Seminar Series: Samtidskonsten sporrar

Sweden’s Museums launches contemporary art seminar series in collaboration with Maria Lind

Sweden’s Museums is initiating a new seminar series on contemporary art in collaboration with Maria Lind, Director of Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna. Running from autumn 2025 through spring 2026, the series highlights the opportunities and challenges museums face when working with contemporary art. Through lectures and discussions with invited experts from Sweden and abroad, the seminars will explore how contemporary art challenges and inspires museums to think innovatively about collections, archives, and their role in society.

The series comprises five events. Each seminar takes place at a museum in Sweden in partnership with the host institution, and features an international expert. To enable broader participation, all seminars will also be streamed online. The aim is to deepen knowledge and awareness of how museums can engage with contemporary art across different fields.

Program

Saturday 13 September 2025

Kin museum in Kiruna – Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

The Museum is a Team
Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, will present how teamwork lies at the core of a modern museum’s mission. She will describe the journey of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, which opened its new building in 2024 at Plac Defilad, a vibrant cultural hub next to the Palace of Culture and Science. Designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, the museum now offers 20,000 square meters for exhibitions, education, research, and public engagement.

Mytkowska will share how the museum’s collaborative approach shapes its focus on socially engaged, political, and ecological art. Through examples from major exhibitions — such as The Non-Permanent Exhibition. 4× the Collection — she will illustrate how multiple curatorial voices present diverse narratives, both Polish and international. The lecture highlights the belief that a museum’s relevance today depends on dialogue, inclusivity, and critical thinking, achieved through interdisciplinary teamwork.

Joanna Mytkowska is a curator and art historian who has been Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw since 2007. She previously worked at Centre Pompidou, Paris, and co-founded the Foksal Gallery Foundation. Mytkowska has curated major exhibitions, including Never Again. Art against War and Fascism in the 20th and 21st centuries (2019) and Alina Szapocznikow, Sculpture Undone 1955–1972 (MoMA New York, Hammer Museum, Wiels Brussels). Her leadership focuses on making the museum a collaborative, socially engaged institution that reflects the complexity of contemporary society.

Thursday 4 December 2025

Röhsska museet in Gothenburg – Victoria Lynn, Director of Tarrawarra Museum, Melbourne

Curatorial Co-belonging: Listening to the Land
Dr Victoria Lynn, Director of TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville, outside Melbourne, presents the museum’s site-responsive approach developed through close collaboration with First Nations communities. Situated on Wurundjeri Country, TarraWarra Museum of Art was established in 2003 through the philanthropy of Eva and Marc Besen, who also donated a major collection of modern and contemporary Australian art.

Under Dr Lynn’s leadership, the museum embraces the cultural and historical significance of its location, drawing inspiration from the Wurundjeri custodianship of the land, the history of Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, and the meaning of Tarrawarra — “slow moving water” in Woiwurrung language. Dr Lynn will explore how this connection to place challenges the traditional western model of the modern art museum.

Through examples of recent exhibitions, the lecture will demonstrate how TarraWarra strives for curatorial co-belonging — where art is not isolated from life but deeply connected to the land, its histories, and its communities. This approach offers a new model for museums seeking to engage ethically and creatively with their environments and the people who shape them.

Dr Victoria Lynn is a leading Australian museum director and curator, recognised for her strategic vision and her commitment to art’s role in society. With over 30 years’ experience in major public galleries, she currently directs TarraWarra Museum of Art. Dr Lynn is widely respected for her engagement with First Nations arts, as well as contemporary Australian, European, American, and Indian art. A prolific writer, she has published over 100 articles, essays, and monographs on contemporary art. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2008 and became a Fellow of Monash University in 2024. Her work champions both emerging and established artists on national and international stages.

Tuesday 17 February 2026

Arkdes in Stockholm – Tone Hansen, Director of MUNCH in Oslo

MUNCH – Between the Iconic and the Contemporary
Tone Hansen, Director of MUNCH in Oslo, presents the vision behind one of Norway’s most significant cultural institutions. Opened in 2021, MUNCH is a striking landmark on Oslo’s waterfront, housing the world’s largest collection of works by Edvard Munch. With its 13 floors and over 5,000 square meters of exhibition space, the museum offers a dynamic range of experiences — from showcasing Munch’s iconic art to presenting modern and contemporary works that resonate with his legacy.

