Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T15:32:22.467Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art

from INDIVIDUAL BIOGRAPHY AND MUSEUM HISTORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Stuart Burch
Affiliation:
Nottingham Trent University
Kate Hill
Affiliation:
University of Lincoln
Get access

Summary

Time: 1:30 pm, Friday 30 May 2008

Place: Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jean Tinguely's Fiesta Bar is lined with liquor bottles. Tasty-looking snacks by Claes Oldenburg are available for visual consumption. People hungry for knowledge can read from an extensive library. The even more inquisitive are able to salve their curiosity by nosing through some postcards sent by On Kawara. Those wishing to exercise their bodies rather than their minds can follow Andy Warhol's handy Dance Diagram and foxtrot around the gallery. There is, alas, no musical accompaniment. Indeed, time seems to stand still, like the motionless hands of Ed Kienholz's clock. Suddenly the silence is broken when someone presses an inviting red button, bringing Tinguely's Fiesta Bar into life. The metal clanking of this kinetic sculpture harmonises with the click and whirl of a more technologically advanced mechanism. The latter, operated by touchscreen computer, makes it possible for visitors to select a painting from a menu of available works and watch as it glides across the ceiling before slowly coming to rest in the middle of the gallery. Emblazoned on the work I decided to pick were written the familiar words: ‘In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.’

Someone who has been famous for considerably longer than 15 minutes is Pontus Hultén. His renown certainly rivals and arguably even eclipses that of Moderna Museet, the museum he once led.

Type
Chapter
Information
Museums and Biographies
Stories, Objects, Identities
, pp. 29 - 44
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×