Milliken Gallery in Stockholm is closing down. At the end of the year, the gallery’s founder and director Aldy Milliken will move to Louisville, Kentucky to assume the directorship of the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft.
Since opening in 2004, Milliken Gallery has established itself as one of the most interesting galleries in Stockholm. Unlike most of the city’s gallerists, Milliken has consistently kept his downtown spaces open for different types of events – guest curated group exhibitions, lecture series, film screenings, fashion shows, etc. – not only solo shows with the gallery’s artists. In many ways, Milliken Gallery has been an anomaly on Stockholm’s gallery scene, an attempt at creating something more than a business: a public space for critical artistic experiments and discussions.
“I’ve always wanted to challenge the notion of what a gallery can be”, says Milliken himself to Kunstkritikk. “Perhaps I can only continue this work by departing from the gallery as such.” According to Milliken, his decision to leave Stockholm’s gallery scene is due only to the potential he sees in his new professional role, to his desire to explore the structure of the museum.
Milliken Gallery has also established itself as one of the most important Swedish galleries internationally. It has represented artists such as Tris Vonna-Michell, Felix Gmelin, Lars Nilsson and Tova Mozard, and has regularly participated in several of the most influential international art fairs, such as Art Basel and The Armory Show. At the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Milliken will, among other things, work with developing the museum’s international profile, which, he states, may include introducing Swedish artists in Kentucky.
