With BrittonBritton, we were honored and inspired to assist our dear friend Andreas Brändström—curator, dealer, and then-acting museum director—with the production and presentation of the sensational hit exhibition Munch!, subtitled Nietzsche, Thiel, and the Greatest Nordic Artist, at the Thielska Galleriet museum in Royal Djurgården park, organized to mark the 150th anniversary of Munch’s birth. The exhibition set a visitor record for the museum unlikely to ever be surpassed.
The show was in every respect a remarkable achievement, pulled off in an rediculously short production time of just six months. The Thielska Gallery’s Munch collection is among the finest in the world. When the Munch Museum in Oslo and other Norwegian institutions requested loans of key works from this collection for the Munch anniversary, Andreas saw an opportunity to, in exchange, borrow other masterpieces from the Norwegian museums for his own Munch exhibition—staged on the shortest possible notice—before the start of the Norwegian anniversary celebrating their national artist.
In order to stage the exhibition, swift action was required to upgrade the museum’s logistics, climate control, and—above all—security, following decades of neglect during Ulf Linde’s 35-year reign as Thielska’s patron and autocrat. We must acknowledge that this was a perilous gamble in terms of time, security, and costs. We assisted Andreas with consultations on interiors, presentation, and minor modifications to the premises to improve the visitor experience and logistics.
Everything clicked in the end, by the narrowest of margins—as is always with productions of this kind. The result crushed our wildest expectations. It was an exquisitely beautiful exhibition (unfortunately, we lack photos!) that attracted nearly 80,000 visitors to the remote, then completely forgotten Thielska Galleriet museum—an absolutely incredible figure, four times the most optimistic estimate we had presented to the board to justify the venture. In the end, the Thielska Gallery made a substantial profit from the Munch exhibition.
Unfortunately, we ourselves were scarsely rewarded for our efforts. After our follow-up exhibition, Stockholm New (see below!), we were swiftly disposed of, following our dear friends and collaborators Claes Wachtmeister, chairman of the board, and Andreas Brändström, acting curator, in a truly unsavory, widely publicized cultural scandal. We had gravely underestimated the small-scale corruption and rot fermented over all those decades of self-serving mismanagement, as well as the cultural-political power games in which we became sacrifcial pawns.
I, along with others, will return to these sordid, instructive episodes in greater detail—that’s a promise!
Read more about our exhibition Stockholm New, which followed Munch! here:
Stockholm New: national romanticism from double turn-of-the centuries: fashion photography meets classic masterpiece painting.
Stockholm New – national romanticism from double turn of the centuries: contemporary fashion photography meets classic masterpiece painting. Art exhibition staged at magnificent Thielska Galleriet art museum in Royal Djurgården park in Stockholm. Large and monumental scale prints of classic