Gitte Ørskou on The Art of Collecting

Museum Director Gitte Ørskou introduces The Art of Collecting – a behind-the-scenes look at how Moderna Museet builds, cares for, and shares its collection, through the voices of those who make it possible.

Gitte Ørskou: A very warm welcome to Moderna Museet. I’m Gitte Ørskou, Director of the museum, and I’m delighted to introduce you to The Art of Collecting.

In this audio guide, I invite you behind the scenes. You will hear from several of my colleagues – curators, conservators, technicians, museum hosts – as they share their insights about the many steps involved in bringing a work of art into the museum’s collection and preparing it to meet the public. Together, their voices offer a vivid picture of the wide expertise gathered under this roof, and of the work that often remains invisible.

This exhibition presents works acquired for the collection in the past five years. During this time, we have also developed new ways of thinking about what a collection can be, and how it can be used. We have invited artists such as Maurizio Cattelan and Rashid Johnson to interpret and stage the collection on their own terms – and through this, our understanding of both the art and the museum has shifted. With exhibitions such as
Sleepless Nights, where art of the 1980s was given renewed force, and Pink Sails, which opened unexpected perspectives on Swedish modernism, the collection itself has become an arena for discovery. These experiments have not only enriched our visitors, but also us as an institution: they have underlined that a collection is not a closed archive, but a living laboratory where the meaning of art is constantly renegotiated.

Let me also say something about the conditions of collecting. Once a work has entered Moderna Museet’s collection, we take responsibility for it – forever. We can never sell it. But we do lend many of our works, both to other museums in Sweden and abroad, and as long-term loans to institutions such as the Government Offices and Swedish embassies around the world.

Because the works will always belong to the museum – and thus to the Swedish people – we have over the years received many significant donations. Many wish to give an artwork as a gift to the public. Today, we rarely use government funds to buy art. Most of the works you see here have come to us as donations – from private individuals, foundations, our friends’ society Klubb Moderna, or from The American Friends of Moderna Museet.

We are continuously working to build these relationships, and often we succeed in securing precisely the works we want for the collection. In this exhibition, you will see many wonderful examples of just that. Each time, it is a great joy to present a new work that we promise to preserve, to share, and to show – forever.

The Art of Collecting is therefore not only an exhibition about art itself, but also about the great responsibility and care that lie behind every acquisition.

I hope you will feel inspired and curious. And I wish you a rewarding experience here at Moderna Museet – with The Art of Collecting, and with all the other collection exhibitions currently on view at the museum.