The Artist/Scenographer and the Museum Exhibition

Abstract

Summary: There are several professional competences involved in the creation of a museum exhibition. This article investigates the collaboration between the artist/scenographer and the museum. Further, it seeks to contribute to a historical understanding of such collaborations by exploring the work created by the Swedish artist/scenographer Lennart Mörk in the 1960s and 1970s. It analyses the arguments used to justify the involvement of an artist/scenographer, and looks more closely at the nature of the collaborative work that ensued when the two exhibitions Oskuld–Arsenik (1966/67) at Nordiska museet and Gustaf III (1972/73) at Nationalmuseum were created. The article argues that the recruitment of a theatre decorator/stage artist, as this group of professionals were referred to at the time, was part of a strategy that allowed the museum to realize complex exhibition concepts, while also making the display more emotionally engaging and accessible, something that was increasingly demanded of the museums at the time. Moreover, it challenged a traditional museum exhibition format, placing less focus on the authentic museum objects and more focus on sensory experience and aesthetics.