Konstmuseet i Norr, Norrbotten County Art Museum, opened in 2018 to great fanfare. Here was a highly anticipated new institution with the potential to bring Norrbotten, Sweden’s largest and northernmost county, together and establish it as an art destination. In 2020, two years after the grand opening only some 3,400 people had visited the museum, which is located inside Kristallen, Kiruna’s new city hall. There were numerous health and safety issues, a leaking roof, and criticism from exhibiting artists. All of the museum’s employees took sick leave, and in November 2022, former director Selma Green left her post.
This fall, curator Maria Lind will take over as the museum’s new director. With a sophisticated programme, Lind has high hopes of attracting an international audience and putting Norrbotten on the contemporary art map. She has been Sweden’s Counsellor of Cultural Affairs in Moscow since 2020 and has previously been director of Tensta Konsthall (2011–2018) and curator at Moderna Museet (1997–2001). She has also held international positions at Kunstverein Munich (2002–2004) and at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in New York (2008–2010).
Lind seemed flattered when I pointed out that she isn’t exactly known for her crowd-pleasing programming. She made it clear that for Konstmuseet i Norr, art – not the audience – will be the point of departure, which sounds like the opposite of what many art institutions are doing today. Lind didn’t go into detail about what art will be shown in the one-thousand-square-metre space, except that it will be a combination of local and international artists. Furthermore, Lind’s curatorial methods will be similar to those she employed during at Tensta Konsthall, with long-developing projects that link internationally prominent artists with issues and artists from the region. At the same time, the position as museum director presents new challenges for Lind, such as building an art collection and running an institution whose activities concern the entire region of Norrbotten.
This fall you will take up the position as director of Konstmuseet i Norr, leaving your post as Counsellor of Cultural Affairs in Moscow. You have been in Russia during an unusual time, to say the least, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. When did you return to Sweden?
I came back to Sweden three days before [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s mutiny, so it was in the nick of time. My contract runs until mid-August, but I’m on holiday for most of the remaining time. I will not be going back.
What was your final time in Russia like?
The embassy is functioning. There have been some expulsions, but those gaps have been filled. Overall, it has been a life-changing experience.
Part of your new job will be to establish a network in the Barents region. Will the work you did in Moscow be useful in that regard?
The official Barents regional cooperation has been suspended following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Before that, it was quite substantial. During the three years I worked as a counsellor, I travelled extensively throughout Russia, so, of course, I carry those experiences with me. There are very interesting artists and institutions in the north; the vast majority of those who remain today are dissidents who miss the cooperation enormously.
Kiruna is a long way from Moscow. What are your plans for the museum?
The first thing I’ll do is to go there and meet the staff to familiarise myself with what they have been doing. It is a young museum, only five years old, but it is still both interesting and important to understand what has been going on so far. Konstmuseet i Norr is supposed to be a museum that affects not only Giron/Kiruna, but the whole of Norrbotten County, as it is both municipal and regional. I want to get to know the contemporary art scene in the fourteen municipalities and what could be done with it. I think a lot about [Swedish journalist and author] Sven Lindqvist’s Dig Where You Stand[1978] – start looking where you are, it can give rise to many thoughts and ideas. Of course, you don’t have to look exclusively at the local, but many times it can be an exciting starting point. Northern Sweden is at the crossroads of so much that is going on in the world today, from societal transformation, resource extraction and industrial expansion, to issues of Indigenous rights, minorities, and climate change, which accelerates the closer you get to the poles.
In general, I am thinking about the methods we used at Tensta Konsthall, where we worked with longer projects. You don’t have to address a question or a theme through just a group exhibition and then “tick!” it’s done; instead, you can let things take time. Not every detail has to be planned in advance; it’s also possible to decide to just see how things develop. It has been a rewarding way to work before and I think we can benefit from it at Konstmuseet i Norr as well.
An artist based in Norrbotten often does not have the same exhibition opportunities as those in Stockholm and southern Sweden. Should a regional museum work to support the local art scene or rather work to give people living in the area the opportunity to see international art that is not otherwise shown there?
