Skissernas Museum at Lund University is home to the world’s foremost collection of sketches and public art in its early stages, and is one of Lund’s most visited attractions. Since its opening in 1934, the museum has many exhibitions, but the majority of its pieces are hidden away in archives. The unique collections will now be presented in book form, which has been made possible by a multi-million SEK donation from the Thora Ohlsson Foundation.
The museum’s collection is currently made up of around 35,000 sketches, models and other preparatory studies for public art from the early 20th century to the present day. The collection grows mainly through generous donations from artists or their estates, but also through gifts from private individuals, cultural institutions, municipalities and regions. Despite the wealth of material, there has never been a compilation of all the museum’s pieces or their history. There has been demand for a book about the museum, not least by the museum’s visitors.
“We are delighted that the Thora Ohlsson Foundation has now come to our rescue and provided the generous support that will enable us to realise our vision of a book about the collection,” says Annie Lindberg, Skissernas’ museum director.
The book Skissernas museum – historien om en samling (“Skissernas Museum – the story of a collection”) will tell the story of how the remarkable collection was created. The plan is to invite different authors to write in-depth chapters on the museum’s founding, the collection and the archive, and its significance for research and education. In terms of layout, the book is intended to be published in a larger, hardback format and richly illustrated with a mix of recent photos and older black-and-white archival images. The Thora Ohlsson Foundation has donated SEK 3.4 million to the project to fund research, author fees, translation, editing and printing.
Revealing Skissernas’ hidden treasures
Only four per cent of the objects are displayed in the museum’s permanent exhibitions. The remaining 96% are kept in storage. This includes photographs from travels, visits to artists’ studios and meetings with artists from around the world. Studio visits to Sonia Delaunay and Amédée Ozenfant in France, Pablo O’Higgins in Mexico and Barbara Hepworth in England are just a few examples. These documents testify to how the collection has grown over the decades and the close contact the museum has had with artists throughout that period.
“There is the story of a teaching assistant who travelled to Paris on behalf of the museum to collect sketches from avant-garde artists such as Henri Matisse and the Delaunays. And the museum director who insisted on travelling to Mexico to collect materials from the world’s most important muralists: Diego Rivera, Juan O’Gorman and David Alfaro Siquerios.”
Part of the research is already complete
Initial work on the book project was carried out in 2023. Museum staff went through all the albums of press cuttings, publications and annual reports to draw a timeline of the museum’s history, including important events and milestones.
“The timeline will form the basis for the structure and layout of the book. All further archival research will be carried out by museum staff and will inform the production of the texts and images. The museum’s archive of images, cuttings and letters has been digitised and will be an important source of material. What remains is to digitise the photo negatives and all the documentation relating to the studio visits and operations. This will be followed by the actual writing of the book, which is expected to take four years,” says Annie Lindberg.
Facts about Skissernas Museum
Skissernas Museum has been acquiring sketches for 90 years. The collection expands by about a hundred new works every year. The museum was founded in 1934 by professor of art history Ragnar Josephson. Seven years later, with the world at war, the Archive of Decorative Arts opened to the public, a museum of modern art in Lund – many years before the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and at the same time as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris.
The museum is one of a kind in Sweden and one of few globally that specialises in public art and the artistic creative process. Since its foundation, correspondence between the museum and artists has also been kept, and many artists have donated their personal archives. The museum archives also include artists’ project descriptions and photographs documenting the creation of the artworks.
