Moderna Museet’s New Venue in Malmo Opens to the Public at Renovated Power Station

MALMO.- The Art map of Malmö will get an important addition: on December 26, 2009 Moderna Museet Malmö will open John Smedberg’s electricity plant on Gasverksgatan 22 to the public. At the inauguration three opening exhibitions will be presented. Firstly Luc Tuymans from Belgium, who is considered one of the most influential contemporary artists of today. Secondly an exhibition with a selection of Moderna Museet’s collection with a focus on the 60s, and finally Astrid Svangren who is based in Copenhagen. This was presented at a press conference today.

Moderna Museet Malmö will be of continous relevance and of international concern. With a total exhibition space consisting of just above 800 square metres, Moderna Museet Malmö will offer exhibitions with today’s greatest artists and modern classics, parallel with a selection from Moderna Museets large collection from the 20th-century and onwards. Moderna Museet Malmö will also offer gallery education on the highest level, in the form of guided tours, family activities, workshops and seminars. Programme activities connected to the opening exhibitions is being planned at the moment, and will be presented in months to come.

John Smedberg’s power station from 1901 has been carefully and extensively refurbished and redesigned by Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter, and an extension has been built as a contemporary addition – an annex with a striking orange perforated sheet metal façade. The premises have been adapted to fulfil the stringent demands of a contemporary modern art museum of international renown. In addition to the exhibition space of more than 900 sqm, Moderna Museet Malmoe also has an educational workshop, a cafe and a small museum shop.

The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) is one of the most renowned painters of his generation, and the exhibition “Against the Day” presents 20 recent paintings. These new paintings are on themes such as staged and virtual images. It deals with the contemporary phenomena of reality TV and the world seen through the graphics that surround us constantly in a wide variety of media and electronic devices.

Copenhagen-based Astrid Svangren (b. 1972) strives in her work what I remember… to give the viewer the feeling of being enveloped by the work. By placing objects around the exhibition space, she generates a dialogue between image and object, while putting the focus on the viewer who is positioned in the midst of the work.

“SPECTACULAR TIMES: The 1960s from the Moderna Museet collection” is Moderna Museet Malmoe’s first presentation of the abundant Moderna Museet collection. Some 40 works have been carefully selected to highlight aspects of the American, French and Swedish art scenes. In addition to Robert Rauschenberg’s famous goat, “Monogram”, the exhibition will include works by Andy Warhol, Judy Chicago, Öyvind Fahlström and Carolee Schneemann.

Moderna Museets new exhibition halls in Malmö will be marked exteriorly with a new annex with entrance, café and a new upper gallery. The annex will get its characteristics by a perforated orange red façade that both connects with the old electricity plant buildings brick architecture and stands out as a contemporary addition. On street level the façade is completely made out of glass so that the daylight filters through the perforated surfaces.

Interiorly the building will have a totally new spatial order by the two new stairs that lets the visitor move between the high rooms of the turbine hall and the upper exhibition halls. The turbine hall is separated in three and contains except the exhibition halls a children’s art studio. The new museum will meet top quality demands on climate and security, to enable international borrowings and exhibitions with the foremost modern and contemporary art. In total Moderna Museet Malmö will offer 1,000 square meters of exhibition space including the children’s art studio for educational purposes.

The award-winning architects Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter are in charge of the annex and the interior remodeling of Moderna Museet Malmö.

Related posts:

1. Astrid Svangren Exhibits Her Works at the Opening of the Moderna Museet in Malmo
2. Moderna Museet’s Exhibition at New Museum in Malmo Focuses on the 60s
3. National Trust and Royal Academy of Arts Collaborate on New Public Art Commission
4. All Power to the Imagination! An Installation at Vienna’s Secession