Moderna Museet
Sweden's national museum of modern and contemporary art, in Rafael Moneo's building on Skeppsholmen.
Moderna Museet holds Sweden's national collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, running to some 130,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation. It opened in 1958 in a former naval drill hall on the island of Skeppsholmen under its first director Pontus Hultén, whose exhibitions in the 1960s made the museum internationally known. The collection includes Picasso, Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Rauschenberg and Louise Bourgeois, alongside a deep holding of Nordic modernism.
The present building, by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, opened in 1998. It is arranged as a low group of galleries with pyramid-shaped lanterns that bring even northern daylight into the rooms, and it shares the site with Arkitektur- och designcentrum. Damp problems forced a closure between 2002 and 2004, after which the building was overhauled and reopened. Outside, a sculpture terrace holds works by Alexander Calder, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, with views across the water to Djurgården.
Highlights
- National collection of modern art, around 130,000 works
- Rafael Moneo's 1998 building with daylight lanterns over the galleries
- Rauschenberg's Monogram and a strong holding of Nordic modernism
- Outdoor sculpture by Calder, Niki de Saint Phalle and Tinguely