In her lecture, Hansen will discuss how MUNCH has evolved into a platform that balances historical reverence with forward-looking programming. She will reflect on how the museum’s three core pillars — Edvard Munch, modernism, and contemporary art — create opportunities for dialogue between past and present, local and global perspectives. Through recent exhibitions such as Alice Neel, Goya and Munch: Modern Prophecies, and George Baselitz, the museum demonstrates how Munch’s themes of human vulnerability, nature, and existential struggle continue to inspire and challenge today’s audiences.
The lecture will also highlight the museum’s role as a civic space, fostering inclusivity and experimentation, and its commitment to contributing to the cultural life of Oslo and beyond.

Tone Hansen is the Director of MUNCH in Oslo, a landmark museum dedicated to the life and work of Edvard Munch, as well as modern and contemporary art. Since 2021, she has led the museum in developing ambitious exhibitions that connect Munch’s legacy with global artistic dialogues. From 2011 to 2022, Hansen served as Director of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, where she revitalised the institution with a rich, cross-disciplinary programme. She has curated exhibitions featuring artists such as Pablo Picasso, Yayoi Kusama, Nils Aslak Valkeapää, and Zdenka Rusova. A trained artist and art scholar, Hansen has also held key leadership roles in Arts Council Norway and other cultural boards across Scandinavia.

Thursday 12 March 2026

Silvermuseet in Arjeplog – Manolo Borja Villel, art historian, curator, and advisor to the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya

After Guernica: Museums, Memory and the Challenge of the Present

Manolo Borja Villel, art historian, curator, and advisor to the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, reflects on Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s iconic mural. Created for the Spanish Republic’s Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, Guernica became a universal symbol of resistance to oppression and the horrors of war.

In his lecture, Borja Villel asks: What becomes of such a symbol today, when Guernica risks being reduced to a tourist attraction, and Picasso’s name to a brand? How can museums move beyond mass-consumption slogans to rekindle the critical power of art? Drawing on his experience as former director of Museo Reina Sofía — home to Guernica since 1992 — and current head of the Museu habitable programme, he explores how museums can engage with the persistent ghosts of history, confront Eurocentric art narratives, and reclaim their role as spaces for education, transformation, and collective memory.

Manolo Borja Villel is an influential art historian and curator, currently serving as advisor to the Department of Culture in the Generalitat de Catalunya and leading the Museu habitable programme. He was director of Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid from 2008 to 2023, where he was instrumental in rethinking the role of museums as civic and critical spaces. Prior to that, he led MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Borja Villel is internationally recognised for his work on institutional critique, the social role of art, and his advocacy for decolonising the museum sector.

Thursday 7 May 2026

Etnografiska museet in Stockholm – Doreen Mende, Director of the Research Department at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Vulnerable Processes: Art and Research in Conversation
Doreen Mende, Director of the Research Department at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, explores how curatorial research can engage with the diasporic lives of objects and material entities in museum collections. Drawing on the 500-year history of the Dresden museum complex — shaped by electorates, monarchies, colonialism, Enlightenment, and shifting state logics — Mende reflects on objects as witnesses of entangled histories and futures.
Her lecture offers insights into research methods at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, including initiatives such as the Stannaki Forum and the Transcultural Academy, which seek to pluralise the concept of history and rethink museums as democratic sites for the 21st century. Through conversations between contemporary art and specialised museum research - from provenance studies to restoration - Mende invites us to consider history as an unfinished process, and to engage with heterotemporal and transgenerational perspectives on material culture.

Doreen Mende is a curator, academic, and Director of the cross-collections Research Department at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden since 2021. She initiated the Stannaki Forum. Art and Research in Conversation and the Transcultural Academy, bringing together international partners around themes such as Futurities and Unfinished Publics. Her curatorial practice spans major research-based exhibitions including Sequences: Entangled Internationalisms (Albertinum, 2023/24), Candida Höfer: Context. A Dresden Reflection (2024), and The Missed Seminar (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin). Mende co-founded the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin and was associate professor of curatorial/politics at HEAD Genève (2015–2025). Her research focuses on decolonisation, entangled internationalisms, and the politics of display.

Bild: Kristina Pashkova, Dagböcker, 2020-2021