It’s very important to combine both regional and international artists – as always! This is in line with how I’ve worked before, a mix of what’s nearby and what comes from further away. The most important thing for me is to show incredibly good and relevant art. There are themes that can be built around phenomena that are specific to Norrbotten, the Cap of the North, or the entire circumpolar area, and these can be related to phenomena in other places in the world. It doesn’t just have to be about geography. You can try to find similarities, communities, and parallels to other places.
There are already a lot of interesting artists and art institutions in the north, even though the art scene in southern Sweden isn’t always aware of it. I am thinking of Havremagasinet in Boden, the konsthall and Galleri Syster in Luleå. There is also a dynamic residency centre in Moskosel, a small self-organised konsthall in Råneå, and so on. Konstmuseet i Norr isn’t alone.
But Konstmuseet i Norr stands out as a collecting museum. What are your thoughts on the kinds of art a museum like this should collect?
Building a collection practically from scratch and thinking about the best way to do it is new to me, although I have worked with collections in other ways before. It’s important that a collection reflects what the collecting institution does, that it isn’t just a matter of shopping. A collection should serve as a kind of archive of the art institution’s activities. What we do will be a combination of local and global, and that will be reflected in the collection.
The regional government’s investment in culture in the area has been highlighted as a means to “attract more people to the north,” and the idea seems to be that Konstmuseet i Norr will act as a kind of catalyst for the regional art scene. What are your thoughts on this?
My job is to make sure that the museum has a brilliant programme with art at its core. My experience is that if you really do that – work with high quality in a committed and respectful way – people are interested and want to participate. You don’t have to be a crowd-pleaser. What is relevant and good attracts an audience. This was something I learnt during my years at Tensta, but also in connection with the Gwangju Biennial [2016] and the Art Encounters Biennial [2019] in Timisoara. It’s about finding common concerns, starting from the art rather than the audience.
It’s a very young museum, what are the advantages and disadvantages of that?
I like it! I enjoy working on development and devising new methods and strategies. This is a great opportunity to do that as the museum board has also expressed a strong desire to take a step forward.
Up until now, the museum has mainly been known for endemic health and safety problems. Since it first opened, all the employees have left. How do you feel about taking the helm of a museum where there has been so much turmoil?
Allow me to quote our king Carl XVI Gustaf: “Let’s turn the page.” Let’s move on and look forward.
Will this idea of turning the page be reflected in the programme? How will what you do differ from the museum’s previous activities?
The most noticeable difference will probably be that there will be a bit more activity, a bit more intensity. So far, the programme has not been all that articulated externally. I want our activities to be more explicit, and to clearly communicate to people what we are interested in and why we choose to do what we do. In general, I think we need to get better at explaining why we do what we do in the art world, both in Sweden and elsewhere. I appreciate communication that makes it clear what you are interested in and what you think is important. Is it creating a contemporary art canon, or is it something else? And if so, what?
What are your hopes for Konstmuseet i Norr in five years? What do you hope to have achieved?
By then I hope that Konstmuseet i Norr will be an established art institution both in Sweden and globally, through our collaborations, and that we work with artists all over the world. I also hope that we can contribute to art from the region travelling beyond Norrbotten. I want Konstmuseet i Norr to be a place where you can experience the most interesting contemporary art, that you come away with something of what is most relevant to our time. It is also important to me that Konstmuseet i Norr plays a big role in the region, even outside the museum walls.
What is the first thing you’ll do when you get there?
I want to begin with a kind of inventory. I am convinced that this will trigger a lot of ideas. I want to understand what kind of libraries there are in the area, what kind of spaces they have and whether they already have art there. Have they worked with art there before? I want to get an overview of the region’s community centres and parks, folk museums, and settlement houses to see how we can work together. Then, of course, it’s about surveying and getting to know the artists in the area, many of whom I consider to be among the most interesting contemporary artists working today, for instance, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Joar Nango, and Silje Figenschou Thoresen, to name a few.
