume of Art Bulletin of

National-museum, Stockholm is the second to be an