Page 48 - Studio International - March 1966

touching on. Hulten, born in 1924, has been director has disappeared. The first reaction was to start an
of Moderna Museet for eight years. A former student in artificial system of grants to subsidize Swedish artists
Paris, author of a monograph on Vermeer, he organized whose works no one was buying any more. Then we
several exhibitions in private Stockholm galleries in realized this was a mistake, and that it would be better
1958 on Dada, Tinguely, and 'the object'. When he took to form a new class of potential buyers who would in
over the museum (he was 34) it was only a neglected turn make collections. To show them the way we had
branch of the National Museum, and it is due almost to have a good museum. In 1964 the Swedish govern­
entirely to his efforts that it has been transformed into a ment agreed to allocate us a special subsidy of a
remarkable cultural conductor and a focal point of million dollars. This was a great help'.
intellectual life. For what?
His friendship for the artists and the constant support 'The museum is a home for all those new experiments
he has received from Duchamp, Tinguely. Calder. which have no other home·. says Hulten. 'We take in
Oldenburg, Soto. Mortensen, Klein, Rauschenberg, art's homeless. We show what is neither music, nor
Fahlstrom, and Sandberg. former director of the Sted­ poetry (like our poetry festival), nor painting ("hap­
lijk Museum, has made it possible for him to bring penings". labyrinths). On principle we stand on the
together. at reasonable cost and sometimes for nothing. artists' side. not the public's. No vulgarization, no
many important works-more than a thousand acquisi­ attenuation, no dilution. We show raw experiment.
tions in ten years. The result is one of the most modern It's up to the public to make an effort .. .'
museums in Europe. 'Relations with artists are impor­ To Hulten the museum is no show-case of works of
tant'. he says. 'If your reputation is good. you will get art but a practical instrument for influencing collective
the best. the rarest . . .' Thus Rauschenberg's famous sensibility. You feel he would rather have a Rauschen­
goat, which Rauschenberg refused to let the New York berg 'happening' (he had one) than a work by
Metropolitan Museum have. has an important place Rauschenberg, if he thought the shock to the public
in Stockholm. would be more violent and fruitful. This is an ·activist'
The public followed his lead. With 200.000 visitors a view of a museum; there's no question of beneficently
year (Stockholm has a population of a million) it tops displaying acceptable samples of an already dead and
the figure of the Musee d'Art Moderne at Paris by about classified culture. Now the aim is to constantly assault
a third; the average age is under thirty and thirteen intellectual complacency, to put a charge of dynamite
per cent. are working people. Every Stockholm school under our mental outlook and fight all the time those
visits the museum twice a year. In 1965 clubs and other who try to water down the revolutionary potential of
bodies organised 688 conducted visits. 'This isn't a work of art and turn it into an innocent gadget or
enough'. says Hulten. ·we must reduce the entrance make it a part of the decorative scene.
ticket to a crown (1 /4½d) and open from midday to This is the generous utopian attitude underlying
ten p.m. We must break down class divisions in the Hulten's activities; a political utopianism in the broad
museum. With incomes in Sweden levelling out a sense. Art. he thinks, should change man. so that man
whole category of patrons who bought artists' works in his turn may change the world. □

Yayoi Kusama Robert Rauschenberg
with her Aggregation Boat 1962 Monogram 1955
231 X 78¾ X 511 in. 72 X 72 X 48 in.
One of the exhibits in The Inner A recent acquisition
and the Outer Space exhibition of the Moderna Museet

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