Pontus Hulten and the Observatory in Stockholm

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jean Jeurissen
Date: 2009/6/10
Subject: Pontus Hulten and the Observatory in Stockholm
To: SNS

First when I was about 23 and visited the 'cultural meetings' in the garden of the Moderna Museet of Stockholm on Saturday afternoons and several years later as a trainee at 'Modernan' from the museum education of the University of Lund, both these periods 'under his influence' were very important for me even if I didn't know it yet when it happened.

Last Monday it was the first time that I seemed to have forgotten his name. So please let me give him the honours he deserves. This is one of the two men who steered my interests into the direction of art and museums.

During one of his 'garden happenings' I came in contact with the people of 'Puss', an alternative satyrical magazine.

 

Pontus Hultén (1924-2006) is one of the most influential European art museum people of the 1960s and 1970s. He was director of the Moderna Museet 1959-1973 and of the Centre Pompidou in Paris 1973-1981. Hultén's private collection came to include works from the same artists whose exhibitions he curated and whose art he purchased for the said museums.

Andy Warhol and Pontus Hultén, 1968
photo: Nils-Göran Hökby. Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hultén's main aspiration was a new, active art museum, offering not only exhibitions but also concerts, films and other additional programme. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm was an important influence for the Finnish art circles as well, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. The radicalism of those decades was also seen in the more traditional Ateneum building in the form of different happenings and other events. The selection on display in Ateneum features about 100 works from the collection that Pontus Hultén donated to the Moderna Museet.

During this exhibition (from September to December 2006) Pontus passed away:

Obituary: Pontus Hulten, 82, curator - Europe - International Herald Tribune

Published: Monday, October 30, 2006

Pontus Hulten, a restless champion of contemporary art whose achievements spanned many countries and the founding directorships of several museums, including the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, died Wednesday at his home in Stockholm. He was 82.

His death was announced by the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where his career began.

A loquacious and outsize personality, Hulten was among the first of postwar Europe's curator-impresarios. He was known for his breadth of vision and for fomenting sprawling exhibitions that were extraordinary in scope and, sometimes, extraordinarily messy. He wanted museums to be user-friendly meeting places that challenged all kinds of accepted ideas and preferred exhibitions that embraced a range of artistic mediums and periods. He is often credited with inventing the interdisciplinary exhibition and the idea of organizing shows working with teams of curators.
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Greetings,

John

       
This is the observatory museum I talked about: http://www.observatoriet.kva.se/engelska/index.html They also organise happenings in the garden during summertime. Your idea is VERY GOOD!

The drawing with the swedish politicians and big capitalists is of Lena Svedberg, who illustrated some of my articles in 'Puss'. She would just like me have been 63 now if she hadn't taken her life in 1972 at 26.